Draftwood

Draft wood combines horse powered logging and restorative forestry practices. Our goal is to make beautiful, healthy, and ecologically productive woods. Buying these products makes you a partner in achieving this goal.

CONTACT Chad Vogel
CALL (518) 573-4499
EMAIL reberrockdraftwood@gmail.com

Products Offered:

Flooring

Unfinished hardwood: tongue & groove
multiple native species available
Unfinished Pine: tongue & groove or S4S

Live Edge Hard Wood Slabs
Maple, Oak, Walnut, Ash

Rough Cut Lumber
Pine in various sizes, Ash, Butternut

Fire Wood
Split seasoned wood
Long length

We can come to you and harvest firewood from your woodlot

Low impact harvest methods
Horse logging using worst-first single tree selection is called “restorative forestry”.  This method looks closely at each individual tree to determine which ones to harvest. Trees damaged by previous skidding, disease, fire, over-crowding, or weather are removed first. Every tree that is cut is carefully felled to avoid damaging other remaining trees
with high value potential.

Grow high quality timber
Restorative forestry has been found to increase the amount of high quality commercial timber taken from a given site over time. Crop tree management focuses on releasing individual, selected trees to maximize their growth by removing nearby diseased and damaged trees.  Research conducted on hardwoods in West Virginia (Perkey, Wikins, and Smith, USDA Forest Service, January 1994) indicates that a crop tree “free to grow” may increase in diamter 2-3 times more rapidly than unmanaged stands.

Our harvest techniques can provide income to the landowner every 10-20 years. It is an ongoing management system rather than total clearcut harvest rotation every 75 years.

Benefits of Restorative Forestry and Horse Power
Minimal soil disturbance and erosion
Restores the health and ecological diversity of your forest
Increases the development of top dollar timber
Cultivates large, majestic, valuable trees
Preserves the beauty and recreational use of the forest and can create a trail network
Helps protect air and water quality
Protects wildlife habitats
Requires very little or no road building
Supports the local economy
 
Why Horse power
We use horses to pull logs from the forest providing a low-impact, uniquely sourced product. Horses don’t cause soil compaction nor rutted skid roads that are often associated with large machines. Trees have numerous roots close to the surface of the ground hat are easily damaged by heavy machinery. Horses have greater maneuverability and are able to make tight turns without damaging trees.

Why Restorative Forestry
Our method of selecting individual trees on a “worst first” basis improves the quality of the trees in a given forest. Limiting removal to no more than 30% maintains the forested condition. Creating small pockets in theforest where light can get to the ground allows natural regeneration ofa range of tree species.

We believe Draftwood standards exceed every other standard in the industry, including Forest Stewardship Counsel (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Our products are guaranteed to have been harvested under Draftwood Principles, Criteria and Guidelines. Draftwood Green Certified Forest Products have been used in L.E.E.D building projects.