Please help support "Carbon Positive" Forestry

Most people wouldn’t know what “green” in a consumer sense really is, even if it kicked them in the butt. I wouldn’t suggest doing that, because consumers are barraged with advertising that confuses everyone. But I would like to use any forum available to educate consumers about making awesome choices to support the environment. This is my life’s work. I will share with the reader, some of the journey to this point in time. I bet you get a kick out of reading about it. Certainly it is something to talk about – those Organic Horse Loggers up in the mountains.

I work with a small “treeroots” organization that promotes “restorative forestry”, Healing Harvest Forest Foundation.

http://healingharvestforestfoundation.org

We call it “restorative” because we know the quality of the forest products produced conventionally on a per tree and log basis is declining. So we don’t think we can sustain a decline. We think that in order for any natural resource management or extraction to be sustainable it must be restorative. You may ask: Restorative to what? Restored to a forest that is as similar to a virgin forest of North America as possible. “Restorative Forestry” imitates nature and only takes the worst trees first and allows the best trees to remain to grow as large, old and profitable as possible. This is a long term approach that is gaining acceptance equal to the understanding of it by the public, particularly environmentally aware consumers.

Our approach is one of being “carbon positive” in our actions of addressing human needs for forest products. This means we use a power source that doesn’t burn fossil fuels which contribute to global warming, but instead process, digest and convert captured solar energy in the form of hay and grain into a biological power source of working animals. We log with horses, mules and oxen, animal power. That’s the anthropological culture side which supports the silvicultural approach. Our methods leave the biggest, best and healthy trees in the forest which stores more carbon in their large bodies and yet increases carbon sequestration buy promoting some new growth to replace the lesser and declining trees that are harvested. This method and group are the most “green” producers in the country - maybe the planet.

The most cool thing about it, is that it cost exactly the same as any other log home, no premium extra charge for being “GREEN”!

Now - what you may do to be a part of this is to visit our web site and read more about what we are doing. The gist is to buy a DRAFTWOOD Turman Log Home, made exclusively from our logs, harvested using restorative forestry principles….and we will get a sales commission on the home. This money will be used to start a combination endowment - self insurance fund for the ground level workers. This is what we call “ecological capitalism”, where the people that do the best job taking care of the eco-system, make more money for their work. This could be one of the most revolutionary consumer driven changes in the world. What we want and need from every reader is to spread the word about this project, invite them to contact us about it and help us sell a home made from our logs.

*Our industry has challenged us to back up the notion that people really care about the environment so anyone paying any attention that really cares about the environment may help. Building starts are down, everyone is worried about the future, but someone out there is planning to build that dream vacation log home or any kind of home….we may enhance the dream to actually having the home owner come to the forest and see the logs harvested if they want to.

Go to http://www.turmanloghomes.com and tell them you want a DRAFTWOOD Log Home…it is as green as the real world gets…..They can build state of the art, timber frame or log homes, your design or they will design for you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and spread the word…

Jason Rutledge – rutledge@swva.net

* Industry means the existing manufacturers who have never before considered the sustainable question about their products. Most of their other wood comes from bad practices, like Clear Cutting and High Grading. They don’t think enough people care to matter…let’s prove them wrong and do what is right for the environment. Or maybe the do care and want to do things differently if possible, here is our chance…either way it is a win/win.

Thanks again!