We have cut, prepared and sent out logs to the mill many times over the years, but with mills becoming few and far between, the cost is prohibitive.  For these reasons and the fact that we did not want to cut so many trees into firewood, about ten years ago we purchased our own Woodmizer sawmill.  We were impressed with the Woodmizer mill and utilized it to custom cut much of the lumber for our barn and fences. We cut oversize rough planks for scaffolding to enable us to build our barn and custom cut and planed the large planks for our truck trailer beds. We cut more lumber for our nursery beds, decks & shelters. We even panelled our living room and master bedroom with our own custom made tongue & groove cedar. 

Our older sawmill was great, but it required that each log be turned by hand with a peavy and it would only cut a maximum sixteen foot long log length. It served its purpose well and enabled us to become proficient in milling our logs into usable lumber. A few years ago health issues made handling the heavy logs impractical and we had to upgrade to a newer hydraulically operated model.  The new hydraulic mills load and turn the log all by itself on a twenty foot, or longer, extendable bed.   A twenty foot length enables us to create an even more universal product.  In addition, our collection of different saws, planers and other equipment enables us to custom process our lumber into many other value-added products. 

There are many small, lumber mills locally, so competition is tight. There is not much markup on standard sizes like 2" x 4" or 2" x 6" lumber. We cannot compete with the mega-stores for price and most people do not seem to be willing to pay a green premium for quality material from a certified tree farm.  So we use our wood in as many ways as we can think of here on our forest farm and laugh when we see the poor quality material people carry out of home improvement stores.