There is a river swamp on our place in south Georgia. Nobody in my family has ever cut a tree out of it — not for want of timber, some of them are two hundred years old, but because none of my people ever did, and I had no intention of being the first.
Hurricane Helene settled that. It put those trees on the ground in a single night, and they have been lying there since.
Why the timber is still good
The swamp floods. It goes completely under water for months at a stretch, and wood that stays wet does not rot — it is preserved. There is no clock running on these logs. Many came down with their root plates still attached, so the heart never dried out at all, and some of them were still carrying green leaves weeks afterwards.
What I am short of is not time. It is water level, and a way to move a six-thousand-pound log out of ground that nothing has ever driven across.
What this is
Old Growth Mill is one man, one portable mill, and a finite number of trees. I am not sawing anybody else's logs and I am not going to be — that is covered here. I am cutting mine, one at a time, and writing down what each one turns out to be.
Every tree gets a number, a pin on the tree map, and a blog that follows it from the ground to whatever it finally becomes. Nothing about a tree is settled until it is opened on the mill, so the record gets written as the work happens rather than assembled afterwards. That is also why availability isn't listed.
Frugal from stump to top
Old Growth Mill practices frugal milling. The trunk gives slabs, boards, cants and mantles. The crown — the part most people burn — gives bowl blanks and turning stock, and the crotches carry figure you cannot get anywhere else in the tree. Only the brush is waste. That is not about being cheap. It is about not throwing away wood that took two centuries to grow and cannot be replaced.
Where this stands
The mill is not at the swamp yet. It is at my house, where it has spent two years cutting up storm-fallen trees out of my own yard and my mother's. Nothing from the swamp has been milled, no trees are numbered, and nothing is for sale.
When the mill moves out there, the record starts.
Contact Old Growth Mill
Old Growth Mill
Axson, GA 31624
Email: [email protected]