Both end up as logs. They arrive by completely different roads, and the difference shows up in the wood.
A Harvested Tree Falls the Way Somebody Planned
It is chosen, cut on a schedule, dropped where it was meant to go, and it has a clean sawn stump face you can read at a glance. Nothing about it is a surprise.
A Storm-Thrown Tree Does Not
Wind loading, saturated ground and a twisting failure put it down where it stood. It may have snapped, torn out, or come down through other trees on the way. That history goes inside the log: compression zones, distorted fibre, and shake — rings separating from one another — which storm timber is genuinely prone to and which you cannot see from outside.
It also has no sawn face. It tore off the stump, so the end is splintered and unreadable, and the cheapest information available is one recon crosscut. See what makes a tree worth milling.
The Part That Is Usually Said Wrong
The standard line is that storm-fallen timber is racing a clock — insects, fungus, moisture cycles, get it milled before it degrades. That is true on most ground and it is not true on mine, and it is the single most important fact about this stand.
The swamp floods and stays completely under water for months at a stretch. Wood that stays wet does not rot: submerged timber is preserved, not decaying, and there is no rot clock running on these logs at all. My constraint is water level and a way across ground nothing has ever driven on — not time.
Most of them also came down with their root plates still attached, which means the heart never dried out. Some were still carrying green leaves weeks after the storm.
Three Different Populations Out There
They are not one pile, and they do not want the same treatment:
- Submerged — anaerobically preserved, still saturated, no clock on them.
- Held up off the ground by the tangle, which fell like pickup sticks. These have been air drying for two years already — a head start, and a different drying plan from the rest.
- Still alive, tipped but rooted. The cleanest material of the three, with no beetle and no stain, but full green weight and better anchored to deal with.
One more thing worth saying: time on the ground is not the same event for every species. It took a magnolia of mine to a spalted figure I could never have cut on purpose. It would take a white oak the other way. See old growth timber and the Q&A for the terms.
Contact
Old Growth Mill
Axson, GA 31624
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (912) 310-0650
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