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If you drive around rural Vermont, you see logging skidders parked in people’s dooryards. You see them working in smaller woodlots and residential woodlots, felling trees with a chainsaw at twenty below zero, dragging cables through waist deep snow. It’s dangerous work, and they’re a resilient lot. And they prefer logging by hand.
This story is about them.
Credits
This show is part of The Resilient Forest series produced by Northern Woodlands and first aired on NEXT, a weekly radio show and podcast about New England. The Resilient Forest Series is supported by the Davis Conservation Foundation and the Larson Fund. Most of the loggers you heard are part of the landscape of the vast working forest of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the subject of a special report in the Summer 2019 issue of Northern Woodlands magazine. You can find that reporting HERE.
Rumble Strip is sponsored by the best restaurant in Burlington, Vermont. It’s called Honey Road, and I ate there a couple weeks ago and honestly it was the best meal I’ve had in years. Plus the place is wicked fun. Ask for the drink that comes in two glasses….you won’t regret it.
Original music for this series is produced by Vermont musician and Rumble Strip collaborator and friend Brian Clark. In fact, here is a picture of his band, Anachronist, looking very serious:
Loved this show. I really appreciate hearing the perspectives of the loggers who work in the north country, their opinions about what constitutes quality work, and their thoughts about the lost art of working with their hands. I also appreciated the advice to not pick up a chainsaw if I didn’t know
what I was doing, which I don’t. I long to hear more of these voices that so often go unheard. Thank you, Rumble Strip for your awesome work to bring them to us.
I am listening to this Rumble Strip story about forestry while sitting on a drought-dry Tuesday in Central Europe. Forestry in New England is a nice thing to hear about while feeding American peanuts to European magpies as dusk approaches and a total eclipse entertains future refugees in South America. Learned about you through sCarrier at Delerium in Brussels; now I have only one question: what kind of microphone were you holding when interviewing the woodsmen? and did you have any kind of shock mount to protect you in case a skunk fell into the input?
WH
I can’t believe I never responded to you William! I’m sorry! I use a Shure VP88 stereo mic. And I wasn’t using a shock mount. that mic performs pretty well as a handheld without mediation. What a life you seem to be having…???
As one who’s run a saw for over 40 years, I highly approve of this podcast.