This is Forest to Frame, where we explore how restoring forests creates beautiful spaces. A podcast dedicated to conversations with industry leaders shaping the future of the forest industry. And now, here's your host, Russ Vaagen

podcast. I'm your host Russ Vaagen Thanks for taking time to listen to this podcast and check in with us here. What we're going to talk about today and throughout this podcast is about our forests, our communities, and mass timber. I'll tell you a little bit about my background and story if you don't know. My family moved to the forested area of Northeast Washington about 100 years ago. And in the 20s, 30s, 40s, in that early part of the 20th century, my family was homesteading and they were sawmilling and basically just living off the land and trying to get by. And my great-grandfather learned how to sawmill and became good at it. And so he began cutting lumber for fences and houses and barns and all kinds of things. And it really, to me, boggles my mind that they were doing that. And he and the people he was working with were doing that before there were uniform tools, before there were roads in this area. had to be a different time. But through that, my grandfather, his brother formed a company called Boggan Brothers Lumber in 1952. And they started cutting timber and things like railroad ties and mining timbers, and then just framing lumber for houses and construction. And they built a nice little business. And also during that time, at a macro scale, we were managing our federal lands. I wouldn't say aggressively. But we were, we were managing them for an economic benefit also for forest health. But at that time, it was really more about economics. And so there was a lot of timber sales available. So a lot of mills, opened up. And in the West, I like to call it the Intermountain West where we're at. So that's like Eastern Washington, North Idaho, Western Montana. And then as you move South, through other Western states, that's kind of the Intermountain West, dry site forests, multiple species. But there were lots of sawmills here. Hundreds, actually. And So fast forward into the 80s, and you start seeing some challenges where people are looking at the forest for more than just economic benefit for communities, but the natural landscape, the beauty, the recreation, preservation, you know, we've created lots of wilderness areas, but people wanted to protect more. And they were concerned that there was going to be too much cutting. And then the late 80s, we were still harvesting timber at a high level. And by the mid 90s, we had gone from over 12 billion board feet annually on our federal forest, down below 2 billion board feet annually. Those hundreds of mills, a lot of them shut down. A lot of these family businesses in rural small towns, their raw material just dried up. I've talked about before my TEDx talk that You know, we basically stopped managing the land instead of adjusting our management style to fit the society and to fit our needs. And with that, we created a big problem. So my family, Vaagen Brothers Lumber, was caught up in all of that. And we had sawmills that were cutting dimensional lumber for the marketplace to build houses. But we also did things a little differently than others. We really spent time concentrating on the forest and what it looked like. A lot of the harvest techniques, they certainly weren't clear cuts, but they would be things like thinning forests, selective cuts. We used a lot of terminology. But basically, it was managing it as a continuing forest. So the trees of different sizes were still out on the landscape. If you went out there, it might look like a thin forest with some sparse areas. And in other areas, it was left a little thicker in what we'd call a mosaic landscape, where there were different variations of trees and sizes, species, and densities. So it, it looked pleasing to the eye, even though there were some stumps, but it wasn't a, you know, big rectangular clear cut on the landscape. And that was just because, you know, we felt like we had to be good neighbors to those around us. And we lived here and love this area. So we want it to be done the right way. Well, at the same time, there are other areas where it makes more sense to do clear cutting because of the types of trees and the type of, you know, their root systems and things like that. So if you thin out the trees, let's say on the west coast of Washington, their hemlock, the winds would come and the rest would blow over because they have a shallow root system. And so they kind of blow like wheat in the wind and they hold each other up. So, you know, I'm not going to judge other places and the way they manage it. I'm just explaining the way we did it here. And you know, we always thought that the Forest Service and the federal lands that stopped management, that if they manage that way, and the environmental community and others wouldn't be so upset, so concerned with changing. And so, fast forward, you know, the The timber industry retracts significantly. Our family's business did the same thing. But we felt like because of that management style, that people really wanted product from forests that were managed this way. And we had some success marketing that and got a lot of positive feedback and started collaborating with the local Cabo National Forest to change things. We worked with environmental organizations and their members. We worked with local businesses and it was a community group that I was fortunate enough to be the leader for for about 10 years as president of the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition. And we created lots of projects on the US Forest Service lands locally. And that allowed our family's mill to survive. We focused on small diameter logs, which was also something that kind of gave some comfort to the environmental community that we weren't going to go after the large old growth trees that so many people are enamored with and want to see on the landscape. You know, the secret is, it's not a very good secret, is that technology is such now where primarily all sawmills are using smaller diameter trees than the large ones. But the other thing is we're doing things in such a better way and the market likes it, but we're still competing with just the regular old two by four lumber store. And those are commodities and, you know, the lowest price wins. And so I thought, why not go into another market where people can touch and feel and see the wood and really love it? Around 2010, we're starting to see information coming out of Europe about frost laminated timber. And I didn't really know what it was. I think that was actually 2008. And so did some research, and I became very compelled to move our business in that direction. And so in 2015, I went for a trip to Europe and saw some of these facilities being built. And they were upgrading. I've been to this one facility three times now and each time it's totally different than the last. It's growing so much and I said this is what we need to be doing because if we can take the byproduct of our forest restoration efforts, the small trees and the trees that are overstocked in the forest, send those to the mill, the mill can then produce it in the lumber and we can buy some of that lumber to make cross laminated timber and glue and build beams and build these beautiful mass timber buildings that that's the, you know, connects the entire loop of the story. And so that's what we did. And at the time I was vice president of our family's business, sawmill forced product business. And My dad and I talked about it. He was president, I was vice president. We were just different points and he didn't want to take the risk of getting into mass timber, and I really did. We sat down and came up with a game plan where I would leave the family business and start Vaagen Timbers, that's our business now, separately. We've done that. We I left Wagner Brothers in 2017, and we broke ground in 2018, and we were certifying CLT in 2019. And we've grown substantially. But I think you can see there with that story, why we call it Forest to Frame, because we really want to be able to tell the story of where the wood came from, how it was harvested, what does the land look like afterward there? Because I really look at it as our products are a byproduct of forest health. The focus should be the health of the forest. Let's make that healthy. Let's take the material that needs to come out and find its highest and best use. And in my opinion, mass timber is the highest and best use, if not one of the highest. And we can now go in and build these beautiful buildings. We're essentially, if thinning forests that were in otherwise catastrophic fire risk, You know we're converting the smoke in the air, or that what would have been in the air into these beautiful buildings and they're truly amazing buildings there. They're buildings that people just are enamored with and amazed by. And yeah, it is just lumber, but the feeling that you get when you have an all timber structure, and it doesn't have to be all timber, but a timber structure, it's just awe-inspiring. And it's a natural product. The carbon that that wood stores through photosynthesis is stored in that building for the life of it. And the other thing is, because it's solid wood, if there's something in that building had to be torn down for some reason, different use or what have you, that wood could be taken apart and put back together, because these elements are strong. And essentially, we're building big mass timber Lego kits. So we're taking these big pieces of glulam and CLT, and we're cutting them into specific to fit dimensions. We're sequencing those things and sending them to the job site. And most of our clients, especially our initial clients, as we started out, really loved the story. And their buildings tell a story now. And their They're not only, you know, a great story, but they're they're functional building their energy efficient. I've got all kinds of stories from clients about how you know they expected the price of their heating and cooling to be significant higher, higher than it is and benefits of these buildings that they never thought of initially. So I just, I'm really happy with the results of what we've been able to do. Now it's all about scale and, you know, starting up a business is hard and it's difficult to manage. There's a There's a lot of costs and just starting from scratch and building a team of employees and learning together collectively. But that's all part of the Forrest of Frame story. And one of the things that we're hoping to do here is shed a light on some of these stories. If you're in the space, you can learn a little bit more. If this is your first time hearing about mass timber or forest restoration, we can shed a light on that. And hopefully you'll walk away knowing that there are people out there that, number one, really care and are experts at what they're doing and looking to expand these great activities on our forests. And they really benefit all of us. It's not just the timber industry and the buildings, but it's the environment. It's recreation. It's the communities. It's knowing that whether you go out to the forest every day, every week, or once every decade, that you know that it's still there. And you know that it's in a healthy state. Unfortunately, most of our federal lands are not healthy right now, which is why we're dedicating our time and energy to utilize a lot of the material that comes from those Forest Service forest restoration projects where they're restoring the forest back to a healthy condition that can withstand wildfire. And we're turning them into these beautiful products that people love. And that's probably one of the things that we love the most is seeing how we help create these spaces that are truly transformative. They're beautiful, they're they're incredible. And we just, you know, we're happy to be a part of it. So thank you for tuning in here to the initial Forrest of Frame episode of our podcast, and look forward to sharing more information with you as time goes on. If you have any questions or ideas that you'd like us to cover, go ahead and drop those down in the comments and we'll do our best to to get back to you on that. So thank you.

Russ Vaagen

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