story by Amy Vanharen
A Fine Balance5 companies that have made preserving the North Woods their business
Combining commerce and conservation is never easy. But these five innovators are doing it. Whether through guiding, farming, woodworking, or natural resource management, these North Woods companies have made sustainable business a reality, working locally, efficiently, while respecting the fragile northern New England landscape they call home.
Native Woods
Possibility in every tree
Gary Krauss has an affinity for weird pieces of wood. The more curls and sweeps, fungus infestations, and crotches, the better. He gives these criteria to master logger Ron Ridley who scours Maine's northern forest for trees. The first time Ridley collected such spoiled wood, his father thought he was trying to rip Krauss off. But Ridley has learned. Today he proudly collects the diseased and twisted trees that, in Krauss' hands, will become something beautiful.
Krauss has been turning Maine's forest oddities into furniture for more than five years. He uses primarily unwanted logs, shaping the bark edges into pieces as intricate as the northern forest itself. His company, Native Woods, turns sustainable forestry and efficient wood-use into art–proof that conservation and economic prosperity can go hand-in-hand.
A fourth-generation woodworker, Krauss built his first birdhouse at age four. In 1989 he began remodeling homes and doing custom cabinetry and traditional furniture work, but he was concerned too much wood was being thrown away. In 2002 he took a scrap piece home and built a frame. He made more frames. Then coffee tables. Then benches. And finally dining tables–all out of disfigured, scrap material. Every piece sold. "The more heavily diseased and rotten the logs, the more beautiful character comes through in the bark edge," he says. Trees that face difficult circumstances are often the most spectacular inside.
Krauss' efficient woodworking techniques produce virtually no scraps. His first incisions on an average piece of weird wood–roughly 14 inches in diameter and 10 feet long–are the top and bottom slab cuts. These become shelf ledges, hallway mirrors, and key hooks. The next two cuts, slicing the log from top to bottom, are made into picture frames, small legs, and vanity mirror frames. The heartwood, where the grain is the straightest and the character less interesting, becomes countertops, tabletops, doors, and benches. Waste pieces are turned into pot planters, clocks, and jewelry boxes with stick handles on each drawer. His neighbor uses the sawdust as bedding for his dairy cows. Local townspeople use what's left–roughly four trash cans of wood each week–for kindling.
When customers learn where his products come from it becomes more than simply buying furniture. "We're trying to make people think about our forests in a different way," says Krauss' wife Chris. Krauss is also part of Maine WoodNet, a local artisans' community formed in conjunction with The Wilderness Society that focuses on sustainable woodworking. Farmington's Sugarwood Gallery sells only forestry-conscious art. In four years, it has sold over $1.5 million of local work.
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Native Woods article in AMC Outdoors
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