Buy Local Wood Lumbery Newsletters! Insight into just about everything involving local wood, business, the environment, Maine, wood mills, lawsuits, the Town of Cape Elizabeth, sales and so much more.
A Farmer’s Market for Local Wood
“Buy Local Wood” is our unofficial tagline. Most people would think that buying local wood (and plants) in Maine, the most forested state in the lower 48, would be easy, but it’s not…especially for cedar wood products.
In fact, most cedar sold in Maine is red cedar which arrives from the west coast. The reason for this blatant incongruity is that white cedar is inconvenient. The white cedar tree is not nearly as girthy as its western cousin, it is predominantly milled in relatively little quantities, by small, family owned mills in small towns scattered throughout Maine and it is not heavily traded on the commodities market.
This is where the Lumbery comes in. We, essentially, have created a farmer’s market for local wood. We have opened a retail store that allows for out-of-the-way mills to expose their products to the larger market in southern Maine and beyond.
The benefits of this relationship include reduced emissions due to a compact chain of custody, hyper-local business growth which includes, foresters, loggers, truckers and mills who in turn have a greater tendency to ensure that the forests are well maintained and sustainable plus it creates a genuine sense of regionality and pride…like a homegrown athlete or celebrity.