Goooood morning hoarders! I don't know about you but it's 90 degrees today and for some reason I'm smelling fall. Yes I have a problem. The wood dork in me is in full effect today so I thought I'd start a thread to find out what peoples favorite book is related to firewood, wood cutting, forestry work etc. Non-Fiction or Fiction doesn't matter to me. For me it has to be The Ax Book by Dudley Cook. It's small but packed with excellent content. There's a short story in the beginning that really got me. I don't want to spoil it but it was about a boy growing up and learning from an experienced axman. It really highlighted the skills and know-how men like that had in the days before chainsaws (not that it doesn't take skill to run a saw it's just different). Anyways I'd like to find out what your is. Cheers!
I think I can say that the below book was not only my favorite forestry book, but my favorite book of all time.... had a strong influence on me... highly recommended..
All kidding aside, I have several. My Favorite is a coffee table book titled "Endless Tracks in the Woods". It is primarily about bulldozers, and of course logging, spanning the years between 1750-and 1960 when steam engines started to be self-propelled and when rubber tired skidders came onto the scene. I read through it, put it down for a year, and then read back through it again. Its a great book. Another is called "Nine Mile", and while about a Game Warden's wife who spent years deep in Northern Maine, it has a lot to do with logging when some drastic changes came to Northern Maine and how logging was done.
Perhaps someday I will write my own book about logging. Perhaps wrongly we have always called ourselves "farmers" here, and while we are for sure, but with 3/4 of our acreage being tied up in forest, we have a deep involvement with forestry. From sawmills to shingle mills, from tree farming, to using every conceivable method to pull wood from stump to furniture, I think we have done it. We have even been murdered for it (my Great-Great Grandfather in 1898 by people engaged in timber-trespassing). Of course we have housed ourselves with it, paid taxes with it, and been kept warm by it. They say money does not grow on trees, nor can anyone pick money from the money tree, but having wood has sure kept me from spending a lot of my own hard earned cash. Somewhere there must be a book in all that, and not just in the paper pages either.
The Golden Spruce, based on a true story. Another is called They Felled the Redwoods, logging in California in the 1880-1910, has some amazing pictures in it.
"A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold is one of my favorites. Many wonderful passages on a variety of wood cutting, conservation and general life. The man had a penetrating understanding of forestry and ecological issues but a way with words that approached poetic.
There is another book called "Tough Men, Tall Trees" that describes logging in Maine in New Hampshire from 1600 up to 1965. It too is a good book on logging for these two states.
I like to peruse this one. Lots of excellent pictures and descriptions. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
