[dramatic music] - People say money doesn't grow on trees, but around here it does.

[Narrator] Out here in the logwoods of East Texas, people have harvested the trees and shared nature's bounty generation after generation.

[Kariana] There's 10 of us in the whole extended family that works on the hill at the sawmill.

[grunts] [Narrator] From the kids to the grandparents, to the great grandparents.

- My great-grandfather, at the age of 13, he was driving a log truck out of the woods.

- I was driving the truck and I had to double that pillow and put it under me to see over the dash.

[Narrator] Over the next hour, you'll meet the loggers, the sawmill operators, [truck horn] all the people who do the demanding and dangerous work of bringing wood to market.

- When I wake up and get out there and you can smell that fresh cut wood, I love it.

- The area we live in, we say it's frozen in time a little bit, but I mean, we have DSL internet here.

- Just, just a good old country boy.

[Narrator] Life in the Logwoods, coming up next.

[gentle music] The loggers first arrived in East Texas in the early 1880s.

At first, these farmers just cut trees for their own log cabins.

But soon after, the railroads arrived and serious commercial logging began.

Long-forgotten mill towns and scores of hard-scrabble logging camps literally sprang up overnight, clear-cutting great swaths of majestic virgin pine forests.

Once the forests had been cut out, the towns were abandoned.

But some people stayed.

And, over time, the forests slowly began to grow back.

Today, descendants of the early loggers carry on the work of their great, great grandparents.

[gentle music] [Hop] My grandfather, he was born here in Houston County in 1892.

Just about two miles from here.

He was in sawmilling.

He sawmilled here.

- Bye, bye.

[Hop] And then my father has built sawmills.

So, I've just been around it practically all of my life, the sawmill and lumber industry.

[chain clanks] [saw motor revs] [wood cutting] My name is Charles Wells.

I'm 59 years old and I live in Tadmor, Texas.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ [equipment humming] The mill is located on the property that's been in my family since, uh, probably the late 1800s.

It's a small mill.

I mean, if you worked it real hard all day long, you could cut 2,500 feet a day.

I cut about eight hundred to a thousand feet a day.

I'm kind of semi-retired.

My father works with me nearly every day.

He's nearly 85 years old.

But, uh, it's been good for him, also.

It gives him something to do, and us to working together.

[Jace] I work with my grandfather, Charles Wells.

We call him Hop.

And my great-grandfather Kenneth Wells, and we call him Pop.

[buzzing] - I just enjoy working with the sawmill, and the lessons that it's taught me.

Hard work.

Discipline.

- Well, I started probably six years old, something like that.

And, uh, I've worked the plainer, the edger, and I've also helped Hop with the sawmill.

- My great-grandfather on my dad's side was a logger.

And my great-grandfather on my mom's side was a logger.

And my grandpas both are loggers, too.

[grunts] Well, I've worked with my grandfather ever since I was about five or six.

And, um, I do about everything they got.

[thud] [birds singing] [birds singing] I got the black one from an egg.

She got hatched over in my other pen.

The other ones I've kept for a while.

So, uh, I really enjoy the chicken stuff.

That's Plymouth Rock.

Her name is Pepper.

And then the other one, the white one's name is Princess.

And the, uh, rooster's name is Little Man.

[thud] Well, this is my room.

And then I have my bed.

And then I have my workspace and my screen, which I watch my school on.

[Teacher] Put that app, well, I'm going to put mine right here.

[Misty Wells] I went to public school and actually we started our children in public school.

We got to a certain grade that we felt did not teach to the standard that we needed it taught.

And so, we were like, we needed to do something different.

So that's when we looked into homeschooling.

And we actually started going through an academy.

[Teacher] And it doesn't matter... [Misty] Because I didn't want to teach them myself.

[Teacher] Pull it down.

[Misty] But I wanted them to actually get a very good education.

[Teacher] You're to draw a two-inch line so go back to the inside.

And number 11, you're going to do the same thing.

[Misty] And now my kids are in ninth and seventh grade.

But Prestin, we've started him in college classes online.

[Teacher] A thesis statement communicates the main point of an essay.

[Prestin] Well, currently, I'm going to school for a finance degree in college.

[Teacher] Here are two key points to remember.

[Prestin] I could be a financial planner.

It could take me to the city, or I could just live here.

Having it online opens up different opportunities.

[Teacher] For many academic essays, a thesis statement should be one sentence long.

[Jace] I really enjoy homeschooling.

I think you'd get a lot more out of it.

[Teacher] ...because it resembles a sponge or honeycomb.

[Jace] Of course, you have to be diligent.

[Teacher] ...from the tiny auditory bones in your ear.

[Jace] I am doing medical terminology right now and chemistry.

Then I will be working toward my pre-med.

[Teacher] Ligaments, tendons and other bones.

[Jace] My ultimate goal is to just work wherever I may be needed.

I don't know where God is going to call me, but I want to be ready for whatever He wants me to be.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - I started running chainsaw when I was 11 years old.

Now, today's way, people would think that's child abuse.

But, uh, it, it was a good way of life.

It taught you to work.

Taught you to respect the equipment that you was using.

We had eight of us.

And a normal day was everybody had their own chores.

Some of us had to go to the well and get the water.

And some of us split firewood.

And the girls always helped Mama cook.

And the boys we'd done, you know, the work outside and help my dad.

And whenever she said it was time to eat, you better break and run cause if you was very late, there wasn't nothing left for you at the table.

I was almost grown before I knew there was more than a neck and a back on a chicken.

[laughing] You probably don't need that in there, but... [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Pop] I've been retired a few years, but I didn't never retire, really.

I'm, I'm just, I'm just coasted along.

[saw buzzing] I worked born October the fourth, 1933 in Tadmor, Texas.

- Most of the time we don't do nothin' that'll hurt us.

- We figure we got plenty of time to do it.

So, why get, get in a hurry?

Some of these people wants us to hurry up, but they don't stay out here and help us.

[laughter] [upbeat music] Daddy was a sawmiller.

From the time I was four or five years old, I was raised up in this business.

When I was 12, I started driving a truck in the logwoods.

When I was 14 years old, Daddy put me to sawing.

I sawed till I was about 18 years old.

And then I got married.

So, that ended my sawmill there.

[birds singing] [Misty] Leviticus 17:11.

[Prestin] For the life of the flesh is in the blood.

And I've given it to you upon the alter to make an atonement for your souls.

For it is the blood that make us an atonement for the soul.

[Misty] Psalm... We are quoting our scriptures.

They give us a list at the beginning of the year.

Deuteronomy 6:8.

And that's how that we memorize them is the everyday repetition of quoting them.

So, every morning we get in here, I'll give them the verse reference.

Like Titus 2:13, then they have to quote it to me.

First Peter 3:20.

- Well, I've quizzed for eight years, and I've learned probably thousands of scriptures because we learn around 400 each year.

[Misty] John 3:16.

[Prestin] For God so loved the world that he gave us...

It helps in different aspects of life.

[Misty] John 14:8.

[Prestin] Because I have to memorize that daily.

And that helps me for my school as well.

Philip says to him, show us the Father and it sufficeth us, John 14:8.

[Misty] First Timothy 1:17.

- Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen.

First Timothy 1:17.

[Misty] John 3:15.

[Prestin] Who shall believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life, John 3.15 [Misty] Jeremiah... [upbeat music] - Question one is worth 10 points.

Ready question.

The Word of God is a discerner of what?

[buzzer] Red three.

- The thoughts and intents of the heart.

[Misty] That is correct.

Question two is worth 10 points.

Ready question.

What does the law of the Lord convert?

[buzzer] Yellow three?

- The soul.

- That is correct.

Question six is worth 10 points.

Ready question.

Deuteronomy chapter six mentions these words, which I... [buzzer] Red one interruption.

- Which I command thee, when this day.

[Misty] That is correct.

[Misty] These are a few of our trophies that represent what we have accomplished in the state level and at the national level in our Bible quiz tournaments.

This one, and this one here are from placing fifth in the national level.

This banner shows that last year we were first placed in all of the Texas district for our Bible quizzing.

[rumble of four-wheeler] - My name is Kariana Riley and I'm 16 years old and I've been working at the sawmill with my family since I was 10 years old.

[saw revs] I've cut sticks, edged lumber, planed lumber, and working up here is, most of the time it's pretty hard work.

But, normally get a pretty good paycheck out of it.

- My name is Julianna Riley.

I'm 12 years old and I've been working here since I was about six.

Cleaning work is not easy, but it's fun cause you get to kind of roll around in the sawdust and kinda get a little bit dirty.

Why I like working up here is because it teaches diligence and it gives you a little spending money and it teaches you hard work.

I live down a dirt road where everybody does.

You'd surprised how many people do live in Tadmor because there are a lot of dirt roads.

- Life in Tadmor.

It is wonderful.

[laughs] You get to be with trees and dogs and horses and animals.

And in a city, you don't get to have much space to have any of that kind of stuff.

So that's the best part being in Tadmor.

And especially with family.

[saw revs] We have jam sessions all the time.

We get up there and we just sing and play and have a good time.

♪ Open up the heavens, ♪ ♪ We want to see you.

♪ ♪ Open up the floodgates, ♪ ♪ A mighty river.

♪ ♪ Flowing from your heart, ♪ ♪ Filling every part of our praise.

♪ ♪ Open up the heavens, ♪ ♪ We want to see you.

♪ ♪ Open up the floodgates, ♪ ♪ A mighty river.

♪ ♪ Flowing from your heart, ♪ ♪ Filling every part of our praise.

♪ - We, we, we had camps out there.

We stayed at, at, at the camp and Daddy had cook-shack, he called it.

Daddy said a man couldn't work if he didn't eat.

So, he wanted three meals a day for the hands.

And we was working ten-hour days back then.

I don't know where this eight-hour stuff started.

We didn't cut very much this morning.

We cut about 500 feet.

[upbeat music] It was cold this morning.

That heater works.

We couldn't stay up here if it weren't for that old heater.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ [Hop] My grandfather was born in 1892.

He hauled logs to the 4-C Sawmill.

That's one of the largest capacity sawmills.

I think it would cut like a hundred thousand feet of lumber a day.

Trees is the biggest renewable resource we have.

It can be used for so many aspects, but it doesn't need to be abused either.

You need to selective cut and replant.

And I mean, it'll be here for generations to come if we take care of it.

I have a vested interest of maintaining this area and the beauty of this area.

My history goes deep.

I plan on staying here the rest of my life.

This is home.

[Pop] I seen these little mills come and go, come and go.

But in the end, the little mills is the best.

[dramatic music] [Narrator] In the 1880s, the timber industry hit the impoverished East Texas backwoods like an economic whirlwind.

The farmers of the pinelands found jobs waiting for them at mills and logging camps.

But most of those jobs paid just a couple of dollars a day, a humble reward for a hazardous occupation.

By the beginning of World War II, most of the old growth timber was gone and East Texans were left to devise new ways to make a living from their shattered forests.

[chainsaw revs] Decades later, the trees have returned.

And with them, the job.

Just as important, the advancements in timber technology radically changed the industry.

The life of a logger was improving.

Although the work remains difficult and dangerous.

[thud] [tractor rumbles] [chainsaw] - Oh, I just got a job to clear the trees and get the wood off of there.

That's practically all I do.

My family kinda been doing this all my life.

You know, off and on.

My Dad had done it and Grandpa.

[implement clanking] [tree cracking] [chainsaw revs] [chainsaw revs] [thud] [chainsaw revs] [David] We lived six miles out in the country.

Nine kids, and didn't have no water, or light, gas.

We had to tote it or get it from a well.

No inside bathroom or nothing like that.

[thud] [chainsaw revs] Oh, here with this tree, I was cutting and I messed around and cut the wrong limb.

Big old hardwood tree just kind of rolled over on me.

And you know, broke my leg.

Yeah, that's what I say.

You gotta watch what you're doing.

Keep a good clear head working in the woods.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ [Rickey] I'll never forget the little loader I saw.

It had a little old grapple on it And, man, I called it a suicide seat.

[creaking] It wasn't as big as this chair I's in and you was way up there and-- all that going on was right there around you.

The log, you had to reach out far enough cause the loader was so little, it wouldn't pick the whole thing up from one end.

You'd had tried to get it in the middle.

[chainsaw revs] Well, that log was up here right beside you.

And it could get real interesting real quick.

[David Ellis] That's all of ‘em, ain't it?

[upbeat music] [honk] [upbeat music] [equipment rumbling] [truck revs] - We generally get up to nine log trucks of raw material in here a day.

And we average out about eight loads of pallet material a week.

[sawing] When we're operating at full capacity, we employ about 45 men.

I'm the head sawyer.

And it's my responsibility to run the scragg mill.

[whirring] The machine that we break down the logs with here is a twin bladed, 56-inch diameter, twin blade scragg mill.

And we process about four to five log trucks through this machine every single day.

Every part of the log goes into a product.

We don't have any waste.

We control the amount of light that comes into the cab and it's usually quiet and climate controlled.

So, I can focus on doing what I do, which is to break down the logs into rough dimensional lumber.

I'm usually operating multiple hydraulic functions on the machine at the same time.

[blades whir] Because I'm cutting a dimensional lumber product, the measurements have to be extremely precise, usually within a 32nd of an inch.

And so that requires a great degree of concentration and focus.

[saw whirs] For me to learn how to run a machine like this, it's very complicated.

And I've had to just cry out to the Lord for mercy because there's so many mistakes and accidents that could happen.

If it wasn't the Lord just helping my hands, teaching my hands to war and my fingers to fight, I definitely wouldn't, wouldn't be able to run a machine this complicated.

Growing up, my, my whole entire family is involved in forest products.

And my dad started, uh, logging and land clearing about 35 years ago.

And before that, he had a small circular sawmill that he ran.

And my dad and my mom, one of the key things that they taught us when we were young was the importance of hard work and honesty, integrity, and diligence.

That's something that deeply impacted me growing up, seeing the honesty and integrity of my dad.

That's something that I've sought to carry forward in my own business, in my own dealings with customers.

[sawing] The most important thing is not the machines or the profit, but just honoring the Lord Jesus Christ and serving Him with my life in whatever way that He calls me to do that.

[upbeat music] [equipment rumbles] [Del] The "Set" is the busiest place.

There's so much going on.

I mean, you have to worry about the sethands, the truck drivers.

Making sure you're taking care of your equipment.

Not tearing it up.

Most of all, production.

You gotta make sure you're getting your wood out.

Pumping the wood out.

Making the money.

I push that loader hard every day, but I respect it.

Don't be scared of it.

You get somebody on there that's never run one, it's like a wild stallion.

It's like a carnival ride.

You have two joysticks.

Two buttons on top and a trigger button on each hand.

And you work your knives out there with one trigger button and your saw with the other and your trigger brings the saw back up.

You're doing all that while operating.

[machines clanging] I used to remember when you got to the woods, the sawhands would be cutting at daylight.

They'd have a belt on with their saw-gas hanging on each side and a jug of water.

And they'd hit it hard till about one o'clock and it started getting hot, and they'd go home.

They'd have enough wood cut for the rest of the day.

Whew!

But that's how I started out, was, they called us flatheads.

[machine whirs] Now we cut the timber with a shear, a cutting machine.

[sawing revs] [tree cracking, thud] [sawhead rumbles] I run the sawhead.

I cut the trees and, and lay ‘em down for the next piece of equipment, which is a skidder.

The skidder driver, to me, that is one busy job.

Cause there's always somebody wanting something.

You don't hardly get slack.

The guy that works on our skidder, there, runs it, Luke.

He's been around logging nearly all his life.

[skidder engine rumbles] He didn't grow up in the era that I did, but does an outstanding job.

[Del] If you have a good crew, everybody knows what they're supposed to do.

So, you really ain't have to be a boss.

But, down here in East Texas, uh, you know, we, we get in a conflict at work.

It's a little different than most areas.

If you think we can talk like men, we'll talk like men.

If you're not, we'll get down, we'll fight it out.

We'll shake hands and we'll get back to work.

Don't go crying and call the cops or pull a knife or a gun.

We'll get down there and we'll have a good little fist fight.

Get it out of your system.

Whether you whip me or I whip you.

And we're going to get back to work.

In the end, we're going to have to stick together and work.

And, and that's, that's how we were raised around here.

[upbeat music] I grew up around my grandpa who had started with mules and loading it on a train.

And growing up with him, I knew the best of both worlds.

I've had places my grandpa's cut and I've actually been in the same exact place where he cut and cut the next generation wood.

So, I mean, generations revolve.

We're going to keep planting.

It's going to keep growing.

[thud] [upbeat music] [Narrator] Logging has long been considered among the most dangerous of professions.

But a few years ago, OSHA joined with industry leaders to rewrite the rules governing nearly every aspect of timber production.

In this state-of-the-art sawmill, automation has essentially removed the worker from the wood, creating a safer environment with far fewer accidents.

[upbeat music] Many forestry jobs, however, will always require a more hands-on approach.

This includes the foresters, biologists, migrant workers, tree farmers, and, of course, the truck drivers.

Their combined labor fuels the engine which provides the wood that frames nearly every aspect of our daily lives.

[CB Chatter #1] What do ya have in mind?

[CB Chatter #2] Driving this truck.

[trucks rumble] - Logging is no different than any other profession.

It's a dog-eat-dog world.

And when you can go, you have got to go and go hard.

But it's the life I chose.

I love being outdoors.

The men I work with are like family to me.

We look out for one another out there.

I don't regret anything.

I'm 50 years old now.

I've been doing this since I was 16.

And, I've run every machine out there on the job.

I run ‘em well.

And enjoy every minute of it.

I mean, this is my life.

It's what I like to do.

I couldn't imagine being couped up in a cubicle somewhere in front of a computer screen.

I'd jump off a building.

I would, I would just, I'd literally go out the window and jump off a building.

I just couldn't see me being confined like that.

That's prison.

They lock people in prison and put them in a little cubicle.

I couldn't live like that.

I quit school in the 10th grade.

Am I proud of it?

Absolutely not.

Um, I made a mistake as a young man.

I got myself in some trouble.

Uh, no, I didn't rob a bank or nothing like that.

I, I wrecked my vehicle and I'd been drinking.

Got a DWI, 16 years old.

I couldn't see my mom and my dad working as hard as they were working, paying for what I did.

So, I opted to drop out of school and go to work.

Take care of my bills.

School just wasn't my thing.

Yes.

I learned.

I can read.

I can write.

I can comprehend.

I'm not dumb to say the least.

I'm just un-education.

Per se.

[dramatic music] Yea, it rained out here.

Look that slick mess right up through there.

[CB Radio #1] How ‘bout it Little Harge.

[CB Radio #2] Go ahead.

[CB Radio #1] Yeah, you want me back there again, don't ya.

[CB Radio #2] Yeah, I guess.

They ain't hollered anything over there.

What ya showin', Bubba?

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ Everybody out here either mans up or goes home.

It's just that simple.

You either man up and do the job, or you go to the house.

Go find yourself a little easier to do, little less complex.

Whatever it takes for you, just, you're not going to be out here jeopardizing us.

You can either man up and do it or leave.

It's your call.

I mean, that was the way it was put to me whenever I went to the woods.

And it always helps to have a good woman at home that can figure up a checkbook.

[dramatic music] [truck engine rumbles] - So, we just entered the gate here off the county road.

And uh, I figured we'd start here at Plot Number One.

Number One's our unthinned plot so we can get the heaviest stuff done earliest.

So, right now, we are at a site outside of Rusk, Texas owned by a Swedish micro-electronics company.

They purchased this property to earn carbon credits with no intention of gaining any timber revenue off of it.

And they just let SFA manage it and take care of it.

And thus, we can do research projects out here.

Tree two, seven nine, tree three, ten nine.

Right now, I have my sights set on graduate school.

And then after that, I'd like to fulfill my dream of being a wildlife biologist.

Ten, two.

- I'm a senior now, a Forest Management major.

Fifty-eight, thirty-three.

And I'm hoping to end up working for a timber company, doing procurement, buying timber from landowners to feed into a sawmill.

- Seven, four.

- I am a sophomore studying Wildlife Forest Management.

It's a forestry degree, but with a focus on wildlife management.

- One, O, six.

[Justin] My task today was recording all the data that they were giving me.

- Sixty-seven, thirty-three.

[Taylor] Five aught.

[Justin] So, I was taking down the heights and all the deformities that were on the trees.

[Taylor] One twenty-seven.

[Daniel] We're working on this thinning study.

They're tracking the growth of trees.

- Eighty-six.

[Daniel Fichtel] We're out here every year taking the measurements.

So, we're taking the diameter to the nearest tenth of an inch.

[Taylor] Eleven, six.

[Daniel] The total height of the tree, and then the height of the live crown.

[Daniel] Sixty-five, thirty-five.

[Daniel] Any defects or anything that is wrong with the tree.

We're also making note of those.

[Taylor] Three, fifty-two.

[Daniel] Sixty-five, thirty-four.

[Taylor] Seven, one.

[Daniel] Forked pulpwood forever.

M sixteen.

[Justin] This stand right here that we're in is about 15 to 20 years old.

- Eight, three.

[Justin] It's about to reach its peak maturity.

They're planning on cutting it within the next five years.

[Taylor] Nine, eight.

[Justin] You go in there, you clear-cut everything.

[Taylor] Fifty-five.

[Justin] And then you go back and you plant it.

It's just one stage of a multi-step process.

[Taylor] Ten, two.

I absolutely see climate change as an issue.

And a lot more research is necessary to find out just how much humans are contributing to climate change.

And I think projects such as this, that are putting plants back where they should be on a sustainable and responsible basis is ultimately a step in the right direction.

[Taylor] One O seven.

[Daniel] Sixty-eight, thirty.

[Taylor] Nine, eight.

[Daniel] R. T. [Taylor] Ten, three.

[Daniel] Sixty-five.

Thirty-two.

Forked pulpwood forever.

[birds chirp] [Wade Shartle] Right now, we're three miles on the east side of Augusta.

We've got about 200 acres to burn.

You can go ahead and light this way.

[Jace] OK. - But don't light this way.

[Jace] OK. - Cause that's all gonna be part of the fire.

And I think there's a not going to be any fuel right in there.

On the downwind side, we'll start a backfire.

What that does is a fire burning into the winds so it'll burn slower.

We'll go set those.

Let them burn.

Yeah, you follow Charles and I'll follow Jace.

The head-fire is going to be moving with the wind.

So, it's going to move a lot faster.

We don't want to run a head fire right into a firebreak cause it has a good chance of jumping it.

We've been burning for 40 years.

Forest Service used to do burning.

And they'd pretty well did all of it.

But they quit 25 years ago.

[fire crackles] They'd come to do the burning, but now it's become all private.

The reason you want to burn is to control the brush.

Is when your brush gets too tall, your wildlife can't utilize it.

When you burn the brush off, doesn't kill a lot of it.

It just burns it down to where it starts up young.

And you had the tender browse that the deer like.

Gives them a lot better food source.

They'll run off for a little bit, but they're gonna be right back.

And they'll benefit from the burning a lot more than what you'd think.

[ATV putters] Right now, it's better to burn a controlled fire and get rid of the fuel because some of these places, if you have a wildlife go through it, it'll do a whole lot more damage.

If you do a controlled burn and get rid of the fuel and you do have the summer fire, it won't get near as hot.

So, you've got a better chance of saving your timber.

[upbeat music] Nothing exciting happened today, which is always a good thing when you're burning.

The fire didn't burn quite as hot as what we had hoped, but it'll clean the woods up and get rid of a lot of fuel.

It will open up for the animals.

That's what we're looking for.

[upbeat music] [wind blows] [upbeat music] [Gene Bickerstaff] We've been growing seedlings for a long time.

And the crop that we have in the ground this year on the 50 to 60 million seedlings that we'll harvest, you're talking about replanting somewhere between 150 and 200,000 acres.

We sell to a lot of different customers.

From private landowners who may only plant one time in their life.

They may have family land that they inherited.

They want to keep the property and one way they can do that is to plant seedlings on it for timber.

But we also sell to a lot of large customers that this is their business, and they manage thousands of acres.

And so, they've got property at all stages of growth.

[energetic music] The way we harvest the seedlings is with the mechanical lifter.

We're lifting whole beds out of the ground, all in one pass.

[energetic music] That machine is capable of moving 30 feet per minute.

So, we're lifting 3,000 seedlings per minute.

So, it's capable of putting out 180 to 200,000 trees an hour.

[energetic music] We've got customers planting all over East Texas and Louisiana.

And so, we have to get trees out quickly.

And so, it's more than capable of meeting our needs of 1.2 to 1.5 million seedlings a day.

[energetic music] [honk honk] Once the seedlings are harvested, we try to manage that whole process with ensuring the best survival that we can for those seedlings.

We don't want them to dry out.

We don't want them to get too hot.

On average, we probably see 90 plus percent survival.

[upbeat music] During the harvest season, we have to bring in a harvesting crew.

The crew that we're using this year happens to be from Guatemala.

They're H2B workers.

They do a great job, hard workers.

And you know, to be honest, our industry, whether it's at the nursery level or the tree planters, you know, we couldn't survive without them.

[energetic Latino music] - My name is Olegario Ramirez.

I'm from a little town called El Terrero, which is a ranch, but the town is San Felipe Guanajuato.

Everybody's from the same place in Mexico, same state.

My brother's over there right now.

He's raising cocks.

I started when I was 28.

I'm 38, now.

I do it every season.

It's seasonal, but then he let us do fences, too.

Or the tomatoes.

[energetic Latino music] ♪ ♪ - The whole property is approximately 83 acres, and we're planting approximately 35 today.

Pine trees don't get out at night.

You don't have to worry about them breaking through a fence.

If you have plenty of ample rain and moisture, and you can keep the pests and rodents from harming your trees, then honestly, they are no trouble.

On the negative side, you have to worry about fire.

You have to worry about pests.

I think that's about the only negative I can think of.

[Tim Buckley] I was a firefighter in Jacksonville for 25 years.

And I was friends with Joe-Bob Staton out of Jacksonville who had a lot of land.

And when he turned 65 years old, he decided he wanted to start planting them pine trees.

I got with him and we planted about a million trees a year.

When he passed away, he had 13,000 acres of timberland.

- This is a long-term project.

For my wife and I, this was, this was an investment for our kids and our grandkids, for them to enjoy the trees and to hopefully reap the benefits in the 20 to 35-year range.

[Narrator] The early East Texas logging towns were segregated according to race.

In the forest and mills, however, a man was measured by his ability to work and not by the color of his skin or the language he spoke.

For companies trying to produce as much lumber as possible, finding labor willing to work long hours in remote locations under dangerous conditions was not easy.

If a man couldn't get along with others or disrupted the flow of work because of his bigotry, he was sent on down the road.

[dramatic music] [John Johnson] We're cutting a 50-foot right-of-way all the way around on a 92-acre track.

He's about to put a high fence up.

[dramatic music] Most of our logging jobs, pretty family oriented.

Because, family will get mad at each other and they still go to work together.

But... [laughs] That's normally how most of that logging stuff is.

I'd come up here with my granddad.

He's been doing this since, ever since I was can remember.

Started out going with him when I was a little kid, just going to work with him.

[Henry Rogers] I mostly helping my grandson.

If he needs some help, I help him.

Cause, I might be gone any day, you know.

I practically raised him and he learned it from me.

And...

He always wanted to go to the woods with me.

So, he learned, he learned the system, you know?

So, he thinks he know more than me now, but [laughs] he might do.

He can do more, anyway.

We'll put it that way.

[chainsaw revs] [John] I know one thing is I need my shear out of the shop.

[thud] I could get a lot more cut and then I know I could haul more every day.

[chainsaw] This cutting by hand, it's just, just a slow process.

[thud] - When the major piece of your equipment goes down, like the shear, that actually cuts the timber down.

When it goes down, it slows your production way down.

If he had the shear going, he could produce three to four loads a day.

With the shear not being here, he has to cut the timber by hand.

When he does that, he can hau maybe one, maybe two loads per day.

Well, do you need some help getting... [John] Ricardo gets the tracks.

And he walks ‘em and figures out what's on ‘em.

- If I see him in Palestine... [John] He's handled all the paperwork and all that stuff.

And we just, you know, go in and cut it.

And haul it and deliver it.

[Ricardo] I am a Procurement Forester.

What I do is I purchased timber from private landowners.

I've been doing this for about 41 years.

You know, a lot of tracks that I get are tracks that are 50 acres or less that the bigger crews are not willing to cut.

And what I mean by a bigger crew, they may haul 10 to 15 loads a day.

Our crew hauls one or two loads a day.

If a big crew came in here, he could do this in say, three, four days.

Our crews' been here month and a half.

We move a little slower, but we sort the wood out a little better.

[John] I want to get bigger in the business.

Probably doing, like, at least ten loads a day.

[chainsaw revs] I think that would be pretty good.

I'd a pretty good living, you know, for my kids.

[Henry] I finished school in 56.

Slavery hadn't been over but about 100 years at that time.

And you know, when they raised all that sound about busing and this and that.

Well, they'd been busing us for years.

You know, right by three or four schools before we got to the black school.

Yeah, it's changed a whole lot.

After the Civil Rights deal, it changed some more, you know.

Going to school together, it's just like, the longer you keep two dogs separated, they want to fight one another.

But once you put them together, they two are gonna be okay.

They get that out of their system pretty quick.

Well, people is kind of like that, you know.

It's better like it is now, I think.

Well, my great-granddaddy was in slavery.

And I had a great-great-auntie lived to be a hundred and something.

She was in slavery.

And they were using the boss man's name, you know, last name.

All of them descended from slavery.

You know, there wasn't no way around it, the way it was, you know.

I think they made a mistake when they didn't teach that when we was at school, but they didn't.

About slavery.

They never taught it.

Never seen it in the history books too much.

Never did.

But I think you need to know where you came from.

Union Hope Cemetery.

That was my great-great granddaddy.

Henry Gaston.

And Dora Gaston, his wife.

Dora Gaston.

I just know, I was going by this tombstone, 62 when he was born.

Yeah, he was a baby by when slavery was over.

He was a baby when slavery was over.

[dramatic music] Well, our relatives are, you know, my mother and daddy was raised here.

My grandmother, granddaddy.

Far back as that goes.

All our folks were raised around here.

I mean, you know, used to be a big community of people.

[dramatic music] [upbeat music] [Narrator] Today, the East Texas Pineywoods face many challenges.

Forest fragmentation, where large tracks of land become ever smaller.

Urbanization and population growth.

And the younger generation moving on to careers in the cities.

Still, life in the logwoods endures.

What is uncertain is the culture and legacy of the people here.

But, as always, some folks will stay.

No matter what.

[Rickey] The old saying is, in eastern part of the state, you get that pine rosin on you, you'll always hang around the timber.

When I'd get a holiday or off-day, I'd come back and them old pine trees be calling me again.

And I got it in my blood, I guess.

[Hop] My history goes deep.

I plan on staying here the rest of my life.

This is home.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪