This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society advancing the interests of women in the arts in Virginia and beyond.

Thoughtful, functional, beautiful Berry Home Centers can design your dream kitchen, we focus on customer service so you can focus on what matters.

Serving Southwest Virginia for more than 50 years and now the New River and Roanoke Valleys.

[Jay Prater] Virginia's Appalachia, rich in culture and tradition, and largely misunderstood by outsiders.

The region is a bridge from the past to the present.

This series will explore local legend and lore, mixed with the science and skill you'll only find in Virginia's Appalachia.

Today, we're taking a dive into the Appalachian practice of logging... with horses!

And we found a sort of Appalachian authority on the matter.

Jason Rutledge is a woodsman living in Floyd County, Virginia.

He's a lifelong farmer and a co-founder of the Healing Harvest Forest Foundation, a group that supports forest restoration.

He's been training and raising Suffolk Punch draft horses since 1981, and he's gotten quite a lot of publicity for being a practicing horse logger.

Jason has also trained over 200 people in the skill sets of modern horse logging and restorative forestry.

[horses hooves clopping] [Jason Rutledge] Logging is a way that we address human needs for forest products, from the forest.

Logging is basically converting a standing tree into the commodity of a log, generally for a fee.

That's what logging is.

I always like to contrast the difference between a logger and a woodsman.

And a logger is someone who converts the trees to the commodity of a log for a fee, where a woodsman is someone who go es in and works in the forest, addressing human needs, but doing it in such a way that they can always return again, as opposed to a once-in-a-lifetime experience, which is what a clear cut is.

Cut all the trees at one time, then you don't get to cut again for a whole lifetime.

You practice restorative forestry like we promote, you go back every ten years.

And so, the forest keeps getting better, quicker and quicker.

[♪♪♪] I think horse logging has been around since, or oxen, "animal-powered" is the word I like to use, because it includes other animals besides horses.

I mean, there are oxen, which are cattle, which was a more common way of logging for many years.

And of course, there are mules, which is a hybrid animal.

So animal-powered logging has been around since people have domesticated animals.

So it's been thousands and thousands of years.

And it's an interesting thing, in this country, when the white man first came here, there was nothing but forest.

So the first industry or job was to remove the forest so they could plant food.

The Native Americans had some food plots in little meadows that they had, over the years, kept clear through prescribed burning and such.

So logging is probably one of the oldest practices for shelter, for wood, for fuel, for keeping warm and for cooking food.

And they have lived out of the forest.

The forest does provide a lot of food that people have eaten traditionally for a long time.

Well, you know, because I have the NGO, Healing Harvest Forest Foundation, we do have a very futuristic view of the forest.

And when I use that term "restorative," I use it instead of the term "sustainable."

And there's a reason for that.

And there's a thought behind it, and I'll share that, in that we know from all the scientific evidence being collected that the forest is now in a state of decline.

And I don't understand how you can sustain a decline.

The point is, it's either staying the same, getting better, or getting worse.

So our position is that in order to have a chance for it to be sustainable or stay the same, we have to restore it.

I think th e Healing Harvest approach to fulfilling our mission statement, which is to address human needs for forest products, while creating a nurturing coexistence between the forest and the human community.

This subliminal thing there is th e use of the word "community" in a singular form, because the truth is, I want the humans and the forests to be one.

We harvest on a ten-year harvest rotation.

I always have this little joke th at I tell to the apprentices.

I say, "If you harvest on a ten-year harvest rotation, and a two-person crew can harvest 100 acres a year, and you have 1,000 acres, how long does it take you to get done?"

Well, the math says, "Oh, in ten years, you'll be done."

But you won't, because when you get done, you can start over where you began by doing it again.

That's the hillbilly Appalachian definition of sustainability.

But it's based upon restoration, based on the fact that we always take the worst trees first.

The trees we leave there are growing faster and better from the thinning, and they're also reseeding the forest from superior specimens that are appropriate to the site, not just whatever's left over after we came in and took what we needed for the most money.

This is a different approach.

-Probably what really drew me in when I met Jason was his commitment to, you know, what we leave in the forest is more important than what we take.

That's just not what folks think about when you talk about logging.

So I do like, you know, the branding of restorative forestry.

You know, it's hard to put things into words, but honoring the forest, being aware of its history, and acknowledging that like we're a part of this Earth and we're not separate from it.

And so, you know, there are actually beneficial ways that humans can interact with our landscapes to help right some of the wrongs that have been done.

And there's just so much learning that can be done out in the woods.

I really love, you know, the concept of worst first, because trees are incredibly majestic creatures, and you know, but we also build with wood.

And people and animals and species of all kinds, you know, utilize materials and other species to thrive.

And so, the idea of finding ways to interact with the landscape and get the needs that you need, but in a way that has an eye for the future and is honoring those plants and the other creatures that call it home, that really drew me in, you know.

And then, obviously working with horses.

I'm one of those at a young age wh o really fell deeply in love.

And so to combine my desire to work in natural landscapes and to work with horses was just a dream come true.

And really being around the horses, especially the work horses, and doing some of these things that are challenging with large creatures and large trees and saws, it's really taught me a lot about being present in the moment.

It's taught me a lot about myself and rest and reward and thinking things through and as, you know, Jason says, making ready, you know.

Just planning things out and things happen really quickly when you're in the moment.

And so, just preparation ahead of time and being grounded.

And yeah, the horses, when you're working with these beautiful, very strong, powerful, willing animals, you can't turn your head around.

They can't necessarily speak to you and say, "Hey, I'm thinking this."

You really need to be paying attention to their body and how they're feeling, and also, you know, the trees and where they're at.

And so, it's a way of just re ally being more in the moment, and I really appreciate that.

[Jason Rutledge] And one mistake that a lot of people make is they think that, well, maybe the best thing to do is to do nothing and don't touch the forest.

But in reality, the forest has be en poorly managed for so long that we do have the knowledge to know how to manage it better for the future.

And through that whole process, we 're actually capturing carbon by making forest products out of the trees that go into long-term storage in the form of houses and furniture and flooring and all sorts of forest products.

So, harvesting timber is not necessarily a bad environmental thing if it's done the proper way.

And that's what our way of restorative forestry is about.

And the key point, I think, to this, my involvement in this project is that this is happening in Appalachia.

That diversity has been recognized as strength in nature.

And there's nothing more diverse than the topography of Appalachia.

The land is up and down, and facing one way and facing another.

And there's water and there's rocks and there's so much diversity.

So that, I think, is an excellent theater for humankind to express its best effort at making the world a better place, at making the forest a better forest.

And I would hope, in the end, it would help humans be better stewards, be better caretakers of our natural world.

[♪♪♪] Folks didn't have chainsaws and they didn't have big machinery or fossil fuels.

So the work was done wi th a crosscut saw and an axe, and generally a team of oxen or whatever horses they could get to work.

And for a long time in Appalachia, there was no logging.

There was tanbark industry where they would kill a lot of trees just by stripping the bark off of them.

Because they could haul bark to the mill with just a wagon and a team of horses, and they didn't have to handle those big, huge logs.

So, when it did get to where th ey had crosscut saws and axes and they were actually harvesting timber, historically, this is after the Civil War, when they started harvesting most of the timber in the Appalachian region.

They high-graded, they took the best trees and left the rest.

Because the work was so hard and it took so long and it was so low production that they didn't bother with anything but the very best.

And I think that's what restoration is for us, by leaving the best specimens and taking the worst first.

The forest does improve very quickly, and that's what my life is about, and that's what my presence he re in Appalachia is about too.

That allows me to access the timber because the people that own the land now are different than they were 100 years ago.

A hundred years ago, people were doing whatever they could to survive.

We now have challenges for the future that they didn't have then.

In particular, those are alien, invasive botanical species.

We have plants that have been introduced to the ecosystem here now that are displacing the opportunity for the forest to regenerate itself.

So we have to be careful ab out introducing those things.

One thing to understand is that al l of those invasive botanicals are disturbance dependent.

You have to create a disturbance on the ground for them to get a start.

And since horse logging or animal-powered forestry is light disturbance from the beginning, I submit that that's a great place to start.

So that's why we think the least disturbance and the least amount of tree removal, the better chance the forest has to restore itself.

[♪♪♪] Well, my favorite part about being a woodsman is the horses.

You know, giving the horses a reason to be here, you know, continuing to refine the development of the horses.

I happen to use a very rare breed of horse called Suffolk Punch that were nearly extinct because they had never been developed for anything but farming.

So they never made the big show circles, they were never used to pull beer wagons like the Clydesdales.

So they didn't have the other support.

So they've had to prove themselves by being useful in addressing human needs.

And so I use them for farming and for forestry.

They're very loyal, very hardworking.

Horses are honest.

Once you understand a horse and know how a horse is, they're generally going to be the same way all the time.

But I've always seen the horses as sort of humbling because they're limiting, an d they're limiting my ability.

I can't run over things.

I can't pull seven trees at a time.

So it's sort of humbling in that sense.

But it's also harmonizing because it harmonizes my pr esence with the natural world.

Because I can move slow enough about it that I get a chance to appreciate a lot of the life around me that isn't available to a rapid, you know, fossil-fired sort of approach to things.

It's not an occupation of last resort.

This is not something that people do because they can't do anything else, like often, is thought about conventional loggers, you know.

But so, this is something that you choose to do.

It's very skilled.

It's very dangerous.

It's very complex.

It requires anticipation of what's going to happen in an often very violent setting of trees falling and big animals hooked to logs.

It, you know, it really does require abstract comprehension, too.

You have to know what's going on without seeing it, like the saw that's inside of the tree.

You've got to know where that saw is without being able to see it.

So it really does require a high level of skill and a high level of personal dedication to master all those skills and bring them to your daily activities.

So this is not-- you're doing a special here about Appalachia.

This is not a dumb bunch of hillbillies that don't know any better.

These are people who are making conscious choices to do the very best things that they know of, to the best of their understanding, science and culture-wise.

[♪♪♪] [Jay Prater] Next, we head to Speyside Bourbon Stave Mill in Millboro, Virginia, and their cooperage in Atkins, Virginia, to see their modern-day logging and production in action.

Speyside Cooperage has sp ecialized in providing barrels for spirit making since 1947.

With that longevity comes a wealth of experience and industry knowledge, like using Appalachian White Oaks to make their bourbon barrels.

-Speyside Bourbon Cooperage is a part of the TFF Group, which is a company that is based out of France.

Started back in 1906 as cooperage operations, spirit operations in different countries around the world.

So we're fortunate to be a part of that.

So we operate two cooperages here in the U.S., new barrel cooperages, that is-- under the name of Speyside Bourbon Cooperage, and eight stave mills under the name of Speyside Bourbon Stave Mill.

We have, at this location-- we're in Millboro, Virginia today, which is one of eight mills that Speyside has.

Those are scattered around Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, so all of them purchasing logs throughout the Appalachian region.

We have two cooperages-- the one I mentioned in Jackson, Ohio, and also one in Atkins, Virginia.

We're making our final product, which you'll get to see at some point.

So you ask why we're based in Millboro, and another reason for that is the proximity to the Appalachian Mountains, and the white oak that grows in the Appalachian Mountains is well desired in the barrel-making process.

The growing seasons allow the white oak to have denser growth rings, which is important in barrel-making.

And the well-drained slopes that occur throughout the Appalachians, where white oak likes to grow, obviously makes for a good distribution of white oak within the range that we operate.

So as part of being based in the Appalachians, we are purchasing logs throughout the majority of the 344-county region that white oak grows in.

More than 50 percent of our logs do come from that region.

As part of that, we are AHMI certified and legal, stating that the majority of our logs come through that region, and that those logs are being harvested sustainably based on state and government guidelines for such.

Bourbon, by law, has to be made in a new charred white oak barrel.

So white oak is the only species from characteristic and from the law standpoint that can be used to make bourbon.

So our procurement starts in the field.

We have a network of log buyers.

We're procuring logs in 16 different states, find a mixture of logs, standing timber.

And our buyers are looking for 100 percent white oak or Quercus alba, and those logs are bought in log form or standing timber, which are all brought to this facility to be processed.

[♪♪♪] Those logs are brought in here to be manufactured through a quarter sawn process, which is the process of splitting the log into half and then half again, which gives four quarters.

So the reason we're using white oak is because white oak has what's called tyloses, or balloon-like structures that block the flow of water in the cells.

They also have lignans that give off flavors into the spirits, and tannins, which provide color.

So at the end of the day, the barrel's doing a lot of work to make the bourbon that you and I see on the shelf.

So once that process begins, the logs are cut, as we mentioned.

They're processed down to the final product that we call stave and heading, stave being the sides of the barrel, heading being the tops and bottoms of the barrel.

You know, I think the biggest thing that we need to acknowledge is that, you know, white oak is an important resource to all of us here at Speyside.

We're interested in making bourbon barrels as a product, but white oak goes far beyond that, and there's many other economical uses for white oak, from lumber, flooring, furniture, cabinets, you name it, white oak's a popular item for that.

But there's a lot of social aspects to it as well, and environmental aspects.

White oak's, you know, the primary food source for a lot of animals, with the acorns it produces and nesting habitat.

So, our need for white oak goes way beyond just making barrels.

So I think, you know, it's important for us all to understand the complications that go with that, and there's organizations out there such as the White Oak Initiative here in Virginia.

We have our Hardwood Initiative, and all aimed at trying to promote the regeneration of not just white oak, but oaks in general, because they're all important parts of our ecosystem.

So when we look out in the field and we see harvests that are occurring, whether they're clear cuts or select cuts, understanding what may have gone into that, that it's not always just an economic gain that was occurring.

Sometimes those stands were diseased.

They were overcome by invasive species, poor practices in the past that led to management needing to occur.

And so, those are all important aspects in the longevity of oak in general, and in our case, white oak.

So we like to promote sustainable forestry.

We like, not just from an economic, but from an environmental impact.

And so it's important there's a lot of things we've got to get turned around in our management techniques.

The absence of fire, trying to control invasives better are all challenges that we face ahead of us.

And, you know, a lot of our landowner base is private.

So we got a lot of people to reach to get that management done, but we know it can be done.

So it's obviously in Speyside's best interest to help get that done as well.

Just like we, as foresters, have an interest to protect the resource for our children and future generations, corporations do as well, and companies like Speyside have a vested interest to ensure there's white oak growing tomorrow because without white oak, there's no barrels to make the bourbon that the consumers enjoy today.

[Jay Prater] Our last stop is at a family-owned logging operation near Goshen, Virginia.

We learn about modern-day logging from Scott Barrett, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech from the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation.

He also specializes in forest operations and logging businesses, along with directing Virginia's SHARP Logger Training Program.

-The forest industry in Virginia, which would include logging as well as the landowners that are selling timber and mills that are producing products, it's over a $23 billion economic impact to the Commonwealth of Virginia, which makes it the third largest industry in the state.

So Virginia is primarily forested.

It's about two-thirds of the state's land is forested, so it's about 16 million acres of forest.

Of those 16 million acres, over 13 million acres are owned by private forest landowners.

So, harvesting operations are almost entirely on private forest landowners in Virginia.

There are some other landowners, the U.S. Forest Service and State Forest, but the vast majority of all harvesting operations take place on private forest lands.

So in the Appalachians in the western part of the state, it's primarily hardwood forests, so it would be natural hardwoods, which is a mixture of species, almost always naturally regenerated.

Yellow poplar is one of the more common species.

Then you'd also have the oaks.

We've got red oaks and white oaks.

Also hickory, maple, several other species such as walnut.

On any given harvest, you may have a dozen or more different species of trees in that harvested area.

So a lot of different species, they all have different growth requirements.

They all have different products that can be made out of them.

So a real variety of species that you'll find in the Appalachian hardwood region.

One of the things that I'm responsible for is the SHARP Logger Program.

And so, SHARP is an acronym for Sustainable Harvesting and Resource Professional.

So it's part of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Program.

So companies that are in the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or SFI, they require their loggers to go through the training program.

And we operate the training as an extension program.

So the basic principles of the program, we focus on the principles of sustainable forestry, environmental protection, and workplace safety.

So it's a two-day core program to become a SHARP logger.

So if the participants go through both of those core programs, they're considered a SHARP logger.

And then they have to maintain that by earning eight hours of continuing education every two years.

So we've got about 1,100 participants in the SHARP Logger Program.

We offer trainings across the whole state of Virginia to make sure that everybody who needs the training program can attend one of our SHARP Logger Programs.

So I think one of the misconceptions, people think that it's, you know, giant corporations that are out there doing the logging.

But it's really not.

These are small, family-owned businesses that are out there.

They're working with private landowners.

And it's a small business that's running the logging operation.

And then they're delivering that to the mills that make a product from it.

So we're out here today on Martin Logging.

Their logging operation is near Goshen, Virginia.

And this is an example of a fully mechanized harvesting job in the mountains of Virginia.

They have two different mechanized fellers.

So they've got a tracked feller, and then they've got a rubber-tired feller/buncher.

So in these operations, it's a whole lot safer because the operator is inside of a cab while the trees are being felled.

Same with skidding.

Th ey're using a grapple skidder where the operator doesn't have to get out of the machine to pick up the logs.

So anytime you can have th e operator inside of the cab, it makes for a lot safer operation.

On this particular operation, so they're harvesting logs.

So the larger, higher-quality trees that will be used for lumber, those will go to sawmills.

The smaller trees are a little bit lower quality.

We would call those pulpwood trees.

So they go to a paper mill where they would be made into either paper or packaging products.

And then what's left over is what we call logging residues.

So this would be the limbs or the tops or trees that were not good enough quality to make paper.

So those logging residues are chipped in this job.

So it's a whole tree chip.

So whatever the remainder of that tree is that they're going to use for chips goes through the chipper.

And then that's used for biomass energy.

So those logging residues, also called biomass, are taken to a facility where they're burned to generate electricity, which is renewable energy.

So they're using a waste product, which otherwise wouldn't have had a better use for a different product.

So that waste product is then used to make renewable energy, either to fuel some process at the mill or just to generate electricity.

And we've got mills that do both of those here in Virginia.

So it's kind of unique.

Not a lot of loggers in the mountain area have a chipper.

But this particular job is a good example of where they're producing logs, pulpwood, and then biomass for energy.

So on this logging operation today, there were four people th at were working in the woods.

And that's pretty typical of what we see with logging operations in Virginia.

A typical logging operation, especially in the western part of Virginia in the mountains, is going to have between two and four people that are working in the woods' harvesting.

So another common misconception when people think of logging jobs and logging operations, if you look at a harvest area, whether it was a clear cut or a select cut, they look at that harvest and think that there will never be trees there again.

But in reality, that's a common misconception.

It's just not true.

When you harvest trees, what it does is it lets in more sunlight.

And so more sunlight allows for the trees to regenerate.

So seeds sprout.

We get sprouts from stumps.

And so the next forest starts as a result of moving those trees from the previous harvest.

So unless you do something to clear the land, to convert it to something else, whether that's to parking lots or houses, if you don't do anything to convert it to something else, then that land will become forest again.

And so, by harvesting and removing the trees from there, producing products from them, you've created the next forest and given it a start to regenerate and become the next forest.

So the U.S. Forest Service tracks harvests and removals.

And when we look at the Virginia data, across Virginia, we are growing over twice as many trees as we are harvesting.

So it's a very sustainable operation, and we will continue to have trees in the future, as long as we continue to have forest land that is growing trees.

[♪♪♪] [music fades out] This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society advancing the interests of women in the arts in Virginia and beyond.

Thoughtful, functional, beautiful Berry Home Centers can design your dream kitchen, we focus on customer service so you can focus on what matters.

Serving Southwest Virginia for more than 50 years and now the New River and Roanoke Valleys.