Institute for Sustainable Forestry

07/04/2024

Mysteriously deformed "candelabra" redwood above Usal Beach at Shady Dell on the Lost Coast. Thanks to Sanctuary Forest for setting up the adventure to this remote location.

03/21/2024

Explaining biochar at the Arcata Seed and Scion Exchange with Susan Nolan, March 9. We started our biochar road show four years ago this month for the Institute for Sustainable Forestry.

01/16/2024

Offering an all-day workshop called Cruising for Poles, the first step in building with small trunks of Douglas-fir, which grows everywhere up here. Led by natural builder Colin Gillespie and myself.

Saturday, February 24, 2024
9:00 AM 4:30 PM

Round poles and locally milled wood from sustainably managed forests provide the bones for a simple climate-resilient architecture. As part of a reciprocal relationship with forested landscapes, building with locally-harvested materials reduces GHG emissions in both manufacturing and transportation.

Spring is the time to select and harvest poles.

Feb 24 9:00 AM09:00 Cruising for Poles Saturday, February 24, 2024 9:00 AM 4:30 PM 09:00 16:30 Google Calendar ICS Round poles and locally milled wood from sustainably managed forests provide the bones for a simple climate-resilient architecture. As part of a reciprocal relationship with forested la...

12/25/2023

On this day, when a story with the power of gospel is told in the culture of my birth, I am grateful for having learned other ways of seeing the world. Most recent among the many perspectives I have found through casting off the shibboleths that bind that culture is the origin story told by the first peoples on this land where I live. It is told in the first chapter of a book by a professor in my field with native ancestry, who met my culture from the other direction. With gratitude, I share this excerpt.

"On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.

"Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a co-creator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.

"... Look at the legacy of poor Eve's exile from Eden: the land shows the bruises of an abusive relationship. It's not just land that is broken, but more importantly, our relationship to land. As Gary Nabhan has written, we can't meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without "re-story-ation." In other words, our relationship with land cannot heal until we hear its stories."

– Braiding Sweetgrass, pp. 17–20 by Robin Wall Kimmerer

03/27/2023

In 1990 a group of foresters, environmental activists, landowners, loggers, natural resource scientists, woodworkers, and forest practitioners gathered in northern California to consider the challenging question of how to create a forestry model that would both protect and preserve all forest values.

In 1990 a group of foresters, environmental activists, landowners, loggers, natural resource scientists, woodworkers, and forest practitioners gathered in northern California to consider the challenging question of how to create a forestry model that would both protect and preserve all forest values...

12/26/2021

http://instituteforsustainableforestry.com/audio.html

An interview with local business owner Eric Almquist, proprietor of Almquist Lumber in Arcata, exploring the link, through commercial enterprise, between sustainable harvest of local timber and the market for specialty hardwoods. This interview was conducted by ISF president Chip Tittmann.

09/09/2021

K-P & Sons operates a small, sustainable mill in Humboldt County by Susan Nolan ISF is a big supporter of small mills. We were really disappointed when last year’s trip to the K-P & Sons mill had to be cancelled, as the corona virus crisis deepened. But when things opened up this year, we were abl...

02/28/2020

http://blog.instituteforsustainableforestry.com/how-to-read-a-creek-walk-october-12-2019