Our Team
How This Whole Thing Started
So a few years back, I took a side job felling and splitting 20 trees for this guy. I'd been writing code for 15 years at that point—good work, paid the bills—but something about being out there with a chainsaw, turning a problem into a pile of split wood, just clicked. My back hurt, my hands were torn up, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Later that year, I'm scrolling through classifieds and see this custom log splitter for sale. Guy wanted $300 and a pistol for it. The splitter had been built by an equipment fabrication crew as a Christmas present for their boss—heavy steel, hydraulic ram, the kind of machine you build when you actually know what you're doing. Owner got too old to run it, decided to pass it along. I drove out there, looked it over, made the deal.
That machine is still the heart of what we do. We've turned it into a firewood processor now—added computer controls, conveyors, the whole nine yards. But it started as a handshake deal and a weird trade in somebody's driveway.
The Crew That Makes It Work
Kolgrov and I go back over 10 years. We've spent enough time in the woods together that we don't need to talk much to know what needs doing. When this was still just me and that splitter and a half-baked idea, he said, "Let's do this for real." So we did.
Cris runs operations and keeps the numbers straight. She's the one taking notes while I'm out there eyeballing a load of logs or trying to remember if we ordered more chains. If I'm the chaos, she's the order. Works out pretty well.
Darin and Fred are the newest guys on the crew. They just finished putting the roof on our pole barn—corrugated metal, 40-foot span, the kind of project where you find out real quick if someone knows how to work. They do.
