Jon P Wagy Forest Products

Location: Springville, CA

*Sierra Nevada Region: South (Tulare County)

Contact: Jon Wagy 559-539-3536 dwagy@localnet.com

JONATHAN P. WAGY FOREST PRODUCTS is the only full-time sawmill in Tulare County making rough-saw full-cut lumber. He leases space on an historic mill site that is also home to a truss manufacturer, a tree service, another sawmill, and a rustic furniture maker.

Jon Wagy products directly support Tulare County’s largest product: agriculture. This one small sawmill, protected from the elements by an open metal roofed structure with only two sides, produces peeled logs, log siding, rough siding, rough-sawed lumber for agricultural buildings and rustic construction, grape stakes, posts and poles, bundled firewood, and sawdust for organic farms.

This one man handcrafted rustic interiors for the first ten Tahoe Joe’s restaurants, imbuing them with an outdoor ambiance that is now their trademark. “But not the most recent ones; they are now mass-producing restaurants, and don’t want to take the time or pay for hand-crafting.”

Yes, Jon Wagy runs a one-man artisan operation, as does the logger who sells him raw wood harvested from fuels reduction treatments on private lands. “There used to be more logging contractors in the area, but as it is now, If something happens to him, I don’t work. Yes, it is risky to depend on only one person, for him and for me. But once the idea of the country sawmill is gone, it will stay gone. The idea of the artisan craftsman will be gone, too, because it will be too difficult to make a living if you have to rent space in expensive business parks that are too far from your source material.”

As a forester and FireSafe Council advisor for over thirty years as well, Jon Wagy understands the need to have tools and personnel at the ready. “I suppose I could have retired, but this mill needs to stay open. If you don’t have trained people and infrastructure in place, stewardship projects just cannot happen. We have foresters retiring and mill operators leaving the profession, and by the time we need more of both, there will be no more institutional memory. There is a need for stand-altering adjustments to break the canopy in some areas that now hold five times their natural stocking level of trees. That is monoculture -a stand of trees, not a forest. We have learned important lessons in conservation and ecology in the last thirty years, and yet we have not had the permission or the money to conserve or restore. I don’t care how much it costs, being sick costs more – and our forests are sick. As long as I have enough material, I keep working so that this mill will be here when people remember they need it, and us.”

“People use wood, but they don’t remember where it comes from, or think about its true cost – like our food. Population pressures are forcing us to rape other forests worldwide, for timber and for food. We don’t realize we are exporting our demand and creating ecological transfer effects in parts of the world where there is little if any environmental regulation. At least when we harvest here, anyone can march right up into the woods to make sure it is being done responsibly.”

Wagy lifts a grape stake from the day’s stack, and explains “grape stake economics.” Whereas his are made at the end of the day, from “the last tailings” of other products so that he uses every bit of wood and wastes nothing, some mills worldwide that are tooled to make nothing but these actually discard even large pieces left over from this production. And some of those grape stakes are sold in home improvement stores just thirty miles away. “So what is the true cost of transporting essentially raw material around the world instead of creating value where you are? Think about it. Extricating raw material traditionally creates low-wage, largely unsafe and dirty jobs. But if those jobs are part of a larger local infrastructure that also manufactures and exports finished products, you have created a whole local economy that forces all wages up. Manufacturing, like mine, depends upon a reliable source of supply; so it is in my best interest to support local sustainable sourcing and stewardship jobs and careers. These are higher-paying jobs because they require higher levels of skill and education. This may make my material cost higher, but if more people in my town can afford to buy my finished goods at a price that supports my family, we all thrive. And we all have jobs that are interesting, and engaging, and depend on one another. We are not stratified.”

“This way goods are only being transported once, out of the system. We need to consider the true cost of transportation: it isn’t only one-way. What does it take to get the fuel to us in the first place, and how does that affect the health of the planet and the people in it? I use as little fuel as possible both ways. I sell these grape stakes to a local store, and you’ll pass miles of them as you drive through the Central Valley.”

But not for long: the historic mill site and cattle ranch on the Tule River sits on property that is being sold to a developer who intends to build over 400 homes for “active seniors.” “It is about 25 miles to the nearest full-service grocery store or hospital, on a two-lane road,” notes Jon.

For more about:
• Tulare County Working Landscapes, see Tulare County Farm Bureau Land Use Policy
• Activities of a FireSafe Council, see Tulare FireSafe Council

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