Milling lumber and my husbands love of wood

My husband LOVES wood!

I mean he really, really loves it, or anything at all that has to do with a tree really. He carries tree books in his jacket pocket and constantly stops to ask our girls if they can "name that tree."

His favorite hobby is splitting wood....by hand! Even though our family has a wood splitter, he likes the rugged workout of swinging the ax. But that's okay because I kinda like watching him swing the ax! Since this is his favorite thing to do, it's only natural that he would eventually get in to the craft of woodworking. He's just learning the basics and has made some pretty cool things so far. Mostly he's making decorative items for me to display around the house. His eventual dream is to turn one of our sheds into a woodworking shop so he can be a pro carpenter. (The same way I dream of having a dairy pasture and living off grid) but we realize that these things we must learn one step at a time.

Right now he's learning how to mill and dry lumber.

He has been collecting tree trunks from my grandfathers' farm and stashing them away for the day when a friend would bring over his portable saw mill....

And finally the day had come, my husband was ready to learn how to mill his own lumber. 
Here's a picture of the lumberjacks at work...

 

It was amazing to watch this machine saw so perfectly through such big, heavy logs!

 

 

If you look closely at the last picture you can see that it's been cut every 2". Justin's planning on making us a table out of this English Walnut tree.

 

 

That's  Casey, the awesome guy who owns the mill.

 

 

This is a picture of the whole setup from a distance.

 

 

That's my husband Justin!

 

 

 

 

And this is just some of the wood we had milled that day! The cost for all of this wood was less than $200- Far less than what even a portion of this lumber would have costs at the store. And it only costs us that because we wanted to give the guys a little something for the time.

 

Now that you understand my husbands love of wood, you can look forward to many more posts about anything "trees".. and even some pictures of his milled wood projects. He makes beautiful cutting boards from some of the English Walnut, But that's a whole other post entirely!

 

What's your favorite homesteading hobby?  I'd love to hear about it!