Here I am back home in the Valley (well, the foothills) after 5 exciting years in Santa Cruz and Chile. At 23 I'm living with my mom and working for my dad, but I dig it.

My job right now is doing outreach for my dad's business, Crossroads Recycled Lumber in North Fork, California (http://www.crossroadslumber.com). I'm supposed to get our name out there and let architects and institutions that are building green know primarily about reclaimed lumber, and secondarily about Crossroads. I really enjoy doing this. I actually spend mornings pulling nails or milling boards with the guys in the yard, and afternoons here in the office doing outreach and making connections.

My dad's been doing the Recycled Lumber thing for years now, since before I was born. When I was a kid he worked different jobs throughout the year, logging in the summer, construction or demolition in the winter. When he worked demolition he would salvage lumber, doors, windows, whatever was salvageable from wrecking jobs. The house I grew up in was 100% reclaimed. Even my first pets were salvaged when Dad was on a demolition job and the two cats (Ishi and Mr. Brown) that had belonged to the abandoned building were left homeless. Crossroads took off when I was about 7, and Dad finally bought a sawmill and could do custom milling instead of just selling pieces "as is."

Today the business is strong (well, less so in this economy), with a few guys working in the yard, the old Woodmizer Mill, and a couple planers dad's picked up to finish boards. I'm extremely proud of our family business. In October before I was hired by UCSC (see previous blog) I worked here, doing some research for the website they were revamping. I had this fear in the back of my mind that I would find some kind of terrible flaw in the Recycled Lumber process and discover that Reclaiming and Remilling Timbers is actually horribly unsustainable! (I was pretty into the biodiesel idea when I was younger, and now the sustainability community has discovered that using vegetable products is not exactly an end-all solution to the fuel crisis). But no, after doing that research I am an even greater proponent of what we're doing here at Crossroads.

The benefits behind reclaimed lumber are many fold, and in comparison to other building materials I see very few drawbacks. Lumber in and of itself is a beautiful, natural building material. It is easy to work with and sturdy. But logging and using virgin timber has a negative connotation and reputation. As I mentioned, my dad worked as a logger when I was a kid, and he feels strongly that logging cannot only be done responsibly, but in some cases is even necessary to maintain forests and control fires. However, it is fact that uncontrolled logging can destroy natural habitats for forest flora and fauna, contribute to disrupting a forests' natural carbon cycle (which in turn affects the planet's climate and our air quality), and disrupts the natural water cycle which can reduce soil cohesion and lead to natural disasters like landslides and flooding.

In the last 15 years or so, sustainable forestry has taken off, and guarantees such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification can provide some assurance that virgin timber was grown and harvested responsibly. However, even FSC certified virgin lumber takes a LOT of energy to harvest. Just try to imagine how much oil and human energy it takes to fell trees, and then how much it takes to ship those logs on semi-trucks (mostly from Canada and the Pacific Northwest) all over the country. If anyone can actually find that statistic, I would love to know what it is.

Reclaimed lumber uses