5th Anniversary Special! Xylology (LUMBER) with Jeff Perry

Image Description: Jeff Perry stands on a 2nd story landing in the warehouse at Angel City Lumber, with stacks of wood drying behind him. He has close-cropped dark hair, dark-rimmed glasses and wears a grey t-shirt from Harvest Lumber Company. He has some tattoos on his left arm, his hands are in his pockets, and he is smiling toward camera.

What’s the customary 5th Anniversary gift? Apparently… WOOD! So we wrangled our favorite sawmill owner/operator of LA’s Angel City Lumber, Jeff Perry – who rescues downed street trees from the chipper and turns them into beautiful planks, boards, stumps and chonks. We cover everything from forest management to 2x4s, wood grain, burls, bog logs, sawdust, tree disease, asparagus tips, salvaged lumber, kiln drying, Westward expansion, Indigenous forest management, cedar whiff, and how working with wood changes your relationship to death.

Listen via Stitcher, Apple, Podbay, Podcast Addict, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Angel City Lumber website

Donations went to The Mother Tree Project via this link


Links to things we discussed:

Laura Zahn, carpenter 

Plain sawn, rift sawn and quarter sawn

TerreMoto Landscape 

David Newsome at WildYardsProject.org

Video: Spirit of the Trees: Continuing Traditions (Southwest tribes)

What IS wood? 

How to spalt wood – on purpose. With beer?

One of a kind lumber from recovered Flathead Lake logs

OLD-GROWTH & SECOND-GROWTH FOREST

Coppicing

Video: Old growth vs. secondary growth

Other lumber source companies Jeff likes:

San Diego Urban Timber

Lumber Cycle (San Diego, CA)

Alasaw (Birmingham, AL by way of Los Angeles) 

Street Tree Revival (Anaheim, CA)

New York City Slab

Wood from the Hood (Minneapolis, MN)

Epilogue, LLC (Charbonneau, OR)

Bay Area Redwood 

Harvest Lumber (Austin, TX)

Treeline (Frogtown/Atwater Village, CA)

Habitat for Humanity the ReStore

Frank Pouwer (Netherlands)


Studies:

Longitudinal analyses of lignin deposition in green asparagus by microscopy during high oxygen modified atmosphere packaging

Bound and free water distribution in wood during water uptake and drying as measured by 1D magnetic resonance imaging

Free and bound water in wood” 

Late Mesolithic and early Neolithic forest disturbance: a high resolution palaeoecological test of human impact hypotheses” 

The potential role of humans in structuring the wooded landscapes of Mesolithic Ireland: a review of data and discussion of approaches


Books mentioned:

Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree

Shel Silverstein narrating “The Giving Tree”

Dr. Suzanne Simard’s “Finding the Mother Tree: Discoverign the Wisdom of the Forest” 

Jared Farmer’s “Trees in Paradise: The Botanical Conquest of California

William Bryant Logan’s “Sprout Lands: Tending the Effortless Gift of Trees

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass


More episodes you might like:

Bryology (MOSS)

Dendrology (TREES) Encore

Mycology (FUNGI)

Indigenous Fire Ecology (GOOD FIRE)

Carobology (NOT CHOCOLATE TREES)


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Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media

Transcripts by Emily White of The Wordary

Website by Kelly R. Dwyer

Theme song by Nick Thorburn

EarthAlie Ward