These are the times I look back on and learned my earliest lessons: To keep up, you always had to be 10 steps ahead, and if you weren't thinking and moving fast enough, you were behind.

 

On my 13th birthday, a tornado struck our house and surrounding areas. When the sun came up, destruction was everywhere! I knew there was a lot of work to be done, so I cut the trees out of the neighbors’ yards and began to sell firewood with just a saw and a wood splitter. 

 

At 15 years old, being young and ambitious, I wanted machines that could make my work easier so I saved and bought a skidder. From there I began doing logging jobs. I read and educated myself until I understood what results I needed to achieve. Being young, I missed out on many opportunities because I did not have the experience, but I set the groundwork with great enthusiasm:  I learned from the experienced men who had done it long before me. 

 

This was also an era when people wanted a forester rather than a logger, so I enrolled in Paul Smith's College to overcome that obstacle. Once I graduated, the economy took a turn and log prices weren't as lucrative and no one was hungry to buy logs. When the Marcellus Gas Shale boom started, I saw new opportunities, but they came with with expectations, unrealistic schedules and new challenges. I tried new equipment and methods to see what worked most efficiently. It took years to develop and purchase the equipment we run today.

 

 We have been really fortunate; this line of work is not easy and can often be a struggle. It has its ups, which are short, and the downs, which drag on, but our equipment inventory and our employees sets us apart from the competition. Our success couldn’t have happened without a great team of highly motivated, dependable and driven people.

 

 I can’t imagine doing anything else no matter how tough the day is. I'm always in the woods somewhere, doing what I enjoy, and at the end of the day, like in my childhood, I can always look back and measure what we accomplished.