Our wood for barrel storage, tree buckets, bath tubs
The wood for all these products is also local…
Origin is the Palatinate forest and even from the forestry of our hometown Bad Dürkheim. Large long Douglas fir trunks, some up to 30 m high, planted in the early 1930s, we process into products such as wooden barrel storage, planters and bath tubs.
Every year towards the end of the summer, I organize a tour with the forester through the stands that are up for cutting and we look at the trees very carefully, then make the selection of which trees may be harvested.
In the past, a tree was judged by how strong it was and what profit the forest, whether state or private, could make from it. Of course, these were not the single criteria – silviculture was equal, it had to be ensured that the tree that was harvested was also harvested sensibly, so that offspring got enough light and space to grow.
Today, an important criterion is the vitality of a tree, we try to take only trees that can and should be cut for silvicultural reasons, and also show slight drought damage in the crown – a sign that the tree has not been sufficiently supplied with water and rain. Therefore, sometimes trees remain in the forest that were ripe for felling but are still healthy and provide shade.
The Douglas fir is one of our trees of the future; it is now at home in Germany’s forests, growing and flourishing within a short time to become a stately tree with a strong diameter.
The Douglas fir is evergreen and belongs to the pine family. It roots deeply in a heart shape and tolerates increasing warmth well. As already reported, the Douglas fir is, along with the chestnut, a hope of foresters as a tree that may well survive climate change. However, like the chestnut, the Douglas fir also requires adequate rainfall.
After harvesting, the trees are moved to the roadside and then trucked to our sawmill by our logging contractor using a long log truck.
In our sawmill we then cut the delivered logs and dry the square timbers and raw staves in the open air, then we homogenize the residual moisture in a modern vacuum dryer to bring immediately dry pieces into processing.
The Douglas fir wood has a reddish color, is easy to process and at the same time is a very hard and resistant wood. Our coopers are now sorting the appropriate staves for production.
An advantage for us is the high resistance of the wood against weather influences, thus the Oregon Pine as the Douglas fir is called in its original area of origin in North America, is perfectly suitable for bath tubs, water buckets or wooden barrel storage.
It has a pleasant smell and no tannins, so you can enjoy a bath in one of our large hot tubs without skin irritation.
Some photos show the wood in the Dürkheim forest after cutting other photos show products from our production, which we also made Douglas fir.
The wood residues from the production of our Douglas fir, such as cut boards from the sawmill that we use to cover our raw staves during outdoor storage, or the cuttings in the cooperage that are produced during the capping of the staves and are used to heat the cooperage, we pay attention to the greatest possible sustainability.
See you,
