Log-to-Home

Tours

Whether you know a little or a lot about timber, it helps to understand the particulars of our log yard. We hold dozens of timber species in our yard which we'll introduce you to, along with some of the characters running the show.

The timber we harvest in New Zealand comes from other countries and continents. How did it arrive here? What made New Zealand's pioneers (your ancestors, quite possibly) think it would be a good idea to bet their entire life savings on planting considerable parts of the country in these species? Timber is simply timber to some, but to those interested in the stories behind the plantations, are tales of incredible bravery, fortitude, and foresight. We will tell you some of them.

If we were paid in sweat for the log-to-beam conversion process we would probably be doing exactly what we are doing right now frankly, but we would have a lot more money in our bank accounts! It's a grueling process; dangerous to the untrained, but 100% necessary. Lucky we have some big strapping lads who know what they're doing and are about the friendliest fellas you will meet too. This is the timber milling process up close.

Drying timber involves various types of technology. There are the man made ones like the solar kiln, but there is that other big shiny thing in the sky - the sun - which continues to be as central as it ever was in pretty much anything and everything we do here on earth, including timber drying. Simple, yet absurdly complicated too. We'll tell you what we know!

There are some peculiarities about New Zealand's forestry industry you may have heard about - like how we ship lower grade timber offshore where it gets processed and sold back to us for a higher price. Interesting right? There are reasons why this happens, be they economical, political or other. Regardless, we keep it all in-house. From "log-to-home" as it were. We add the value, and in this stage of the tour we'll show you how.

You understand the fundamentals now, so let's get to the fun stuff. Mortise and tenon joinery is the name of the game and we'll show you how we do it here. Mortise and tenon buildings are still in spectacular form, in places like Norway, some 1,300 years after they were built. More would be around too, were it not for fires or other unfortunate circumstances. This is the basis of our barn homes so who knows - maybe some of the ones we build will be around a millennia or so from now?

We've got three barn homes on the farm now, which makes it a "barn village" of sorts (albeit a very small village). These are family homes and the owners very generously open them up to log-to-home participants. Not all the homes will be available on most given days, but we'll do our very best to give you a good glimpse of a real handmade barn home, in a range of styles.