Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: Tracy in a new studio today.
Speaker 2: I know, isn't it great?
Speaker 1: If you're just listening to the podcast on the audio,
Speaker 1: I guess nothing has changed. But if you're checking it
Speaker 1: out on video on YouTube, on click, take, et cetera, streaming,
Speaker 1: it looks different. You should check it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, check it out for sure. I think we're leaning
Speaker 2: into the sort of nineties Nickelodeon SpongeBob vibe.
Speaker 1: Maybe that is a very interesting. I like that aesthetic
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: After school special.
Speaker 1: I am, this is an after school special, except today's
Speaker 1: topic is not like really what kind of is? It's
Speaker 1: kind of an after school special vibe because today we're
Speaker 1: going to be talking about.
Speaker 2: Alcohol, yes, okay, but not just alcohol. We're doing a
Speaker 2: supply chain episode classic, a thought supply chain episode.
Speaker 1: Yes, and so, uh, you know, I don't have we
Speaker 1: ever talked about the alcohol industry before.
Speaker 2: I don't think we have.
Speaker 1: I don't think we have either, But you know, like one,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it's like, okay, let
Speaker 1: you go, you ask for a drink et cetera. And
Speaker 1: you probably do not think too much unless you're like
Speaker 1: a true connoisseur of something about what it took to
Speaker 1: get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right, and I mean, to be fair,
Speaker 2: that is the case with almost all the supply chain
Speaker 2: episodes that we do, which is people use these final
Speaker 2: products and goods, they don't always necessarily realize what goes
Speaker 2: into them until something happens there's a disruption of some sort,
Speaker 2: and then suddenly everyone realizes, oh, actually you need this
Speaker 2: component in order to make this thing. That I really like.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: with respect to supply chains is that there seem to
Speaker 1: be some issues that arise that I don't know if
Speaker 1: mechanical is the right word, but where it's like you
Speaker 1: can change something and maybe fixing it, like say like
Speaker 1: capacity at the ports, for example. Like in theory, that's
Speaker 1: seems like a sort of like human solvable problem, whereas
Speaker 1: we talk about other issues that arise in which we're
Speaker 1: sort of like dependent on natural phenomenon or at the
Speaker 1: mercy of natural phenomenon, such as drought and say the
Speaker 1: level of the water level of the Mississippi River, Like
Speaker 1: there is very little that like humans can do certainly
Speaker 1: in a short period of time to sort of like
Speaker 1: make water levels higher when that becomes a problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think for this episode, the time frame
Speaker 2: is really key. And if I think back to an
Speaker 2: episode that is perhaps most relevant to what we're about
Speaker 2: to discuss, it's some of the ones we did with
Speaker 2: Stinton Dean where we talked about lumber supply and just
Speaker 2: how long it takes to actually grow the trees that
Speaker 2: we use for all sorts of things, from you know,
Speaker 2: housing construction being the most important one.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: And so there is this supply chain tension that maybe
Speaker 1: we're going to see within alcohol, specifically the world of bourbon,
Speaker 1: and there are many aspects of it that are just
Speaker 1: slow moving particulate barrels building them, or the trees required
Speaker 1: to you know, make the barrels, the aging processes, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like this slow moving supply chain that
Speaker 1: probably many people don't really think about, but there could
Speaker 1: be issues in the future, at least according to our
Speaker 1: guest who will.
Speaker 2: Have on this right, a slow moving supply chain crisis
Speaker 2: is the theme of this particular episode. But I think
Speaker 2: it is true that when you think about bourbon. Most
Speaker 2: people think bourbon, Oh, it comes from corn and you know,
Speaker 2: fermenting corn. Not everyone immediately thinks about the barrels that
Speaker 2: it's aged and where those actually come from.
Speaker 1: Are you a bourbon fan, by the way, No.
Speaker 2: I am the worst alcohol drinker. I drink almost exclusively
Speaker 2: light beer.
Speaker 1: I try again the worst light beer, like sort of
Speaker 1: like brown, like heavy alcoholic. I don't know, like once
Speaker 1: every few years because I think it would be nice
Speaker 1: or relaxing. Hasn't happened yet, But I am aware and
Speaker 1: I respect people for whom that it is.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm aware that that's a popular.
Speaker 2: Maybe this will give us both a newfound appreciation for
Speaker 2: burb exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I am very excited about our guest.
Speaker 1: We're going to be speaking with Kelvin Norman. He's an
Speaker 1: assistant teaching professor of forestry at Penn State, and he
Speaker 1: says there is a looming under the radars supply chain.
Speaker 1: Maybe crisis is the right word, problem coming for the
Speaker 1: bourbon industry thanks to the wood that's needed for the barrels.
Speaker 1: So we're going to learn about something, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm excited about too. This is not like a crisis
Speaker 1: in the public view yet, so maybe we can help
Speaker 1: get ahead of something and maybe it'll never become a
Speaker 1: crisis as opposed to say, like, oh, how did this happen?
Speaker 2: A bunch of people are going to plant trees because
Speaker 2: of this episode.
Speaker 1: Let's hope. So all right, Kelvin, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on Odd Lots.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me on. I'm super excited talking
Speaker 4: about trees. So love talking about trees.
Speaker 5: As an after school specialist, I would hope that an
Speaker 5: assistant teaching professor of forestry likes to talk about trees,
Speaker 5: but I am excited about talking trees as well.
Speaker 1: Well, let's just start with like, can you explain the
Speaker 1: role of the barrel specifically within the bourbon making process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is where it gets really fun. So
Speaker 4: bourbon is an American you know, liquor. It's like our
Speaker 4: true native liquor. It's fifty one percent corn that's distilled
Speaker 4: three times and put into barrels at eighty proof and
Speaker 4: that has to sit in white oak. Once you used
Speaker 4: once charred white oak barrels for a couple of years.
Speaker 4: The reason you have to use white oak, you can
Speaker 4: use a lot of like wood to make barrels.
Speaker 3: It's a really old art.
Speaker 4: But it has to sit for a couple of years,
Speaker 4: and so you have to use white oak because white oak,
Speaker 4: you know, wood fibers are just like long straws, and
Speaker 4: if you put liquids in those straws, you can actually
Speaker 4: drink through straw the straws. You know, when you when
Speaker 4: you're doing your forestry degree, we do this really fun
Speaker 4: thing where you drink water through white oak and red oak.
Speaker 4: So red oak works just like a straw, really fun,
Speaker 4: kind of nerdy. But if you try to use white
Speaker 4: oak as a straw, it doesn't work because white oak
Speaker 4: has these little.
Speaker 3: Bubbles in the wood that just develop after the tree
Speaker 3: is done using those straws to move water up and
Speaker 3: down the tree, and so those bubbles prevent liquid from
Speaker 3: escaping from the barrel itself, which is really handy when
Speaker 3: you're trying to age something for like ten or twelve
Speaker 3: years or three or four years. So there are only
Speaker 3: three woods that you can really use to make barrels
Speaker 3: that age things for a long time. There's French yoak,
Speaker 3: Hungarian oak, and white oak.
Speaker 4: If you want to get botanacle's quercus elbow for those
Speaker 4: of you following along at home.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: So we use white oak here in America, you legally
Speaker 4: have to use it, and you can only use that
Speaker 4: barrel once. After they use the bourbon barrel, they usually
Speaker 4: sell it off to other, you know, liquor distillers because
Speaker 4: the barrels are expensive and very good.
Speaker 1: This is already one of those episodes that I can
Speaker 1: tell is get to produce a lot of facts that
Speaker 1: I'm going to mention at parties and be very popular.
Speaker 1: Like you know, it's sort of like just bringing up random.
Speaker 2: Things to randomly saying quircus alba all the time. Okay, Well,
Speaker 2: on that note, white oak has this special property that
Speaker 2: you were just describing. What's the actual distribution of white
Speaker 2: oak in America? Like how common is it?
Speaker 3: So it depends on where you are.
Speaker 4: So white oak is it an Eastern US species, So
Speaker 4: you can find it from like New England kind of
Speaker 4: Connecticut area all the way over to Minnesota down to
Speaker 4: Tennessee and Florida. But to make a barrel, and this
Speaker 4: is this is going to sound really silly, you have
Speaker 4: to have a really high quality piece of wood. If
Speaker 4: you have a branch or a hole in that barrel,
Speaker 4: it's not going to make a good barrel. So you
Speaker 4: need really high quality white oak. So we really only
Speaker 4: get we call them stave quality because that's the piece
Speaker 4: of what you use to make a barrel.
Speaker 1: As a stave.
Speaker 4: You only really get stave quality wood from like New
Speaker 4: York down into Georgia. I've heard of staves coming from
Speaker 4: like southern Minnesota, but like not really, so you're looking
Speaker 4: really central, like the Apps, the Appalachians.
Speaker 1: Just a real quick question before a longer question. But
Speaker 1: you mentioned like how much is a barrel, like if
Speaker 1: I wanted to not you know, just the wood itself,
Speaker 1: how much is that?
Speaker 4: That is a really great question and I can't get
Speaker 4: that information at a barrel makers.
Speaker 3: I can tell you if you try to buy it.
Speaker 4: There's a distillery to me and they will sell use
Speaker 4: barrels for like one hundred and twenty bucks. So I
Speaker 4: couldn't tell you what a what a barrel costs right
Speaker 4: off the block. Coopbridge, you know, or making barrels, it's
Speaker 4: like a it's like a dark art. You know, they
Speaker 4: have a lot of secrets. Every Coopbridge does their you know,
Speaker 4: barrel making a little bit differently. You know, they age
Speaker 4: wood differently for various distilleris so some distillery structure episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to get a coopron next time.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's not many of them. There's not many of them,
Speaker 3: but you can find them.
Speaker 1: Why should we be concerned about the supply of white oak?
Speaker 4: Okay, so we have one tree, we have one tree species.
Speaker 4: It technically a comodity, but unlike you know, pine lumber,
Speaker 4: it's not you know, spruce and fur and ou interchangeable.
Speaker 4: You know, you can only get it from white oak,
Speaker 4: and white oak has very specific growing requirements. And you
Speaker 4: we're looking for the superstar white oak, so you have
Speaker 4: to have white oak on good site it's growing well
Speaker 4: and where we have a lot right now. But when
Speaker 4: we look to the next generation of white oak, there's
Speaker 4: very little. We're looking at like a seventy seven percent
Speaker 4: population decline if nothing changes today. If we take all
Speaker 4: of our seedling and saplings, of our little oaks that
Speaker 4: we have on the ground, we put those up in
Speaker 4: the overstory, seventy seven percent of the trees that we
Speaker 4: have today are getby you know, population decline.
Speaker 2: So maybe just to back up to illustrate that point,
Speaker 2: can you walk us through the process of where a
Speaker 2: barrel actually comes from. So who owns the white oak trees?
Speaker 2: When do they decide to cut them down? And then
Speaker 2: how does that whole process of creating the barrel actually happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Tracy follow me on this one.
Speaker 3: What can you say about an acorn?
Speaker 2: It's small, but it grows a large tree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in a nutshell, it's an oak tree. Very so
Speaker 3: we don't get a lot of forester jokes, but they
Speaker 3: you slowly, so that I try.
Speaker 4: So you start with to start with a white oak,
Speaker 4: we got to go back like one hundred years. You
Speaker 4: start with an acorn or a stump sprout from a
Speaker 4: tree slowly that recruits, So it grows from an acorn
Speaker 4: into a sapling, into a pole size tree, into a
Speaker 4: stave quality tree. That takes one hundred years, and you
Speaker 4: have incredible mortality. So we have we'll start with like
Speaker 4: a couple of thousand ceilings and we'll end with like
Speaker 4: two hundred trees. And those trees are there for a
Speaker 4: long time. So the odds of a tree becoming a ceiling,
Speaker 4: an acorn becoming a tree super low, and then to
Speaker 4: become a barrel. So if you have a forest of
Speaker 4: really wonderful white oak. There's a stave buyer. It's one
Speaker 4: person for the mill. They'll go around, they have some
Speaker 4: of them even have specific counties and like specific areas
Speaker 4: that they know good wood comes from. Because you're looking
Speaker 4: for super quality trees, like we're again we're talking the
Speaker 4: NFL of trees. It's got to be super straight. There
Speaker 4: can't be any turn in that tree at all. So
Speaker 4: they'll go around, they'll cruise the entire stand looking for
Speaker 4: trees that they want. They'll select those trees, and then
Speaker 4: when the harvest comes through, those trees get treated differently
Speaker 4: and they get taken out and sent right to the
Speaker 4: stave mil Sometimes they'll get cut up at a saw
Speaker 4: mill and the stave mail buys them there, but usually
Speaker 4: they're out there they're picking trees on woodlocks.
Speaker 1: So right now we have plenty of white oak and
Speaker 1: where there's not an acute crisis, but it's your projection
Speaker 1: in terms of the sort of acreage, the volume of
Speaker 1: these white oak trees right now, how much was that
Speaker 1: I don't know if the word is planned or active
Speaker 1: decisions that were made decades and decades and decades in
Speaker 1: the past versus sort of a more emergent phenomenon, and
Speaker 1: we're blessed with something that was sort of sort of
Speaker 1: emerged over time, but that now at this point needs
Speaker 1: more active management.
Speaker 4: Oh, Joe, it's a great question, and it's a really
Speaker 4: fun discussion that we have at the bar after forestry conferences.
Speaker 4: So we have a glut of white oak right now,
Speaker 4: you know, following farm abandonment in the Great Depression. For
Speaker 4: those of you who are not foresters, when you're a forester,
Speaker 4: you have to think really long term because what you're
Speaker 4: doing today impacts a landscape for the next hundred years.
Speaker 4: So when we look back one hundred years, so we're
Speaker 4: looking at Great Depression, is when most of these forests start.
Speaker 4: You know, you get farm field abandonment. White oak really
Speaker 4: likes that sun and the semi shade they came with
Speaker 4: that as well as you know, back in the twenties,
Speaker 4: people ran, you know, they did a lot of fire.
Speaker 4: You know, they're out there cutting down trees, and we
Speaker 4: had this like dappled shade condition that was really great
Speaker 4: for white oak. So I would say we're probably you know,
Speaker 4: the amount of white oak that we had today is
Speaker 4: probably a little bit extra than we would expect. But
Speaker 4: the decline that we're seeing is not a result of
Speaker 4: you know, there was just too much. It's the management
Speaker 4: has changed and we're not managing it correctly to get
Speaker 4: that white oak back.
Speaker 1: So it's a totally an emergent phenomenon, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like it was came from things that were not necessarily intentional.
Speaker 1: But in a way, we owe this abundance to the
Speaker 1: Great Depression.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then we also have to look back, even
Speaker 4: you know, farther back, because you know, this continent has
Speaker 4: been peopled for a couple of you know, thousands of
Speaker 4: thousands of years, and so those peoples managed this landscape
Speaker 4: for a really long time, using fire and harvesting timber
Speaker 4: and deer and all kinds of stuff, and they helped
Speaker 4: you know, they liked white oak because white oak has
Speaker 4: a tasty acorn if you like to eat acorns. I'm
Speaker 4: not a huge fan of it. I think it's kind
Speaker 4: of a cultural thing, but you know, the people who
Speaker 4: lived here before Europeans liked white oak, and they managed
Speaker 4: landscapes for white oak and those the trees and the
Speaker 4: white oak family, and so they helped shape the landscape
Speaker 4: and the trees for white, you know, to be more
Speaker 4: white oak friendly.
Speaker 2: So this is something I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 2: because this is something I learned from buying that house
Speaker 2: in Connecticut, which is a lot of those sort of
Speaker 2: Eastern states used to look very park like because Native Americans.
Speaker 2: I see you shaking your head, but you know, like
Speaker 2: more park like than they look now because Native Americans
Speaker 2: would burn some of the scrub and brush in order
Speaker 2: to manage the land. Talk to us about a little
Speaker 2: bit more about that component of it, like what does
Speaker 2: fire actually mean to the white oak and why has
Speaker 2: that process changed since the Great Depression.
Speaker 4: So you know a lot of people think trees, trees
Speaker 4: don't like fire. Actually it's not true. Some trees really
Speaker 4: love fire. So white oak is kind of it's not
Speaker 4: fire dependent, which is when a tree only regenerates after
Speaker 4: a fire, but it likes fire. So what white oak
Speaker 4: does is it when it grows, it starts putting nutrients
Speaker 4: down into the root system and then it grows up.
Speaker 4: A lot of other trees will just go straight up
Speaker 4: because you know, when you're a tree, you need sunlight
Speaker 4: and so to get someone you got to go up.
Speaker 4: But white oak goes down and then it goes up.
Speaker 4: So if you get a couple of fires in there,
Speaker 4: that kills out trees that can't take fire. So you
Speaker 4: your maples don't like fire, you know, kind of your
Speaker 4: ash and that kind of stuff don't like fire.
Speaker 3: So you get a couple of burns through and then
Speaker 3: the white oak comes up.
Speaker 4: Wayook is pretty fire resistant when it gets to you know,
Speaker 4: a smaller you know, a smaller size, so after it
Speaker 4: gets top kilt, it's probably gonna survive most surface fires.
Speaker 4: And then you get these beautiful white oaks stands. We
Speaker 4: you know, recently in management have suppressed fire because we're
Speaker 4: like fire bed don't like fire.
Speaker 3: In the southeast, they never really stopped burning. They had
Speaker 3: a culture of burning.
Speaker 4: But here in the Northeast it's very difficult to get
Speaker 4: prescribed fire on the ground, which makes white oak regeneration
Speaker 4: very difficult. But there are other things that are probably
Speaker 4: there are other problems. It's not just a lack of
Speaker 4: fire in the landscape. You know, this is this is
Speaker 4: one of those you know, all unhappy families are different
Speaker 4: in their own way, and all happy families are the same.
Speaker 1: So this kind of leads to my next question. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to pick up on something that Tracy already
Speaker 1: asked about, but further to like the current economics of
Speaker 1: this acreage, like who owns this acreage? And for them,
Speaker 1: I have to imagine like the Bourbon or the Cooper
Speaker 1: the Cooper market and leading into the Bourbon market. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming it's not a massive slice of like their own economics.
Speaker 1: And so can you talk a little bit about like
Speaker 1: who are these companies that sort of like own a
Speaker 1: lot of this acreage and what are they what are
Speaker 1: most of them optimizing for because I assume it's not
Speaker 1: optimizing for the Bourbon market specifically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so most of the land in the East United
Speaker 4: States is owned up by companies, but private landowners. Ok
Speaker 4: so like the three of us we represent, like in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 4: that's seventy percent of landownership. Interesting, is just like random
Speaker 4: people in their backyards. Which is why you know, doing
Speaker 4: you know, very good force management is difficult. It takes
Speaker 4: money upfront and then you're not going to see financial
Speaker 4: return for one hundred years. So the odds is like
Speaker 4: that's the really fun thing when you do for us.
Speaker 4: She's like, I'll never see this stand again. I'm I'm
Speaker 4: doing this not for me, not for the person after me,
Speaker 4: but three people after me.
Speaker 1: This is kind of like I think, why endowments, like
Speaker 1: don't they like trees, like like the Yale Endowment, because
Speaker 1: like these are like assets that are really like not
Speaker 1: on typical market cycles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there there are some large you know, timber investment
Speaker 4: companies and real estate investment companies. Teamos in Ritail owned
Speaker 4: forest land, but the East Coast has been you know,
Speaker 4: people buy Europeans for a long time, so it's difficult
Speaker 4: to get that land. You know, there's there's not a
Speaker 4: lot of it out there that large companies can buy up.
Speaker 4: And when you get into the Southeast they buy main
Speaker 4: there's a lot of like softwood, So southern yellow pine
Speaker 4: is the biggest agricultural export of the Southeast, and they
Speaker 4: grew a lot of pine down there. It's that's very
Speaker 4: easy to manage. White oak is difficult to manage. You
Speaker 4: have to put a lot of time, thought and effort
Speaker 4: and money into it and then you see the return
Speaker 4: way down the line. So the economics from the system
Speaker 4: that we have don't make a lot of sense. Because
Speaker 4: if you go out and you do you know, invasive
Speaker 4: species management, which you have to do regenerate. It costs
Speaker 4: you eighty dollars an acre today and then you don't
Speaker 4: get to recruit that value financially for one hundred years.
Speaker 4: You might get to recruit it and that you're harvesting
Speaker 4: deer or you're out there walking your dog or you know,
Speaker 4: you and your family are having a good time on
Speaker 4: the landscape, but there's not really a financial value for that,
Speaker 4: whereas like doing the management costs money today.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So just on this note, I mean, you walked us
Speaker 2: through how the economics don't really work. But I have
Speaker 2: to imagine the people that have the biggest stakeholders in
Speaker 2: growing white oaks should be the bourbon makers. Are bourbon
Speaker 2: makers able to do anything about this? Can they plant
Speaker 2: their own forest for instance?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the bourbon makers are definitely, they definitely take
Speaker 4: a note of this. There's a thing called the White
Speaker 4: Oak Initiative, which is a partnership of the Forest Service,
Speaker 4: you know, various state governments. They own land and the
Speaker 4: bourbon makers coop bridges and they're helping to you know,
Speaker 4: try to raise the profile of this issue and you know,
Speaker 4: teach people how to manage their land correctly. And you know,
Speaker 4: four oak species, so they're taking steps. They also fund
Speaker 4: a lot of research, and they're funding nurseries, and they're
Speaker 4: funding efforts to plant white oak out in the landscape.
Speaker 4: The problem is, you can't really plant white oak, you know,
Speaker 4: just in straight lines like it's corn or southern yellow pine.
Speaker 4: Because when you make a barrel, you need nice tight
Speaker 4: grains and you need to need competition. And when you, you know,
Speaker 4: do a plantation, you don't really get that and they
Speaker 4: don't like plantations. So you can put them out there,
Speaker 4: you can plant them in lines, and you're not really
Speaker 4: going to make barrels out of that.
Speaker 3: You need the natural region. You need a good well
Speaker 3: managed for it.
Speaker 1: So can you explain what do you mean by competition
Speaker 1: in this context? How does that work? And how does
Speaker 1: that natural form of competition create better wood?
Speaker 4: So when trees grow, I'm actually teaching my students listen
Speaker 4: this lesson, Like, surely, so you have some competition for sunlight.
Speaker 4: You know, trees need three main resources. They need sunlight,
Speaker 4: they need water, they need space, and they need nutrients.
Speaker 4: The neutral is really a problem. So they need the
Speaker 4: competition for sunlight. If you know, a tree gets all
Speaker 4: the sunlight it ever wants. You have these really wide
Speaker 4: growth rings. Actually have a tree cookie here, So you
Speaker 4: have this these other growth rings.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this on the audio, you got
Speaker 1: to watch the video because Keldon has propped this is awesome.
Speaker 4: Well again, my students are going to see this in
Speaker 4: an hour. So if my students are listening to this,
Speaker 4: you already learned this lesson. But so you have these
Speaker 4: growth rings here, which is how much this tree grows
Speaker 4: every year.
Speaker 3: When they're very big.
Speaker 4: That's really good for liquid moving through it, which if
Speaker 4: you are trying to hold a product for a long
Speaker 4: time in a barrel, is bad. So you need trees
Speaker 4: that are kind of stressed and they're really having to compete,
Speaker 4: and so the growth is it's good, but it's not huge.
Speaker 4: This is the opposite of like if we're growing like
Speaker 4: two by fours. When we're growing two by fourth, we
Speaker 4: want big growth because then you can make a lot
Speaker 4: of two by fours really fast.
Speaker 2: So you need the sort of the dappled sunlight with
Speaker 2: some shade, basically a forest environment with lots of trees
Speaker 2: crowding in that makes them compete to grow up towards
Speaker 2: the sunlight. To what degree can you I guess you know,
Speaker 2: replicate that environment. Like how easy would it be to
Speaker 2: start a commercial white oak farm and just create your
Speaker 2: own little natural hundred years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, to wait for getting your financially.
Speaker 2: I get the timeline is an issue. But you know,
Speaker 2: if you're really motivated to solve, to try to start
Speaker 2: solving this program this problem, now, how difficult would it be.
Speaker 4: It's not impossible, it is difficult. You do have to
Speaker 4: have you know, what's why forestree is a profession. You've
Speaker 4: got to have folks who know how to manage these
Speaker 4: trees to encourage growth. This is a solvable problem. It
Speaker 4: just takes you know, time, thought, effort, and money. So
Speaker 4: you have to be you have to know that you
Speaker 4: have the correct you know, physical ground. Your soil and
Speaker 4: nutrients have to be right. So you have to have
Speaker 4: the right ground, and then you have to have the
Speaker 4: right trees on site. Already, if you don't have white
Speaker 4: oak one, you're probably never going to grow white oak.
Speaker 4: You can plant it in, but dear love white oak,
Speaker 4: so those just comes your and buzz down anything you plant.
Speaker 4: So you have to have it on site you can
Speaker 4: manage it correctly. We were just out the other day
Speaker 4: in class in a white oak stand, and there we
Speaker 4: could easily manage that forest for white oak in stands
Speaker 4: that aren't that like perfect. So you can do white
Speaker 4: oak regeneration very well in Kentucky and Missouri and the Ozarks.
Speaker 4: But then as you expand out, you run into invasive
Speaker 4: species that require management. And again we can control those species,
Speaker 4: you know, through the application of herbicides or prescribe fire.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes goats work for some species. So if
Speaker 4: you can control those species, you do management with deer
Speaker 4: sometimes we have to fence forces now to keep deer
Speaker 4: out the way. The trees can grow high enough that
Speaker 4: deer aren't a problem. So you keep the deer out,
Speaker 4: you can get white oak back. It just takes you know, effort.
Speaker 4: There's been a lot of changes to the forest.
Speaker 1: I'm really fascinated by this point that this idea of
Speaker 1: like the best type of trees for say, lumber for housing,
Speaker 1: which seems like it's probably you know not seems like
Speaker 1: a much bigger industry than barrels, is very different than
Speaker 1: the optimal trees for barrel So how much does this
Speaker 1: inherent like economic tension create stress in terms of like
Speaker 1: the planning that you needed in terms of like I
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like the housing is a bigger
Speaker 1: market and that's where people are going to like sort
Speaker 1: of like think about their forestry efforts.
Speaker 3: I mean it does to some extent.
Speaker 4: So so Pennsylvania we call ourselves the you know, we're
Speaker 4: the largest export of hardwood in the nation, the high
Speaker 4: value hardwood. Then if you go down to like Georgia,
Speaker 4: they export a lot of really high value pine. The
Speaker 4: pine species they have down here don't grow in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 4: So we don't have that competition for space because you
Speaker 4: just can't grow them. If you put them in the
Speaker 4: ground today, they'll be dead in a couple of years.
Speaker 3: They don't make it through the winds there. They don't
Speaker 3: like our soil types.
Speaker 4: So you know, there's a little bit of competition when
Speaker 4: it comes to species.
Speaker 3: But you know, you're working with nature.
Speaker 4: So you you could you could try to fight nature,
Speaker 4: but you usually lose, So there's not a ton of competition.
Speaker 4: The problem is there's also a lack of low quality
Speaker 4: wood markets. Now we used to make a lot of
Speaker 4: paper in the US out of American fiber. Now it's
Speaker 4: mostly eucalyptus and bamboo. The Eucalyptus comes from South America.
Speaker 4: So the really great thing about American you know, use
Speaker 4: having the low quality market here is the trees and
Speaker 4: stuff you can't use to make you know, high quality
Speaker 4: products like barrels or shells or boards of that kind
Speaker 4: of stuff that's still you know, the wood you can't
Speaker 4: use that still costs money to fell and to handle.
Speaker 4: There's still risk in cutting the tree down, not like
Speaker 4: financial risk, but like it is a it is a
Speaker 4: you know, several ton tree coming down. People die. So
Speaker 4: you know, you don't want to cut down things you
Speaker 4: don't have to. You know, people don't want to cut
Speaker 4: down things that are risky. So but with the so
Speaker 4: we used to be able to sell those trees, and
Speaker 4: now it's very difficult to sell low, low grade wood
Speaker 4: because it there's no market for it. And that makes
Speaker 4: you know, management for things that don't make you money hard.
Speaker 4: And so's there's a big pressure for the high value
Speaker 4: trees leaving the low value trees behind. But when you
Speaker 4: leave the low value trees behind, there's no second harvest.
Speaker 4: You know, you can't come back, there's nothing to cut
Speaker 4: right from an economic.
Speaker 2: Perspective, So two semi apocalyptic questions. But one, what are
Speaker 2: the chances that in maybe not one hundred years, but
Speaker 2: maybe two hundred years, maybe we just don't have enough
Speaker 2: white oaks to create bourbon barrels. And then secondly, what
Speaker 2: would the bourbon industry do without those white oak barrels?
Speaker 2: Are there synthetic alternatives or is it just not possible
Speaker 2: to replicate the bourbon ball.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'll take the second one first because it's
Speaker 4: easier to answer. There's no legally, there's no replacement. Huh,
Speaker 4: there's no replacement. It has to be white oak, has
Speaker 4: to be queckers outba. You could try to replace it
Speaker 4: with French yoke or with Hungarian oak. You have to
Speaker 4: import those from Europe, and you have similar you know,
Speaker 4: kind of issues over there. I'm not you know, I'm
Speaker 4: a forester who works in Pennsylvania and the mid Atlantic
Speaker 4: slash Northeast, so I couldn't really speak to all the
Speaker 4: stuff that goes on in Europe. I assume they're having
Speaker 4: similar issues. So there's not a replacement. Now, going to
Speaker 4: the the you know, what does the future look like?
Speaker 3: This is kind of my element.
Speaker 4: I do climate change, invasive species and forest health stuff.
Speaker 4: So the future is not great unless we take action today.
Speaker 4: You know, looking you know, using what we have on
Speaker 4: the ground today, you're looking at seventy percent decline if
Speaker 4: we don't take action today.
Speaker 3: But we can take action today and we can get that.
Speaker 4: You know, we'll see some decline because that is probably
Speaker 4: over overrepresent a landscape. But if we take action and
Speaker 4: we start doing good management, we can get those numbers up.
Speaker 3: We can see white oak regeneration get up.
Speaker 4: It just takes you know, getting out there and cutting trees, burning,
Speaker 4: you know, burning the forest, fencing, deer killing and vasive species.
Speaker 3: Just takes action. That's and that's where things get fun.
Speaker 1: If there's no action, how soon of a timeline are
Speaker 1: we talking about in which it would be not apocalypse,
Speaker 1: not the end of the industry, not the end of
Speaker 1: legal bourbon as we know it, But what is the
Speaker 1: point at which the bourbon makers would start to seriously
Speaker 1: sort of get stressed on their own supply chains and
Speaker 1: start to run into hard physical constraints about how much
Speaker 1: bourbon they can make any year?
Speaker 2: Can I tack on a question to that, which is
Speaker 2: how long does a bourbon barrel made of white oak
Speaker 2: actually last? Like how often can you reuse it.
Speaker 4: So if you look at the data, we're good until
Speaker 4: for the next like twenty to thirty years, we get
Speaker 4: plenty of white oak up until that's sixty age. You
Speaker 4: know that sixty year old tree, and you cut them
Speaker 4: at about one hundred and twenty years. They can live longer,
Speaker 4: but they don't really they start to decline.
Speaker 1: We are starting in the arm curves on this one.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really happy that we're amplifying this.
Speaker 2: In one hundred years, people are going to look back
Speaker 2: on this episode and say all thoughts warned us.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 4: Well, when we talk about like white oak decline, like
Speaker 4: one of the main points is nobody knows about this stuff.
Speaker 4: You know. The only people who know about this stuff
Speaker 4: like you know our foresters, and foresters famously don't like
Speaker 4: to talk to other people. The fun joke that we
Speaker 4: have in forestry is the social forester looks at the
Speaker 4: other guy's boots. So that's that's one of the issues.
Speaker 4: But now, Tracy to your question, how long can you
Speaker 4: reuse that barrel?
Speaker 3: A long time?
Speaker 4: You can use it for a long time, so after
Speaker 4: it gets used in bourbon, you can use it once
Speaker 4: to make bourbon, but you can use it to make
Speaker 4: you know, ales and beers. You can use it to
Speaker 4: make whiskey. They sell them to Ireland. I went to
Speaker 4: I was in Ireland this summer on vacation and we
Speaker 4: saw some Irish distilleries that had you know, white oak barrels.
Speaker 3: Is really fun.
Speaker 4: I have this one fun party trick or I just
Speaker 4: identify pieces of wood around the room and.
Speaker 3: I was like, hey, I know that tree. They're like
Speaker 3: what tree? Oh the wood in the barrel? I know
Speaker 3: that one.
Speaker 4: I actually grow those. So you know this is this
Speaker 4: is not going to impact just bourbon. It's going to
Speaker 4: impact a larger range of alcohol products. And then you
Speaker 4: can also use them in your home for decoration. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of bars have bourbon barrels. I'd say, you know,
Speaker 4: the shelf life of a bourbon barrel is before you
Speaker 4: throw it out, it's probably like fifty years.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: They don't really rot and they're very dry, so it lasts,
Speaker 4: it lasts until you throw it out.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 4: It's a great This is the other really fun thing
Speaker 4: about trees. I'm sorry, I just ran you over. Like
Speaker 4: trees are a great carbon storage or great carbon sink.
Speaker 4: So we like to just like, yeah, wood products. I
Speaker 4: drink bourbon because it's a wood product, and you know
Speaker 4: that barrel after you're done with it, that's carbon stored
Speaker 4: out of the atmosphere, physical form.
Speaker 3: You get to put your beer on it afterwards.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the lesson is treasure your oak barrels and
Speaker 2: your wide oaks as well. So I just want to
Speaker 2: go back to what when we were talking about the
Speaker 2: economics of white oak ownership, and you're saying we need
Speaker 2: more active land management, better land management, in order to
Speaker 2: grow more of these trees. But how do you actually
Speaker 2: do that given that a lot of the tree owners
Speaker 2: are going to be you know, individuals who maybe have
Speaker 2: like a grove on some of their acreage.
Speaker 4: So you know, there is some you know, people who
Speaker 4: are looking like, all right, I'm going to model this forward.
Speaker 4: It makes sense for me. I am bought into conservation.
Speaker 4: I like having, you know, oaks, not just for you know,
Speaker 4: the financial value, but they're really important from a habitat perspective.
Speaker 4: I got a bear back here. Bears love white oaks.
Speaker 4: That's just a little fun hat. So so there's some
Speaker 4: people who modeled ford like it's worth it for me
Speaker 4: to pay this, But there's also programs out there. So CRP,
Speaker 4: the Conservation Reserve Program does fund some force conservation practices.
Speaker 4: The Inflation Reduction Bill, the IRA has money in it
Speaker 4: now that is kind of help fund some more of
Speaker 4: these forest practices because you know, good forestry is not
Speaker 4: just good for the woods, it's good for the climate,
Speaker 4: it's good for society. So people are taking notice of
Speaker 4: this and like, oh, we should, we should help fund this.
Speaker 4: There are programs out there. There's a lot of programs
Speaker 4: like extension programs at local universities or at land grant
Speaker 4: universities that help like teach people how to do forestry
Speaker 4: and will help you know, I do. Sorry, this is
Speaker 4: a shameless plug for extension because it's what I do.
Speaker 4: But like, we go out, we give talks, we talk
Speaker 4: to people, we cruise land, and we tell me here's
Speaker 4: you know, how you can do stuff. You know, here's
Speaker 4: things that you could do in the future. So there's
Speaker 4: a lot of you know, help out there. You just
Speaker 4: got to find it. And honestly, to be very honest,
Speaker 4: we need to do a lot. We need to help
Speaker 4: people a lot more because it's it's very expensive to
Speaker 4: do this stuff in the short term.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's sort of what I was going to ask next,
Speaker 1: which is that, like I don't know if it's whether
Speaker 1: it's government, the private sector, some combination of both, or
Speaker 1: educational institutions. But in your view, because it's a it's
Speaker 1: a coordination problem in part, and I have to imagine
Speaker 1: there are all you know, again, if there may be were
Speaker 1: just a few really big landowners, then they could all
Speaker 1: get together and say we're going to do X. But
Speaker 1: obviously there aren't, so you have to coordinate between you know,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands or hundreds of thousands of small individuals.
Speaker 1: Who is best suited to sort of make that coordination?
Speaker 1: And then the economics the part about sort of like
Speaker 1: changing the economic calculus so that the forest management there's
Speaker 1: a reason for uh, someone to do it, Like who
Speaker 1: is in best who is in the best position to
Speaker 1: sort of like make those economics work. Where would we
Speaker 1: have to see leadership specifically?
Speaker 4: Well, again, I'm gonna do the shameless plug. This is
Speaker 4: where foresters come in. We're really good at helping people
Speaker 4: figure out how to manage their land for the future.
Speaker 4: And every piece of land is a little bit different
Speaker 4: from the next. You know, somewhere might have an evasive
Speaker 4: species problem and somewhere else is it to your problem,
Speaker 4: And it's very difficult to manage it on a state
Speaker 4: wide level. You have to manage it on a you know,
Speaker 4: almost tree to tree stand level. So stand is just
Speaker 4: a piece of land. It's a good tike you's piece
Speaker 4: of forest, So you have to manage that on a
Speaker 4: forest level, not like you can't. Like there's not like
Speaker 4: one answer, So it really comes down to conversations with
Speaker 4: landowners and just landowners, you know, funding good forestry and
Speaker 4: helping foresters get out there and do good management, and
Speaker 4: helping landowners do good management. So that's you know, one
Speaker 4: thing that we can do. There are states do have
Speaker 4: foresters that help private landowners do good forestry, and all
Speaker 4: of states are called service forces. Those people are great,
Speaker 4: they do good work, so you know, having resources like
Speaker 4: that available is extraordinarily helpful. And then states do own,
Speaker 4: like all these eastern states own a good chunk of
Speaker 4: private lands, so they don't it's not private land, it's
Speaker 4: private land, so they own a good chunk of land,
Speaker 4: so you know, making sure that they are you know,
Speaker 4: valuing that forest and not forcing it to fund itself.
Speaker 4: And like, all right, this is a service that is
Speaker 4: provided to the people of the state and the nation,
Speaker 4: So like you don't have you're not out there on
Speaker 4: a limb trying to make it work like funded through
Speaker 4: you know, budgetary stuff.
Speaker 1: Are there any legal changes that would be helpful or
Speaker 1: necessary when you think about like whether it's hunting invasive species,
Speaker 1: whether it's more burns, which I have to imagine contained
Speaker 1: some risk. I would assume even if you're like, even
Speaker 1: if it's good for the forest ecosystem, are there any
Speaker 1: situations in which existing law has moved in such a
Speaker 1: direction that is unhelpful for the type of forest management
Speaker 1: that the bourbon industry needs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean deer populations are super high. Bringing those
Speaker 4: down because that's managed to the state level by state
Speaker 4: game agencies, would be very helpful for a lot of forests.
Speaker 4: You know, taking biosecurity seriously and reducing the importation of
Speaker 4: invasive species would be great. There's a lot of invasives
Speaker 4: that you can buy at big box stores, and like
Speaker 4: we could just ban the sale of those. That be
Speaker 4: a great start. Japanese bar very just got banned in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: It's like we've known this as an invasive species for decades.
Speaker 4: Why did it take it, you know, so long to
Speaker 4: get this band. So, you know, focusing on protecting what
Speaker 4: we have would be really great.
Speaker 3: I think that that would be super help.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, and as far as prescribe fire, there's
Speaker 4: a lot you know, in some of the southern states,
Speaker 4: the legislation is a lot more friendly to prescribe fire,
Speaker 4: but you know, in other places, there's a really high
Speaker 4: legislative burden on people who want to do prescribe fire,
Speaker 4: Like you have to have super high insurance, which just
Speaker 4: makes it impossible to do.
Speaker 2: I'm not necessarily advocating this approach, but but one one method, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I really don't.
Speaker 3: But what take it? We'll take the thoughts.
Speaker 2: One method of conservation has to do with attaching you know,
Speaker 2: an economic value, a concrete immediate economic value to something
Speaker 2: that you know, maybe is in the existing system, is
Speaker 2: hard to attach an economic value to because it's only
Speaker 2: going to mature in one hundred years or whatever. Is
Speaker 2: that a possibility here? Could you have some sort of
Speaker 2: subsidy or incentive structure for people to grow and keep
Speaker 2: those white oaks?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's CRP does that already?
Speaker 4: We just don't say like this is white oak habitat conservation.
Speaker 4: You know, it's just funded through you know, forestry practices.
Speaker 4: So we have something like this with pollinator habitat. You know,
Speaker 4: you're out there counting the number of like bees and
Speaker 4: butterflies and other critters that use that pollinator habitat. But
Speaker 4: you can get money from the NRCS, which is the
Speaker 4: natural sorry, National Natural Conservation of Resources. Oh, I forget
Speaker 4: the S service to like you know, plant pollen or
Speaker 4: habitat on you know, farmland. That's not great. So we
Speaker 4: could just extend that farther into forest and make sure
Speaker 4: that program is funded all the way because right now
Speaker 4: it is mainly targeted at farmers. Farmers do own forest land,
Speaker 4: but like you know, also putting an equal emphasis on
Speaker 4: forest ownership would be super helpful, super helpful.
Speaker 1: How much again, you know, going back to the sort
Speaker 1: of the actual bourbon makers, like how much are they
Speaker 1: currently I mean, I assume like they're pretty aware. Are
Speaker 1: theos are thinking about their future? But like how much
Speaker 1: are they currently active in sort of themselves taking on leadership,
Speaker 1: whether it's fronting money, whether it's education, whether it's working
Speaker 1: with educational institutions or public institutions, Like what are they
Speaker 1: doing right now? I don't know who are the big
Speaker 1: like Brown Foreman, so.
Speaker 3: You have like, yeah, yeah, been I think it's Brown Foreman.
Speaker 4: That's one of they going are Yeah they they have,
Speaker 4: you know, seen that there's a there's a problem coming
Speaker 4: for him, because you know, when you're aging a product
Speaker 4: for ten years, you've got to look in the future.
Speaker 4: So they see, they see the issue, and so they're
Speaker 4: really starting they're really funding a lot of research into
Speaker 4: solving these these problems. They've really stepped up to fund
Speaker 4: the White Oak Initiative. We had a National Forcers conference
Speaker 4: in Louisville a couple of years ago, and they were
Speaker 4: the you know, high sponsors. So they're they're and the
Speaker 4: they're putting money where their where their mouth is because
Speaker 4: this is the business, after all, you know good Where
Speaker 4: white out goes, so goes the bourbon industry. So I
Speaker 4: would say they're doing a lot, so I could you
Speaker 4: could always ask for more money, but you they're doing
Speaker 4: as much as that you really can expect.
Speaker 1: I have to imagine that if any industry is going
Speaker 1: to generally take like a long term approach, it's probably
Speaker 1: like there's always been part of people that age for
Speaker 1: a decade, like if the you know, we want companies
Speaker 1: that think long term, like probably like any company that
Speaker 1: has an aging process probably like has that. They're like
Speaker 1: DNA to some extent.
Speaker 2: Well, this was going to be my next and probably
Speaker 2: last question, which is as a forester, you know someone
Speaker 2: who cares about the forest, who thinks about this on
Speaker 2: a day to day basis, and who thinks on those
Speaker 2: really long timelines of you know, what is this land
Speaker 2: going to look like in one hundred years? What advice
Speaker 2: do you have for getting people to care about these
Speaker 2: longer term outcomes?
Speaker 3: This is a super fun question.
Speaker 4: Just go ahead and learn about your local lands cape
Speaker 4: and what's in there. Once you I find with a
Speaker 4: lot of people like once you learn about plants and
Speaker 4: birds and stuff like that, it's kind of an addiction.
Speaker 4: It's like once you start identifying trees on your landscape
Speaker 4: and you just on your block, you start to care
Speaker 4: more about them. Tracy, we were talking before about your
Speaker 4: silver maple. So it's like, Okay, I know about this tree.
Speaker 4: Oh now I care about this tree and that tree,
Speaker 4: and you start to see, you know, the forest for
Speaker 4: the trees to steal the old expression, and you could
Speaker 4: do the same thing with bird habitat. We haven't even
Speaker 4: talked about the wildlife importance of white oak. There's everything
Speaker 4: in the forest eats white oak, you know, from bears
Speaker 4: to chipmunks to you know, warblers. Everybody loves it. So,
Speaker 4: you know, conserving these species, you know, the oak species
Speaker 4: conserves a really wide range of other wildlife species. So
Speaker 4: there's you know, if you like birds, you like oaks.
Speaker 4: If you like deer, you like oak. If you like
Speaker 4: salamander's you like oak. So once you get into the
Speaker 4: natural world, it's very easy to see that, ah, this
Speaker 4: is this is important.
Speaker 3: This white oak here, this is kind of key for
Speaker 3: my little piece of it.
Speaker 1: Any you know, are there any other things that like
Speaker 1: we should be thinking about or like aspects of this.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like a fascinating question, fascinating conversation.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: One thing that I've actually also I just want to
Speaker 1: say I really enjoy about this is that while there's
Speaker 1: clearly like this challenge coming, I appreciate like you seem
Speaker 1: optimistic that this is a solvable problem, Like this is
Speaker 1: not like you know, someone particularly doomor about it, that
Speaker 1: this is like this inevitable crisis that's going to happen
Speaker 1: the way that sometimes you have certain like acute specific
Speaker 1: uh you know, slow moving environmental stresses.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the force are incredibly resilient. They've come
Speaker 4: back from a lot, so I really believe in them.
Speaker 4: And then the other thing is I do this every day.
Speaker 4: Every day I think about trees. So if I was
Speaker 4: really doomor about it, it'd be a tough life. I've
Speaker 4: inherently an optimist despite the things that I work on.
Speaker 4: I think that we can really solve some of these problems.
Speaker 4: That every problem can be solved, or we can solve.
Speaker 4: You know, at least white Oak is solvable. This is
Speaker 4: at least something we could do about.
Speaker 1: And the other any you know actually uh past periods
Speaker 1: you mentioned the resilience where we can look up.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about the sheep bubble in Connecticut in
Speaker 2: New England and how that led to a massive nooning
Speaker 2: of the forest and since then they've actually built back
Speaker 2: the forest quite well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there was there's just a ton of sheep,
Speaker 4: and sheep riped stuff up. They don't just cut the
Speaker 4: top off like a deer doe, they'll actually rip it
Speaker 4: out and ripped it all out, no more, no more food.
Speaker 4: Sheep had to go west. So you see a lot
Speaker 4: of sheep out west. So then the forestly came back.
Speaker 4: Another fun one is the Civil War, so Maine has
Speaker 4: on the flag, you have a sailor and a farmer.
Speaker 4: We think of Maine today as mainly forested. Well after
Speaker 4: the Civil War, like Maine had the largest number of injured,
Speaker 4: like people missing limbs, and so they couldn't go out
Speaker 4: and log, and then the forest just pop right back up,
Speaker 4: you know, Maine us you used to they used to
Speaker 4: say you could drive a wagon from bangor Oh down
Speaker 4: to you know, like can without needing to be on
Speaker 4: a road. But if you look, if you go drive
Speaker 4: around main today, it's very well forced. These places can
Speaker 4: come back, you know. I've seen some really you know,
Speaker 4: degraded habitat and if you do management, they respond well.
Speaker 4: The native plants are there. They're very good at living
Speaker 4: and growing if you give them a chance. There are
Speaker 4: some species that are really imperiled, like ash and hemlock,
Speaker 4: but oak is not one of those.
Speaker 3: Luckily.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great place to leave it. It's
Speaker 1: like very exciting and very like optimistic we've solved these
Speaker 1: problems in the past. I didn't know there was a
Speaker 1: sheep Did you know that? Was that just something you
Speaker 1: knew about or did you like that?
Speaker 2: No, that's something I knew about. So to Calvin's point
Speaker 2: about once you start learning about these things, you just
Speaker 2: go down this slie this hole. But yeah, I started
Speaker 2: because I bought that land in Connecticut three acres. I
Speaker 2: started getting really into this, so I know all about
Speaker 2: like King's planks and houses and the big trees, and
Speaker 2: how blue jays are responsible for the distribution of a
Speaker 2: lot of oaks in North America, and also about the
Speaker 2: Great sheep Bubble of the eighteen hundreds and how that
Speaker 2: led to mass deforestation that we actually fixed.
Speaker 1: We need to do a sheep bubble episode.
Speaker 2: I'd be into that.
Speaker 3: I'm not the sheepga. I'm gonna you gotta find somebody else.
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people in eggs, so all.
Speaker 1: Right, well you can help with me the Kelvin Norman.
Speaker 1: This was such a fun episode. I learned so many
Speaker 1: facts that I'm going to be that person in the
Speaker 1: corner of the meme is like they don't know and
Speaker 1: the like you need you need.
Speaker 2: To get to the level where you can start pointing
Speaker 2: at wood and being like, oh, yeah, no, I want
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 1: To a black This is so cool. Calvin, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on Outlaws.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no problem, Thanks for having me. And what's you know, Tracy,
Speaker 4: to your point, what's you kind of get into this?
Speaker 4: You really send the roots out and really you really
Speaker 4: dig into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Cynthia, thank you so much. That was great.
Speaker 1: It was fun. Calvin, thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Tracy.
Speaker 1: I love that episode, And now, like I absolutely could
Speaker 1: see how one could get really obsessed with learning about trees.
Speaker 1: And now you know, I'm sorry jealous of your like
Speaker 1: multi acres. I already was, but no more jealous.
Speaker 2: You have to come and see the trees. I bought
Speaker 2: a label maker so that I can. Some of the
Speaker 2: trees are already labeled, but I'm actually busy labeling the
Speaker 2: rest of them.
Speaker 1: There were so many things I liked about that episode.
Speaker 1: But I did really like the fact that, like, this
Speaker 1: is a problem that's coming, but the possibility that this
Speaker 1: is also a solvable problem.
Speaker 2: It's nice to have a sort of environmental climate change
Speaker 2: related supply chain episode that doesn't end with, well, this
Speaker 2: problem is unfixable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we talked about some of these things like,
Speaker 1: oh this is bleak, but this is tough. But you know,
Speaker 1: and there's some interesting economics, the fact that it's really
Speaker 1: long term, the coordination of all these like sort of
Speaker 1: like small scale non commercial holders of the acreage, the
Speaker 1: tension between the type of trees that grow best, sort
Speaker 1: of like perfect rows for houses versus what the coopers
Speaker 1: need for the barrels. Like so many sort of like
Speaker 1: economic things I would not have really thought about at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think, And again I don't want to
Speaker 2: necessarily end this on a downnoe, but it does seem
Speaker 2: like the ownership structure is kind of the challenge here
Speaker 2: because you don't necessarily have all these big commercial forest growers.
Speaker 2: Instead you have small scale farmers, individual owners, and you
Speaker 2: kind of have to talk to them educate them about
Speaker 2: how to grow these trees.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, anyway, that was great and maybe I'll maybe
Speaker 1: I'll become a tree person.
Speaker 2: You should. Actually, I was going to recommend a really
Speaker 2: good book.
Speaker 1: Tell me.
Speaker 2: It's Tom Wessel's reading The Forested Landscape. Okay, and it's
Speaker 2: amazing because it has pictures of forest landscapes and It
Speaker 2: kind of tells you all the things to look at
Speaker 2: to study the forest's history and learn about it. So
Speaker 2: you can look at a forest and you can figure out, like,
Speaker 2: where did the big storms come from, how did this
Speaker 2: forest actually grow? What kind of a forest is it?
Speaker 2: It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Have to check it out.
Speaker 2: Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there?
Speaker 2: All right? This has been another episode of the Odd
Speaker 2: Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on
Speaker 2: Twitter at Tracy Alloway.
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