Jones Dairy Farm

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#25 Jones Dairy Farm

In August of 2016, The President of Jones Dairy Farm contacted me and asked me to visit with him about the possibility of turning "some" bowls from one of the iconic Maple trees shown on their "Farmhouse" logo. He wanted somewhere between 50 and 100 bowls from the massive sugar maple and some other furniture items. He took us over to the farmyard, where the tree had been dumped. I couldn't believe one tree could generate that much wood. We agreed that I would do it, and what has followed has been the equivalent of a Masters degree in how different one tree can be, just within the confines of itself. The rules for drying, milling and working wood went out the window when the three trucks showed up at my shop with the wood that I had selected to be turned into bowls. The rest went directly to the sawmill to be sawed into slabs for conversion to furniture. The family had celebrated under this tree for over 100 years, and for the last 35 or 40, had done everything possible to hold the tree together. Parts were dead, and the life support system they devised was everything from braided cable to threaded rod, brass pipe and whatever else they could devise . . . needless to say, my chainsaw has gone beyond the call of duty to do what needed to be done on this one.