*
>> It was 22 below zero
this morning.
I'm not sure what it is now,
with the they said it's supposed
to be 30 below.
The main thing that effects me
is equipment, equipment not
working, when it's that cold.
[chain saw growling]
My great, great-grandfather
was logging and their family
was logging before that.
A long time.
Most of my family was from
Lee and Wolf County, Kentucky.
Then they moved up to
Crandon.
The mill had bought land in
Northern Michigan.
That's how they ended up
up here logging.
[harnesses clink]
Move over, boy.
I log with horses.
I'm the fifth generation in my
family to do it.
I've been doing it full-time for
about eight years.
I love working with animals
Now I've got to warm his bit up,
'cause he don't like a cold bit
in his mouth.
So I gotta put it under my shirt
for a minute, or my coat for a
minute here, get it warm.
My dad had teams still when I
was a kid.
I remember when I was little,
going into my grandpa's barn
after he had retired and seeing
all the harnesses hung there,
and I was just always interested
in it.
In the 90s, we had a
lot of crews working.
We had probably nine crews
working at the time,
nine different skidders and
forwarders workin'.
And my dad and I just always
talked about goin' back go
horses, how much simpler it
would be, how much we'd like it.
About eight years ago,
I just decided to make the jump
and jump into it full-time.
He's got a very soft eye
'cause he trusts me.
If he didn't trust me he
wouldn't look that soft
in the eye.
[chain saw buzzes]
I use Belgians right now,
but I've used every kind.
[wood cracks]
[chain saw buzzes]
There's good horses
come in every color.
It really doesn't matter,
just so long as it's
a good team.
One thing when you're
working horses and you're
horse logging--
Whoo, boy.
Whoo, whoo.
It's a thinking-man's sport,
for sure.
And you're always looking at
angles, and you're always
looking at the physics of how to
get this big log to move.
Back, back, back, back.
It's never that the horse was
not efficient or couldn't do
the job.
It's that people got tired of
runnin' them.
The guys that knew a lot about
'em kinda faded out.
Most mechanized crews, they need
volume.
It's such a volume-based
market nowadays.
Whoo, whoo.
I don't have to take the
amount of volume, and
I can get into a space that's--
All right, buddy, you ready?
--at times 38" wide or
40" wide.
With a machine, a lot of them
are 10' wide.
So just a lot more disturbance
when they have to come into
the woods.
That timber there, that was a
very low-grade red pine.
If I was to sell that at the
market as pulp, a whole truck
load of it might be worth $700
or $800.
You know, but I can hew those
into a fireplace mantle and
somebody will give me a couple
hundred dollar just for one.
[kissing noises]
Come around boy, gee, gee.
It's a worthy profession.
A lot of people disregard it,
and they think of it as almost
the romance of it or the
nostalgia.
And it's not just nostalgic,
it makes sense for a lot of
people to do it this way.
Good boy.