Getting to know you

Dryad Studios is the furniture shop. We specialize in Custom, Limited Production, and Reproduction Arts & Crafts Furniture. Since 1985, our shop has capably reproduced hundreds of original pieces, and designed hundreds more. We now focus mainly on Original Designs, incorporating a wide range of traditional and innovative elements. Our work includes all of the familiar styles, including Mackintosh, the stronger forms of the "Mission" lines, and a broad range of other, "Arts & Crafts", furniture concepts.

Upside Downs is the Farm. It is an evolution of the " Tree Farm ", that has been Dryad Studio's home for almost 40 years.
That new  " Agricultural ", farm effort is expanding as Climate Change is destroying the timber on the upper 100 acres of our 160 Acre "Tree Farm". We now raise a variety of vegetable crops. And, we are slowly fencing, after removing the timber, 100 acres to pasture Dexter Cattle, Boer/Kiko meat goats, and "Irish Grazers"...Tamworth pigs. All the while, we refrain from displacing any of the myriad of birds, reptiles, and mammals that call our mountaintop home.

Sustainability, as an in vogue catchphrase, elicits laughter (in our kinder moments) and sometimes derision, ( when the exigences of rural combat are at their fiercest). We walk the walk.....ALL our vegetables, Most of our fruit, All of our meat, All of our milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, All of our furniture, All of our dwellings ....are produced from materials on the farm.

We like you, folks...... BUT .... cutting through all the delusions and misconceptions, let alone the layer upon layer of cultivated commercial ignorance .... well, IT IS TOUGH.

I / WE are going to try....in as polite a manner as possible.....with as much tact as we can muster, offer a perspective and vision of the past....and the only possible future. BUT ..... as the joke ends, "It is time to decide if you are going to fish, or cut bait".

AGAIN..... I cannot make this simple and easy. Your.....yes, you the reader, YOUR most dangerous opposition will come from within....YOURSELF, and the accumulated social, physical, economic, cultural, and economic mis-direction and misconceptions that have been the source of your bond to our current society. YOU WILL NOT be able to implement these changes without painful revaluation of all that you currently find necessary.

Your everlasting summer
You can see it fading fast
So you grab a piece of something
That you think is gonna last
But you wouldn't know a diamond
If you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious
I can't understand
Steely Dan/ Reelin' in the Years

As I proceed, I will undoubtedly offend some of you. I may, to some degree, offend everybody. I will try to keep my observations, evaluations, and solutions relevant, obtainable, and offer all the possible variables in those solutions.
I, personally, am  offended by the socio/economic lattice that keeps you trapped in a web of poor food, poor environment, poor economic choices, and cleverly limited options  in general.

How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb ???
Just one.....but it takes a very long time, and the bulb has to want to change !!

Or, in a more modern lexicon........" Which will it be, the red pill or the blue pill " ??

Introduction

 It has been a "....long strange trip..",for sure, since we packed a ton-and -a- half Chevy truck, in 1974, with all of our tools, belongings, a freezer full of food, and our two dogs. With a few thousand dollars, and a pile of Mother Earth News and Organic Gardening magazines, we were headed for anywhere that would accommodate what we felt would be a simpler and more rewarding lifestyle than the urban sprawl had to offer.

 The abandoned mountain farms of Northwest Arkansas were one of the last places that we visited in the two months that we toured the backwaters of Americas deserted agricultural past. The soil on most of the farms was as poor as when it had been abandoned during the depression.

 The adjoining forests had regenerated to a great extent and reasonable timberland could be bought for a song. After a few adjustments, we found ourselves the owners of 160 acres covered with massive red and white oaks, hickories, and a dozen or so other minor species.

We bought our sawmill in 1979 and began to selectively harvest our trees.

The land was immediately put into the American Tree Farm system. This allowed us to get help from various government and professional sources in planning and managing our land in a manner that would optimize yield and minimize environmental impact.

Some of the plans that were proposed ran counter to our sensibilities, and were ignored or discarded. The most notable of these is the use of herbicides to kill out unwanted vegetation or suppress less desirable species.

The concept that herbicides are "safe" is one that eludes me. We prefer to use the method of "girdling" to kill unwanted trees. This consists of cutting a groove, about 3/4 of an inch deep, completely around a tree. The flow of nutrients and moisture is interrupted and the tree dies in about 4 months. Slower and less certain than herbicides, it is guaranteed not to hurt wildlife or my family.

 

 We have cut over 350,000 board feet of lumber from our land in the past 30 years. The effect has been to "release" a lot of the highly desirable species to grow to their potential. The forest canopy has restored itself from the initial heavy cuttings of cull species and trees that were of poor form or unsound. We now can cut 10 to 15 thousand bd ft of high quality lumber from our forest with an increase of quantity and quality every year.

The logging roads and openings in the canopy provide forage and cover for a huge variety of wildlife. From its near barren start, we now routinely see deer, bear, turkey, bobcats, coyotes, and a dozen or so other minor species of mammals.

 We achieved the “holy grail” of North American ecological reconstruction the past few years. In a sandy wash by a road ditch, have been the unmistakable tracks of a Mountain Lion

The bird population has exploded with dozens of species abundant now. From the Eagles in the spring, to the Great Horned and Screech Owls every night,we enjoy our daily contact with all but the most inconsiderate Raptors. And for those occasional , "hard to deter" predators, we keep a personal flock of crows that treat all threats, feathered or furred, with equal disdain.

 We are especially proud of the habitat improvement that we have done with the reptile and amphibian species. We have recorded species of both that are deemed "rare" in the field guides.

  The furniture that we build from the trees will extend their lives for a hundred or more years past their harvesting at maturity. Our management and harvesting practices guarantee that all future generations that desire to, can continue with this process.

  I look at furniture in our house, or beams in the ceiling and flooring under our feet, and remember the tree that it was cut from.