You guys who are paying near-retail price for lumber, or even a buck a board
foot, don't know the meaning.



Gloat is when you spend ten grand on a scruffy old Woodmizer mill, 4wd
tractor and a few new chains for the saw, go out in the woods, and manage
over the course of a year to cut over 20,000 board feet of timbers and
boards, about 2/3 pine and the rest ash and cherry and sticker it all in the
yard. Realize that you love doing it so much that you'd rather run the mill
than spend the time in the shop, so your time costs nothing to you. The
best part is so you can build a house and shop using your own trees on your
own land and save a pile of $$$. At last count, able to put probably forty
thousand dollars back into appliances, tile and fixtures for what would have
been a pretty bland and uninspired house.



Gloat is also realizing that your friends and colleagues know you have a
mill, and will gladly give you trees and logs because they need to get rid
of them. That's why you still have several thousand board feet of white oak
and sugar maple in the yard needing to be cut, and why there's a 32"
diameter cherry tree that scales out at over 1500 board feet sitting in the
woods in the next town over, and all you have to do is go get it. Or why,
because of the generosity of a friend, you can make all the counters in your
kitchen out of 8/4 beech instead of formica. What's the price of all this?
Needing to do the work yourself, working harder that you've ever worked
before, because it's all worth it in the end.



The best gloat of all is having a house full of kids who want to spend time
with their Dad in the shop, making 'stuff', and a wife who appreciates the
effort and encourages my so-called 'hobby'.



JonE