David Lashway and Tara O’Brien
Highland Community Lumber, Williamsburg

Officially, David Lashway of Highland Community Lumber in Williamsburg is in the business of sawing and selling native lumber. But talk with him for a few minutes and you’ll realize that his work is as much about building relationships and community as it is about wood.

The sawmill that David owns with his wife, Tara O’Brien, has been operating for just a year and a half, and is the culmination of David’s lifelong dream to be able to harvest and mill his own wood. The sawmill provides people with options for managing their forest sustainably, and provides his customers the reassurance that the lumber they buy comes from local forests that are managed to remain healthy, not cut as the first step to becoming housing developments or shopping malls.

David is committed to building and maintaining relationships with many aspects of his community: the loggers, foresters, forest owners, and other members of the Massachusetts Woodland Cooperative, all the way to dairy farmers to whom he sells sawdust for animal bedding. David says the ‘Community’ in his business name says it all.

When David and Tara O’Brien, bought their own 100-plus acres in Williamsburg four years ago, they enrolled the land in Chapter 61A and developed a forest stewardship plan for the property.  But so far, they’ve been too busy setting up their sawmill and getting their business going to actually do much land management of their own. David is also an active member of the Massachusetts Woodland Cooperative, an organization of forest owners whose land is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The FSC is an international organization that sets standards that ensure forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and economically viable way.  Along with Mass. Woodland Cooperative members’ lands, all state-owned forests in Massachusetts are FSC-certified. Besides promoting FSC standards and certification, the Mass. Woodland Cooperative supports its members by purchasing members’ logs and coordinating their processing by local businesses. The Cooperative markets their finished wood products throughout the region as HomeGrown Wood™.

David recognizes that landowners face a lot of pressures that influence their decisions about how to manage their forests. Increasing population increases demand for land and for wood, and increasing property values drive up property taxes for landowners. David hopes that promoting green-certified wood and forestry practices will give landowners more options for ways to be able to care for their land and help the land support them. As David says, “We really are only stewards for a short time and we try to do the best we can.” You can build a lot with wood. With Highland Community Lumber, David is using his “short time” to build community and a healthy forest.

By Mary McClintock, from the The Highland Communities Initiative My Place is the Highlands series. Reprinted with permission.

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