Getting Lumber in Costa Rica

One of the many big surprises to me when we moved down to Costa Rica was how primitive the wood business was. Here you have a country with hardware stores, tools, etc. but if you want wood, you go to the sawmill and buy green! There are also depositos de madera, or lumberyards, but they usually sell green wood, too.  Of course, you can’t install it green, so you have to dry it yourself.

Many people who are building their own home in Costa Rica are surprised to find that you can’t just go down to something like Home Depot and buy a 2×4; nope, you have to find it. Then, after you find it, make sure to get more than you need, because some of them are going to warp, especially if you don’t know how to dry it properly.

The Ticos are an interesting mix of planning and not planning. If they are building your home, it is hard to find someone who understands buying supplies ahead. I think I have finally figured out why. Most Ticos accumulate material and build in stages. Unlike we do in the USA, they don’t generally get a loan, but they store up money for labor and materials until they have enough to start. This means the wood they need for beams, etc. has probably been in the barn for a few years.

We, on the other hand, land here and want to build our home now, the sooner the better.  Often the wood is not available except in a tree somewhere, which will require permits that take weeks to get.  The wood will be rough cut, often by a chainsaw, then you  will wait perhaps 3 months or more for it to dry (sort of).  Since most construction people have nothing more than a power hand planer, the cost of planing and sanding can cost as much as the wood itself.

We paid our dues on this for sure. The first house we built was from trees to house using chainsaws with guides and a 15″ planer. It felt like the timeline for the construction was stretching out forever (we know those of you who live here can relate).

As we grew, so did our milling operation, and we got faster and faster — and more predictable. Now if we need a beam, it comes out of the factory dry, at the right dimensions, planed and sanded and ready to install. The cost of planing and sanding isn’t much when you have the equipment. It is a lot less than paying a construction person to do it by hand. In fact, the costs saved in having the wood ready almost pays for the wood itself when you deduct the labor cost of working with rough cut wood. And of course, the quality is better. We use specialty equipment that allows us to work with beautifully grained wood that would otherwise have a lot of tearouts. With our equipment, we are able to make gorgeous teak products that cost about the same as cedar.

Now we are in the process of educating the construction bosses from Guanacaste to the central valley that they can buy wood ready to install, which helps keep their clients happy. We not only sell the dimensional lumber, but also the tongue-end-groove wood for ceilings and walls (called tablilla here) and floors. In fact, just about anything that is wood in a house, from furniture to cabinets, to floors and doors, we make and sell. And that uses a lot of wood, which is good for our tree owners.

Posted in business in Costa Rica, cabinets, campo, construction, cultural adaptation, doors, drying wood, forestry, furniture, kiln, tablilla, teak, trees, wood | 1 Comment »

There is more than one way to get a seedling

Here in Costa Rica, there are about 2,000 different kinds of trees, at least 150 of them are good for lumber. You would think seeds would be easy to get.

Nope, not at all. Generally when we try to order seeds, we find 4 or 5 different types readily available. These would be teak, gmelina, mahogany, cocobolo, and acacia. Everything else is fairly unpredictable.

I personally am not fond of monocrop plantations. They are not very interesting and for native species, not very good. Native trees grow better mixed — like in nature.

The majority of the rare trees we plant are from seeds that we collect within our plantations. This year, the only way we were able to find almendro was from our own trees. All of our cebo was from our own trees as well. A big bonus this year was finding balsamo, a very rare tree with wood as valuable (if not moreso) than cocobolo.

When we first arrived in Costa Rica, I thought to grow trees would be as easy as calling up a tree nursery, ordering the seedlings, and planting them when they arrived. I figured some day we would have a nursery, but just because of volume. The truth is, the only way that we could get the seedlings we needed was to have our own nursery. Nothing else worked reliably.

I am sure it is frustrating for some of our clients that in January they might order, say, 500 cristobal trees and I have to say, “It depends on if there are seeds.” This really emphasizes that what we are doing is working in an area that requires the cooperation of nature, and nature at times will decide that this is not a good year to produce certain seeds.

A good example is our mango trees on our property this year. I was starting to wonder if the mango trees we had actually did produce fruit, because for two years there was none. But this year they more than made up for it and there were mangos everywhere! The same thing is true for seeds we need in the plantations — we can’t just plant whatever we would like, because at times, Mother Nature doesn’t give us any seeds.

Another thing we often do is collect seedlings, or as they are called in the USA, wildlings. Currently in the plantation where we live, there are lots and lots of seedlings that have sprouted in the last month or so. We will go out and carefully extract them from the ground and put into bags, to plant inside the farms. Often, these are the best possible seedlings because they have already shown their vigour in surviving.

Aside from the very popular plantation trees, we never know exactly what we are doing to have to plant, but, that keeps it interesting.

Posted in acacia, campo, cebo, finca, forest, forestry, mahogany, nursery, seedlings, teak, tree owners, trees, wood | No Comments »

Welcome to the Campo

 1-year-old acacia and teak on one of our plantations

For those who don’t know, campo means countryside and that is where we live, the countryside of Costa Rica. What are we doing here? Well, as many of our tree owners know, we are growing tropical hardwood trees. For them, we are growing trees as an investment; for the people here, we are creating jobs and a source of wood, which is in icreasingly short supply in Costa Rica. And for the environment (which would be all of us) we are creating a permanent rainforest using the plantation trees as a nursery for the slower growing trees of the rainforest.

We decided to start this blog as a way to communicate with our many tree owners as well as family and friends to keep them up to date on our activities. Also, expect lots and lots of pictures of not only our life here, but the trees, plantations, new projects and of course, wildlife.

We hope you all enjoy it.

Fred

President, Finca Leola S.A.

Posted in acacia, campo, teak | No Comments »