Blue Pine
My son just completed renovating his tackroom and the first thing I noticed were the walls lined with the most unique and fragrant pine. What was it? I’m Susan Allen thanks for joining me on Wednesday’s addition of OpenRange. If life hand you lemons’ make lemonade? Something of that sort is occurring throughout our Western and Canadian forests. The terrible carnage from the rice grain sized pine -beetle, the death of billions of ponderosa and lodge pole pine trees littering our western woods are now being reused and in some cases even treasured as artifacts. Builders and furniture designers are using beetle –killed logs in their wooden creations. One Canadian entrepreneur has even developed a new use for “pine beetle” kill wood after discovering that wood attacked by the pine beetle becomes an excellent ingredient for producing a concrete like product that has the beautiful esthetics of wood, but is hard, water resistant and strong. Perfect for an application as countertops and tiles. In fact so much “pine beetle” wood is being processed that we should be seeing it in home improvement stores before long. You’ll know it as Blue Pine, having been named for the attractive light blue streaks caused by bark beetles. Thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit what was once regarded as a total devastation has generated a wealth of opportunity, an amazing example of sustainability and a pretty darn cool tack room for my son bits, saddles and bridles.
