The story below is from our September/October 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Photos By Dan Smith
When you cut down trees for a living, you see a lot of fascinating wood tossed away. Carrie and James Poff decided to put that wood to good use with an unusual business.
A little more than three years ago, Carrie and James Poff started a tree salvage business in Boone’s Mill and it didn’t go anywhere, so they moved it to their driveway in Roanoke County and found some success.
Problem was that a business in your driveway in a residential neighborhood is bound to draw some complaints and when it did, the Poffs knew the end was near. Then the old Ralph Smith Building (the former Roanoke mayor’s business) became available and the Poffs moved in.
Prematurely, as it turns out. Seems the City of Roanoke has a lot of hoops to jump through and the Poffs didn’t know about them. So, while the business was actually going pretty well, the goal of recycling some of the wood they were harvesting had to be tempered until the city was satisfied or until a new place was found.
Seems Heart Wood Tree Salvage is beginning to come together. The Poffs went to work satisfying the city and, meanwhile, just in case that fell through, they went to Vinton Assistant Town Manager Pete Peters and the Advancement Foundation and found a smaller building that would be perfect for a retail outlet.
While James provides the muscle, Carrie, an artist, looks toward the final product: a warehouse for the wood and for curing and preparing it (a new kiln is on the way); and a retail space for displaying the products Roanoke’s art community comes up with from what would have been scrap wood.
The couple still owns Brown Hound Tree Service, the core of the overall business and the source of the wood.
“We made a vow not to waste trees,” says Carrie.
James says, “We are artistic and hate to throw anything away. There is a lot of cool stuff in trees: knots and wraps and roots and patterns. I think people feel better spending their money on something given new life by wood workers. It’s really neat.”
Carrie is especially grateful at this point that she has a real office.
“I’d been working out of a small part of [the couple’s] 1,000 square foot house and taking care of two children [who are 2 and 4],” she says. “I’ve been able to get back to being myself.”
Initially, Carrie and James contacted artists when they had an exemplary piece of wood, but “they are coming to us now,” says James.
He says that the way they’re doing business—collaborating—is “changing the way” the tree business is being conducted in the Roanoke Valley, where competition has traditionally been intense.
“You just run into so many cool things cutting trees,” says James, “that it’s fun to share.” And, they hope, profitable.
… for the rest of this story and more from our September/October 2019 issue, Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
