What I try to do is leave all the nicer, bigger trees, and I take the small stuff, the crooked stuff. Robin can cut and limb 60 cords of wood in one day - as much as his dad used to cut in three months with a chainsaw. Even so, Robin believes political and economic pressures may get in the way of his own son someday running the business. In recent years state and federal governments have reduced the timber they're putting up for sale. Loggers now buy many more trees from private landowners and at much higher cost.
New equipment makes the job safe and efficient, but is prohibitively expensive.
In the 1990s, the Walshes say, logging is still a tough business - as tough, in some ways, as when it was one guy, with one arm, out in the woods by himself. Major funding for Minnesota Public Radio's regional Internet activities is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.