Gentle Giants Logger And His Horses Work Quietly, Cleanly The Old-Fashioned Way In Harvest Of Timber
With might and muscle, Jake parades down the hill, focused on his owner’s voice, on the land beneath him, the weight he lugs behind.
The biting morning air doesn’t faze the huge horse who’s raring and ready to pull.
“Step up, Jake,” commands Jim Lamm, owner of Mont Lamm Belgians, a horse logging business based in Chattaroy.
Lamm and his 12 horses log land all over Spokane. The ravages of ice storm have kept Lamm, his two sawyers, Paul Trudeau and Russ Hall, and the horses busy. Many residents have sought out horse loggers to clear land of downed or damaged trees.
Horses typically are used in places where it would be difficult for machinery to gain access or where the land is too fragile for the weight and wear of bulldozers and backhoes.
Lamm and his “gentle giants” do the job for a percentage of the profit when the landowners’ logs are sold at the lumber mill.
Tucked far back inside the south Valley’s Ranch Park Estates, a 15-foot log slides across the ground with weightless ease, leaving nothing but a half-moon of flattened snow in its wake. No noise or foul exhaust from diesel-driven machines. Just a cloud of steam hovering above the 2,500-pound Belgian.
A mare and a filly, corralled in by the landowner, race to the side of the fence to get a whiff of Jake and his resting sidekick, Charlie.
The strange horses distract Jake. He wants to turn away from the forest and go back to the trailer where he knows the sounds and scents. Out in the trees, he hears footsteps, chainsaws and voices unfamiliar. He’s spooked and jerks away from Lamm.
“Easy now. What’s the problem?,” says Lamm. “They’re not gonna get you. Listen to me. Pay attention.”
Jake eases up.
“There you go,” says Lamm, a man in love with his herd and full of admiration for their strength, their stamina.
The horses work as long and as hard as Lamm asks. Pulling, tugging on the weight one log at a time, hours on end until the job gets done.
“To use the term loggers is sort of a misnomer with the way we approach it,” says Lamm. He cuts selectively, removing damaged and diseased tree, as well as a few healthy ones.
At the job’s end, Lamm has removed only 15 to 20 percent of the timber stand.
“The object is to maintain a good healthy stand as an investment to the property owners. We’re asset managers,” he says.
In four years, he’s developed 30 to 40 what he hopes to be regular customers. Lamm says he’ll see his customers only once every seven to 10 years - if the job’s done right.
Clean, mitigate and give the forest time to mend, Lamm says. “Just like a flower garden. You have to do repair work. Take out the bad stuff. Keep the good.”
One thing’s certain. Lamm’s not in the logging business to make a ton of money.
“Everything we make goes to feeding the animals,” says Joanie Lamm, his wife. About $7,000 goes to buy 50 to 60 tons of alfalfa hay and oats every year.
Periodically throughout the year, Lamm holds two jobs. He logs by day and works a graveyard shift at a wood-working plant in the Spokane Industrial Park.
“He’s lucky to get 2 or 3 hours sleep,” says Joanie.
Passion is about the only explanation for Lamm’s tireless efforts to get Mont Lamm Belgians off the ground. He sees his business as much more than a livelihood. His horses will be his legacy, he says. No one in his family is interested in carrying on the tradition he started four years ago. So, to the horses goes Lamm’s entire estate.
“I had a conscious awakening of sorts,” says Lamm. “It would be a waste to let them be pasture ornaments.” Lamm, 50, insists the horses will continue to log or pull snow sleighs long after he is dead.
Paul Trudeau, one of Lamm’s sawyers, says, “I suspect one day we’ll be working for the horses.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 5 color photos