Dianne Stallings/staff Glen Barrow helps unload a four-stage, automated bagging machine that's a key component in a tree shaving operation he will head at the Glencoe Rural Events Center. Below, a crane takes over the job.

By Dianne Stallings
ruidoso news staff writer

Using a crane and heavy-duty fork lift, Glen Barrow and a local crew inched an 8,000-pound bagging machine off the back of a 18-wheeler.

The four-stage automated bagging system is part of a wood shaving operation being assembled at the Glencoe Rural Events Center by Barrow and his wife, Sherry, under the business name of SBS Wood Products.

The machine was hauled along with other parts from Wisconsin and Maine to create a new local industry designed to handle small-diameter trees thinned in forest fuel reduction and watershed restoration projects.

The shavings will be bagged and sold for animal bedding, Sherry Barrow said Tuesday.

Prompted by two seasons of destructive wildfires that threatened populated areas, including Ruidoso, federal grant programs were established over the past 18 months. Barrow plugged into three of those to find a way to use small-diameter trees being thinned from public and private land. Some expenses are reimbursed by the grants as the couple buy equipment and gear up for operation, she said.

"We will not be producing chips," she said. "It's shavings, and no one else is doing that in this area. If people have to get round wood off their land, we're the only one within 50 miles who can take it.

"Sierra Contracting can take the slash. We can take the trees and we will pay for them. We're looking for pine, piñon, spruce and fir. Later we plan on adding juniper."

The trees need to be cut in 100 inch lengths and can be from 4 inches to 12 inches in diameter, she said.

She said the 100-inch logs will be fed into a shaving machine, which also produces a fine sawdust that is screened out and carried by an air handler to a 12 million-BTU burner. That burner will heat a 26,000-pound rotary dryer to sterilize the shavings and kill any beetles or insects.

No water is used in the process. "The bedding can be used for horses to hamsters," she said. The shavings that end up in horse stalls eventually will be scooped up with the manure and probably will end up in a garden somewhere, she said.

"It's a big eco-circle," Barrow said.

As for a projected opening date, she reminded those eager to see the first bag of shavings that, "it's like building a house by 10 times," setting up the operation in the leased county building on U.S. 70.

For more information, land owners or timber and thinning contractors can call (505) 653-4980 or (505) 257-5508