Affecting Legislature to Help out your Community: Ft Fireside Farm and Sawmill

November 1, 2021

Affecting Legislature to Help out your Community: Ft Fireside Farm and Sawmill

“I want to tell you about the philosophical reason why I transitioned away from building tables and into framing lumber. That was hard because I was moving from a price per board foot of $7.00-$11.50 a board foot to $1.25.

Part of it is because we’re in the midst of a housing crisis in America, where the median home is $360,000. In my area, the median home price is 460,000. When I look at my sawmill, it’s a tool that can be used for many different purposes. I could build a 17-foot walnut table, and it would be an heirloom piece that a family would appreciate in their living room.

Or I can take on the challenge of using my sawmill to divert lumber from the waste stream, turn it into an optimal product, and then figure out how to offset lumber costs for first-time homebuyers.

This cause is especially important to me because I live in a farming community, and I’m watching eager young people get out onto their land and realize that logs next door are being felled and taken to the dump. All while they’re having to go to Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy crappy lumber and go into debt with their bank for the next 30 years.

That’s a travesty. So as a spiritual and a moral mission, I felt it was important to pivot into framing lumber to solve a big problem. With the help of Woodmizer Carolina and the State Home Builders Association, we developed a bill in the General Assembly. HB 141, the Promote North Carolina Sawmills Act.

This act would give sawyers the skills and the right to self-certify their lumber for recoded building construction. It would be a game-changer for the local industry. When I started doing this policy work, I found the community of sawyers, at least in North Carolina, to be a little disconnected and fragmented. What I need help with is building up the community of sawyers in my area so when this legislation comes about, we can all work together on it.”

Randall Williams

Uniting Sawyers Together

Making changes that affect legislation is an important goal to undertake. Steve notes that this idea will not only have a massive impact on Randall’s home state but could have potentially significant national implications as well. His first recommendation is for Randall to connect with the Urban Wood Network and begin building up a sense of community at the local level.

“The second thing is that you should start a Facebook group with Avery (Wild Edge Woodcraft) and just dump every single sawyer into it. The third thing is to have a North Carolina sawyers holiday party. If you want to do a zoom meetup because nobody wants to meet up in person, have a zoom meetup. I’ll even come to the Zoom meetup just to talk about business.”

Steve Larosiliere

Steve goes on to say that a significant component of changing legislation is demonstrating the potential economic impact. By creating an example of the amount of possible carbon being diverted from the waste stream and the dollar amount generated per business for even 200 sawyers, Randall can showcase the economic potential with concrete metrics.

This presentation can be strengthened further by indicating the potential taxes earned from each transaction to bolster the local economy. Steve notes that Randall can position his argument to explain that it is a small percentage of the revenue generated by big lumber. Since it diverts from the waste stream, it does not take money away from anyone else.

How to Impact Legislation

One resource that Steve references for impacting legislation are the teachings of Dr. Claud Anderson. Dr. Anderson is an author and activist whose method of PowerNomics provides insight into five elements that can create significant changes. Steve explains how these principles can work in Randall’s favor to accomplish his goal.

“The first is money. It’s all about economics. So how could you get money behind this? One is to start a membership group where everybody pays $100; maybe that’s the start. Then you can get a bunch of local businesses who could benefit from buying your lumber; maybe they kick in $100. If everybody kicks in $100, you could have $10,000. Just to put a number out there.

The second is a politician. Dr. Claud Anderson says you need to either buy a politician or rent one. Now that you have money from this group, you need to find a politician and donate to their thing. If they’re not down with you, you need to find somebody that is and then fund their election and raise money for your costs. Did I just say to buy or rent the politician? Yes, I did because that’s what you should do.

The third is the courts and legal system. Once you have that, then you start influencing and shaping policy. The fourth level is the media. Having your own Facebook group, having your own Instagram, buying radio ads, Facebook ads, YouTube ads. Anytime anybody puts your politician’s name into Google, it all goes to your ads about your cause.

The fifth level is education. Once you have the media, then you start educating people. Schools, trade schools, doing tours with kids, all of those places. All those five levels create a feedback loop because they’re supporting each other.

You need the people behind you. You need the people, and then you need to convert those people into money through some sort of membership. Call Avery when we get off the phone and say, “Hey, Steve told me that you wanted to start a group. Let’s collaborate and then just get everybody in that group.” Then by the end of this year, have your holiday kickoff party and tell everybody the plan.”