Addison County economic report

Vermont Business Magazine, Sep 01, 1998

Their employees include crews of about 30 in the field and about 50 people at the home office, which Bread Loaf recently expanded. It's extremely unusual to have such a high percentage of office-dwellers in a construction company, Harris observed -- but they are also, for example, one of the state's largest architectural firms, going by the number of personnel involved.

In the Bristol area, proximity to the resources of the Green Mountain National Forest has been one factor in the historical development of a strong wood products sector. This year, the two largest businesses involved, the A Johnson Company and the Claire Lathrop Bandmill, which produce veneer logs and lumber, both took some hard hits, according to Johnson general manager William Sayre.

There was the late June flood, which at the Johnson mill silted lumber piles, ruined one motor, and floated away lighter logs (maple stayed, basswood went). Sayre said some of the missing timber fetched up in farmer's fields, but the rest may be somewhere along Otter Creek or even in Lake Champlain.

More important, though, has been the so-called "Asian flu," the Pacific Rim's connected recessions and devaluations. Demand from that region had been important in the hardwood side of their business, and with hardwood flooding the market in the US, prices have dropped about 30 percent, Sayre said. That has dragged other lumber prices down with it, he said.

The winter's massive ice storm, which resulted in widespread power outages, road closings, and in some cases serious damage from falling limbs and trees, apparently will hit the A Johnson Company hardest 10 to 15 years from now, Sayre said. The greatest effect was on trees 6-8 inches in diameter, he said -- and the company, which plans a hundred years ahead, will have to factor that in.

But while there may have been significant effects on loggers and firewood dealers (who are now looking at lower prices due to all the storm-related deadwood), there weren't any layoffs at the mills, Sayre said. The timber industry is very flexible in the wide variety of products it includes, and volume was maintained even if prices did not.

AG-GRAVATIONS

This year, the farmers stopped telling the joke about the man who put two calves at the end of his driveway with a "FREE" sign and returned at the end of the day to find three calves. They've also been passing on the one about the farmer who says, "Wouldn't you know, I just got that cow to start eating sawdust and she up and died on me."

The point has to do with forage, the quantity and especially the quality. In a bad year, the protein content of hay -- its most desirable component -- can indeed be only a few percentage points above the protein level in sawdust.

Last year was a bad year for hay, and so was this year, leading to fears that farmers might go bankrupt en masse from having to pay for extra feed. Prolonged wet weather in early spring is more damaging in Addison County than any other part of Vermont, because about a third of the soils are clay; the percentage is even higher in the traditional farming areas whose relative flatness (an old lake bottom where mud slowly accumulated) has sometimes been called "The Great Plains of Vermont."