COOK -- By this time next year, Kelly Ritz of Hibbing and her 12-year-old daughter should be living in what may be the first Habitat for Humanity home in the nation built with wood certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
The first work toward the house began Saturday as trees were cut on a tree farm owned by Sen. Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook. After a brief round of speeches Saturday morning, a John Deere feller-buncher revved to life in a 40-year-old mixed aspen forest off County Road 115. In about 15 minutes, it cleared three-quarters of an acre, the trees from which should provide enough oriented strand board for Ritz's 1,100-square-foot future home.
Bakk's land is enrolled in the American Tree Farm Program, which certifies private landowners. The wood was harvested by Cliff Shermer, who participates in the Minnesota Logger Education Program. Both programs are part of the Minnesota Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
The initiative is one of a handful of groups that certify wood products, a process meant to assure consumers that landowners, loggers and companies have followed principles that maintain and improve the forest habitat, which includes soil, water, animal life, plants and trees.
The land that was cleared on Saturday, for instance, was marked for harvest because the trees had matured and needed to be cleared away. Bakk said it will be replanted in the spring with white spruce saplings, which will do better in the soil than aspen.
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The Habitat for Humanity home will be built by volunteers from the initiative and other groups using certified wood for windows, lumber, siding and other parts of the house, said Tim O'Hara, coordinator of the initiative's Implementation Committee. Marvin Windows and Louisiana Pacific are contributing materials, and other forest products companies in the area are contributing cash.
"This is the first time Habitat for Humanity and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative have teamed up anywhere in the nation," O'Hara said. "Our goal is to make the connection between sustainable forestry and average people and their homes."
Habitat for Humanity builds simple homes for needy people. Future homeowners work on the construction with volunteers. The houses are sold to homeowners at no profit.
Ritz's one-story, three-bedroom house in Hibbing will be built on the 800 block of 39th Street. It will cost about $70,000 to build with volunteer labor and donated materials, but market value will be about $100,000 when it's complete, said Nathan Thompson, executive director of North St. Louis County Habitat for Humanity in Virginia, which is overseeing the project.
Bakk is donating a truckload of aspen from his 40-acre tree farm, owned since the 1950s by his family. He enrolled his land two years ago, putting a covenant on the land not to develop it for eight years. Under the enrollment agreement, the landowner meets with a forester and agrees to manage the land in a sustainable way. About1 million acres of forestland in Minnesota is enrolled, but most of it is owned by large landowners, Bakk said.
The 10 cords of aspen cut Saturday was to be trucked to the Ainsworth plant about15 miles away in Cook, where it was to be tagged and eventually made into oriented strand board for the new home. The plant is temporarily shut down, but the OSB will be manufactured when it reopens.
Construction of Ritz's house is expected to begin in June and to be completed in November.
To carry out the cycle of sustainability, Ritz and her daughter will join Bakk in planting new trees next spring to replace those cut down today.
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Ritz was on hand Saturday to watch the lumber for her house get harvested.
"It's going to be exciting from today until my house gets built in the fall," she said.
Staff writer Will Ashenmacher contributed to this report.
