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ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

Shannon Park Farm strives to use wood sourced entirely from its property for its custom-made furniture. Dead and dying trees on the property are milled at the farm, with the wood dried at a local kiln, and then the slabs are returned to Shannon Park Farm.  We strive to replace each dead or dying tree used in furniture with a new sapling and leave smaller pieces and tree limbs in place as animal habitat (not just for the Zephyr and Celeste, the Shannon Park Farm Rhodesian Ridgeback mascots standing next to the stacked logs in the pictures below). 

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SOME BACKSTORY

I (Brooke) started Shannon Park Farm as a very small apiary (honey bees) in the 2000s after I heard a story on NPR about colony collapse disorder and how hobbyist beekeepers could potentially combat its effects.  A few years ago, however, I lost my hives over a bad winter and the beekeeping/honey production has been (much to the chagrin of those who loved the honey) on hiatus. 


At about the same time as I began beekeeping, two events drove me to begin woodworking (as a hobby) - first, one of the original barns (constructed from beautiful oak) on the property collapsed following a heavy snow, and second, a huge maple at my parents' house needed to be removed due to its declining health.  In both cases, we knew we wanted to save as much of the wood as possible and give it a second life.  And so, we had the maple milled and dried and had the slabs brought to Shannon Park Farm and saved as much of the barn wood as we could. Thus began my woodworking journey.


A couple of years ago, I realized while walking on our 60+ acres that there were a lot of dead or dying trees (black walnuts, cherry, maple, sycamore, etc.) that were going to waste and that rather than have them rot, we could both use them as habitat (by leaving the smaller limbs in place) and also provide a second life to the larger pieces.  So, I purchased a small sawmill, allowing me to do something I love (woodworking) while repurposing old barn wood and selectively milling dead, dying, and fallen black walnut, cherry, maple, sycamore, etc.  Tree limbs too small or curved to be milled are left to decompose naturally, providing habitat for the many residents of Shannon Park Farm, which include a pair of nesting bald eagles, hawks, woodpeckers, coyotes, fox, deer, owls. We make every effort to plant new trees each year to replace those that have fallen or died.

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And finally, in 2020, I left my full-time job as an executive at a consulting firm to focus full-time on Shannon Park Farm and woodworking.  

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