February 2023
BURKEVILLE, Texas – For Mike and Andrea Smith, both 46, their fate was decided when Mike was just five years old. See, Mr. Smith was a pulpwood mechanic and young Mike would often follow him around to the logging woods to work. There, Mike was exposed to logging and quickly found his path in life. Fast-forward to high school, and Mike was still obsessed with logging. He started his own company in 1994. He worked small private tracts on the weekends with a chain saw, a tractor and his dad’s winch truck.
Inside This Issue
COVER: M.C. Smith Enterprise Stays The Course In Texas
BURKEVILLE, Texas – For Mike and Andrea Smith, both 46, their fate was decided when Mike was just five years old. See, Mr. Smith was a pulpwood mechanic and young Mike would often follow him around to the logging woods to work. There, Mike was exposed to logging and quickly found his path in life. Fast-forward to high school, and Mike was still obsessed with logging.
Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
SOUTHERN STUMPIN': Happiest, Deadliest
Are you a logger, or otherwise employed in something that’s at least tangentially connected to this noble profession? I’m gonna go out on a limb here (pun intended, sorry) and say probably so, since you’re reading Southern Loggin’ Times. Well, get this: if you are a logger, you’re among the happiest people on earth, according to a recent (1-6-2023) article in the Washington Post.
Article by David Abbott, Managing Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
High Country
UNICOI, Tennessee – Jerry Byrd recalls an incident from his senior year of high school in 1994. He was assigned a project in his economics class to make a class presentation on what kind of career he wanted as an adult. Settling on a vocation was no problem; he already knew he wanted to get into logging. “The is a logging area,” Byrd says of his part of Tennessee.
Article by David Abbott, Managing Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
BULLETIN BOARD
Our Best Leisure Selections From Our Not-So-Sharp Minds
FROM THE BACKWOODS PEW: The Bog
The muddy side of life is no respecter of persons. The bog will pull on the wealthy, the poor, the healthy, and the weak. It is the curse of sin in this world; it is not part of the original plan, yet as we travel through life, we will step into the bog at some point. Like the forester or the heavy equipment operator, we must cry out, we must seek help.
Bradley Antill is a forester and an author. Excerpted from Pines, Prayers, and Pelts.
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M.C. Smith Enterprise Stays The Course In Texas
Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
BURKEVILLE, Texas – For Mike and Andrea Smith, both 46, their fate was decided when Mike was just five years old. See, Mr. Smith was a pulpwood mechanic and young Mike would often follow him around to the logging woods to work. There, Mike was exposed to logging and quickly found his path in life. Fast-forward to high school, and Mike was still obsessed with logging. He started his own company in 1994. He worked small private tracts on the weekends with a chain saw, a tractor and his dad’s winch truck.
Andrea was also exposed to logging at a young age, as her father worked on a crew in the woods. But the logging bug didn’t bite her until she fell in love with the senior class valedictorian, Mike Smith. “When I met Mike I was so head over heels in love with him I found out real quick, if I didn’t jump in and like it and love it as much as he did I would never see him,” she explains. “The hours he works, I’d have never seen him. Over a period of time, I fell in love with it, too.”
She went into the woods each weekend alongside Mike when they first got M.C. Smith Enterprise started. “We started out with just junk,” Andrea says. “We took baby steps. It took years to build us up to what we are now.” The business has survived crashes, vandalism and mill closures and still hung on.
Logging became even more important in the Smiths’ lives when they lost Mike’s father to pancreatic cancer over five years ago. As he passed, Andrea says he told them, “Whatever you do, don’t stop what we started.” After that Mike really threw himself even more into making the logging venture a success.
That humble beginning and the tenacity required to make it through by the Smiths has not gone unnoticed by others in the industry. In 2021, Texas Forestry Association named M.C. Smith as Texas Logger of the Year. The operation advanced to the national FRA Logger of the Year award rounds. “This is our hobby. This is his life, and his dream. He could have been anything he chose to be and he chose logging,” she says with pride.
The M.C. Smith crew—from left, William “Buster” Moye, Smith and James Riley—is like a family.
Smith cuts with a 2021 724G from Tejas Equipment.
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