IF: Cultivate

"Digging around the Roots"
a sketched spread from my Tornado Joe story - the kids are helping their grand father move one of the trees. The old milk cow and her calf are hitched up and ready to pull it back to the farm.

This image reminds me of the years my brothers and father spent harvesting timber or firewood from the many stands of hardwood in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We cut it, drug it out of the woods, "stickered" it (putting strips of wood between each plank to allow air to move and dry the lumber), planed, sawed and shaped them...

Dad was a fine woodworker - he saw walnut, cherry and oak as money in the bank. He was right. The cost of those woods are beyond the means of many, but dad's foresight has allowed my brothers and me to continue to build items with those harvested trees 30-40 years later.

Dad was cultivating woodworkers.

Sketched from my sketchbook - colored in Photoshop via Cintiq - click to enlarge