We built our very first home from northern white cedar back in 1973, and we've insisted on northern white cedar for every home we've built since.

Why? Because for your log home, cedar is superior to pine in every way.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture-Wood Handbook

Essential oils in northern white cedar give it natural resistance to pests and rot. Drier and more stable than pine, cedar is a full eight times more durable than pine when exposed to ground contact.

Northern White Cedar

Northern white cedar grows only in a few areas of the of the northern US. Most of what we use comes from swampy areas found in the dense forests of northern New England. You have to wait until winter to harvest cedar, when the swamps freeze. But it's worth braving the cold for.

Northern white cedar is naturally resistant to pests and rot without any toxic chemical treatments. Essential oils in the wood give cedar eight times the durability of pine when exposed to ground contact (Source: USDA Forest Products Laboratory, Wood Handbook).

Cedar takes stain beautifully, or weathers to a lovely, silvery sheen. It even insulates better than pine. You won't find a more sensible, , long-lasting, or beautiful material for your log home.

To begin with, a freshly-harvested cedar log contains about one-third as much water as a comparable pine log. After harvesting, we carefully air dry our cedar logs up to 18 months. Pine requires punishing high-heat kiln-drying before it's dry enough to build with it. And even then, cedar is drier still, and far less prone to cracking, checking and warping.

And because it's drier, a cedar log home is much more stable than a house built of pine. The first few years of a pine home requires lots of attention because the wood is still drying out. Pine shifts and cracks and groans. Things that used to fit suddenly do not. Cedar is more stable from the very start.

Less moisture results in lighter weight too, so cedar costs less to ship and requires less labor to assemble-without any sacrifice in structural strength. For good measure, each and every log is inspected no fewer than five times before it's approved for use in your home.

As you can see, there's no mystery why we use cedar in our log homes. The question is, why doesn't every log home buyer demand it?