About the author
David Barmon is president of Epilogue LLC, a company that mills urban trees into lumber. He also co-owns Fiddlehead LLC, a Portland, Oregon-based landscape construction and consulting company which promotes an integrated approach to food, forestry and water. Most of David's work involves running a small scale sawmill operation and digging earth with machines or by hand-he has the dirty fingernails and calluses to prove it. He has cut several hundred thousand board feet of lumber and installed countless edible landscapes and rain gardens in the Portland area. In a former career, David spent almost a decade as a Japanese qualified flight attendant for United Airlines.
David has been a powerful advocate for the urban lumber movement over the last decade. He has successfully leveraged private industry, non-profit organizations, and government to push for transformational changes in the urban forestry system. In addition to his hands-on experience procuring, milling and creating value-added products from urban lumber, David draws from a broad set of skills, including writing, public speaking, lobbying, small business ownership, non-profit management, and policy work. He is currently working on his first book, Wood From the City, the Urban Lumber Handbook.
David has spoken at several conferences including Wood at Work (McGill University 2017 and University of Toronto 2018), the prestigious International Living Future Conference, TEDx Kelowna, and the Mid Atlantic Urban Wood Forum (Virginia Department of Forestry). David was the 2019 keynote speaker at Australia National University’s first every urban lumber conference. David was named Sustainable Business Oregon’s Emerging Leader in 2013. His work and ideas have been featured in many publications such as Oregon Public Broadcasting, Green Builder, Sunset, Dwell, and Residential Architect. In 2015 David helped pass legislation through the State of Oregon to fund the world’s first urban lumber tree planting feasibility study. The study, called the Clackamas County Urban Lumber Pilot focused on how to intentionally plant, maintain and harvest urban trees for lumber.
David is fascinated with the physical world and all of the amazing information our modern society is about to forget. He believes our religion, culture, cities, food, clothing, smartphones —basically everything—comes down to understanding plants and rocks.
What is Urban Lumber?
David Barmon TEDx Kelowna
