Our Story: Tree Work After the Valley Fire

After the Valley Fire

In 2015 the Valley Fire burned through Cobb Mountain and the towns around it. “We’re in the middle of a forest,” Robert says, and the fire left “tons and tons of material and logs” behind it, everywhere. Then came the bark beetles, which move into fire-stressed trees. R2 worked informally through the years after the fire and registered its name with the county in 2022.

In 2022, about seven years after the fire, Robert was asked to assist in operating a CalFire pilot program that took beetle-kill pine logs and put them in an air curtain incinerator. “You put like six logs in here and you just wait for like two hours,” he remembers. All that waiting gave him time to think about better ways of managing the wood resources.

From a Biomass Conference to a Tree Company

That question took Robert to a biomass conference in Atlanta, where he spoke to investors about what to do with the material a big fire leaves behind. His son Riley built R2’s first website for that trip.

Chips coming off the conveyor, one of the clips Riley put at the top of that first website.

Back home the calls and the work kept coming. The county was discussing and seeking expertise on how to handle the overwhelming amount of material at hand. “So I just stepped up and started doing it and figuring it out.”

What began as cleanup after a fire became R2 & Company: a local crew that treats every tree as a valued resource and is there when Cobb Mountain needs it.

Two R2 crew in hard hats cutting the face notch in a large trunk

R2 sawyer making the back cut on a big tree with a long-bar saw

A felled log on a hillside with the chainsaw resting on the stump

Why We Do What We Do

“We don’t want people to choose us because of what we do. We want people to choose us because of why we do what we do.”

Robert Thomas

“There’s a lot of companies that do what we do,” Robert says, “but not everyone has the same passion.” For R2, every part of the job is conscientious: how a tree comes down, what happens to the wood, and how the property is left. After the fire, people here were scared. R2 wanted to be “a center point for the community,” and that is still the goal when a storm drops a tree on a house in the middle of the night.

Nothing Goes to Waste

Robert is a Licensed Timber Operator through CalFire, and R2 works selectively. “The old days of like clear cutting a forest and replanting it all the same species, they’re so over,” he says. The crew brings a tree down without hurting the trees around it, and only takes what needs to come out.

“We have really tried to almost like the natives, where there’s nothing that goes to waste.” If you want the wood, it goes to R2’s mill and comes back as lumber, or as a shed, a coop or furniture. “All the scraps that are left over from milling get turned into soil or wood mulch that go back onto the trees into the forest.” See milling and custom builds and wood mulch and compost.

R2's sawmill with fresh milled lumber, a skid steer and an excavator in the yard

A small shed built from milled lumber, lit up at night

A blower truck piling wood mulch at sunset

The Wood Bank

A couple of years ago R2 started a wood bank to give firewood away to neighbors who needed it, with a grant through the US Forest Service. Riley filmed the whole team for it, with footage from above. The video is on R2’s Facebook page.

The Facts