(bright upbeat music) - Emlenton is a small town in Southern Venango County.

It's in the Northwestern part of Pennsylvania.

It's a beautiful little town right along the Allegheny river.

Has lots of trees, not a lot of people, but it's a beautiful place.

I'm Jessica Hickman Fresch with Allegheny mountain hardwood flooring and Hickman lumber.

And I am fourth generation with the family business.

Cool space here.

- Thank you.

- This is gonna be a bedroom.

I do the marketing and sales.

Hickman lumber started in the 1930s during the depression era.

My great grandfather, Harry Hickman jr.

Started it with a team of horses, just cutting railroad ties.

Then my grandfather Pop Larry, he was really the one that took the sawmill from kind of a small mom pop shop and really grew it.

(machinery revving) We're a fourth generation manufacturer of FSC lumber and hardwood flooring, which means we're green certified.

(machinery roaring) - I'm Larry Hickman, a second generation in the sawmill business.

My dad started, which is dad right there in early thirties.

When I got old enough to stack boards, that's what I did.

And then eventually we went into business together.

I spent a lot of time with my grandfather.

He was an artist and he gave me a few painting lessons, which didn't materialize into very much.

So later granddad moved to the farm, he and grandmother.

And he started a small art colony where he built a studio and quite a few small cabins where he would house people that would come and take art lessons.

I guess you could say, I'm the third generation of artists.

I don't do artwork like dad and granddad did.

I consider this beautiful work here, art as well.

What my greatest satisfaction is at this stage of my life is to show off and resource.

I think this is probably one of the nicest and most beautiful, natural, renewable resources that we have in the world.

And it's just a, it's a great pleasure to show it off.

So my first memory of this property was when I came up here as a tag along hunting with my uncle in about 1942.

And you could see from here clear to the other side of the property, it was that it was that much of a clear-cut.

There were a few saplings standing around here and there, but basically there was very little timber here.

It's just amazing.

I mean, when you think of how many years ago it was, but it's still, it came back very good, shows what mother nature can do if you help her out a little bit.

I'm Denny Hickman, I'm third generation here in the Hickman lumber company.

People ask me when I started in the lumber business, I sold about not long after I was born.

So I just kind of grew up around a saw mill, but it wasn't my life dream to work in a saw mill.

I thought I was going to play baseball for a living and went to Penn state and quickly found out that I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was.

All the waste from the mill convert and convey it to the chipper.

I never told my kids you're gonna work for me just because you're my kid.

You got to go do something.

I mean, everybody's seen that boss's kid, it's a waste of spot in the lineup, right?

They had to go away, go do something.

And if our team was better because they were there, then we'd have them.

But there was no pressure that they had to work for the company.

We've got four kids, two of them decided to, two of them didn't and that's fine.

(power saw roaring) - There are a lot of misconceptions about the lumber industry.

And I think it's changing in the Green-build community.

But as a kid growing up, watching Captain America, that big, bad log, or I remember a really specific time when I came home to my dad and I was like, dad, are you a bad guy?

Like you cut down trees.

Like we need trees, you're cutting them down.

(power saw roaring) And he responded to me, Jessica, who loves trees more than we do.

Like we need trees.

If we didn't have trees, we want to have a business.

We won't be able to feed you.

We need trees, so we're growing more trees than we're cutting.

And that's the way his grandfather did it.

That's the way we're doing it still today.

So the cool thing about wood products is that 100% of the trees used from the forest to the wood flooring.

When the trees are harvested, the tops are left in the forest to protect the new growth.

The logs are taken to the sawmill, the barks removed and that's used by landscaping companies, (machinery revving) a log then cut into premium lumber.

The waste, the wood chips are made in the paper.

The sawdust created is used for fuel to run the boilers for our dry counts.

So then after the lumber is dried, it's made in the flooring with the scent all over the wood.

(upbeat music) - That's one thing I think is cool that our floors are gonna be around.

And people's houses are in museums, places like this for years and years to come, that are all coming out of this little town in Western PA, it sits along the river.

(power saw roaring) - My family, we we've got good routes.

We're like, we're like an old Oak tree.

I think we've got the solid foundation.

And I think that's part of the reason why we've lasted for generations.

- Baby, wow.

- Stayed true to our values and strong.

And as we were branching out, we still kind of keep to our core.

- This could be generation number five.

- My grandfather had a sign hanging in his office.

He had this big sign in big letters that said, all things come to you wait it.

The little letters that said, if you work off like hell while you wait it.

And I was just kind of thought that was a good thing just to live your life by that.

- As we're sustaining our forest, our forest is sustaining our family for future generations.

And that's kind of the circle of life.

(upbeat music)