MEMBER PROFILE 



A.J. Cameron Sod Farms, Inc. 

 A FAMILY OF ENTERPRISES 



Don Cameron's office seems 

 at the center of things: 

 out back is the sawmill; 

 to the right of the mill- 

 yard are storage sheds for the equip- 

 ment used in landscaping and hy- 

 droseeding; the hallway going by 

 Don's door leads into Cameron's 

 Home & Garden Center at the front of 

 the building; beyond the garden cen- 

 ter is Route 1 1 leading south toward 

 fields of sod and nursery stock. 



The Camerons have been here 

 for five generations. Dons grandfa- 

 ther moved to New Durham from 

 Long Island in 1917, apparently for 

 health reasons — country air was 

 thought to cure a lot of ailments. 

 A). Cameron, his son and founder 

 of the company, was eleven at the 

 time. 



Like most everyone in the area, 

 the Camerons farmed, but in 1924, 

 they began digging trees and sell- 

 ing them as landscape material; 

 they also planted a small nursery. 



In 1938, they moved to Spring 

 Street in Farmington. Here, they set 

 up a saw mill to give them some in- 

 come during the winter. 



In 1945, another move brought 

 them to High Street. A new mill was 

 built. (This burned in I960 and was 

 rebuilt on a smaller scale.) Today, 

 the sawmill, a hardware store and 

 offices, a 75' x 175' lumber ware- 

 house, and buildings for equipment 

 storage and repairs are spread over 

 the 40-acre site. Buildings are num- 

 bered to make reference easier. 



Over the years, structures have 

 been torn down and built as 

 needed. Most of the original build- 

 ings — including the farmhouse in 

 which Don and his brothers grew 



up — have gone; only Building No. 5, 

 a small one-room structure used for 

 making grade stakes, was there 

 when the Camerons bought the site. 



THE SAW MILL begins operation in 

 late fall, after landscaping and nurs- 

 ery sales slow down. It gives work 

 to about 25 employees. 



^ 



,ather than 



specializing 

 in a single niche. 



Camerons 



has found several, 



all logically interlocking, 



each in its own 



Cameron buys logs delivered 

 in — the mill doesn't do any of its 

 own cutting. The logs — pine, oak, 

 hemlock — are scaled (measured for 

 footage) as they're unloaded, then 

 cut into a range of dimensions and 

 widths. The variety serves a variety 

 of customers building anything from 

 a bookcase to a house. Other build- 

 ing material is bought in, so people 

 can find most of what they need 

 right here. 



The Camerons mill 300-400,000 

 board feet in a season. This is con- 

 sidered a fairly small mill and is 

 one of the few full retail mills in 

 the state (most mills sell their 

 product to a broker). 



There is no waste. In Building 

 No. 5, grade stakes are made from 



edgings and center-cut lumber ("I 

 can sell all we can make"). The bark 

 ground off the logs becomes the 

 bark mulch used in their landscap- 

 ing jobs; slabs and edgings go 

 through a chipper and the chips 

 sold to paper mills and the sawdust 

 to farmers who spread it on their 

 fields. 



LANDSCAPING expanded rapidly in 

 the 1970s and continued to do well 

 even during the real estate slump. 

 Don credits this to the company's 

 very conservative fiscal policies — 

 "Whatever we buy has to have pay- 

 back." 



Today, there are three crews — 

 more if there's work; Farmington is 

 the starting-off point; most jobs are 

 day trips to sites in New Hampshire 

 and northern Massachusetts, al- 

 though ("we'll go where they want 

 us") they've done work as far north 

 as Lubec, Maine. 



Cameron can follow prepared de- 

 signs or draw up plans in-house. 

 Some work is subcontracted — for 

 example, they do stonework — walks, 

 walls, but not irrigation or ponds. 



Much of the work is large-scale. 

 Steeplegate Mall (Concord, NH) and 

 the Franconia Notch Parkway, Fran- 

 conia, NH, are examples. The size 

 isn't a concern: "You just need to 

 plan far enough ahead to deal with 

 large amounts of material. When we 

 started out, we would landscape 

 anything — from a factory to a cem- 

 etery plot. We still can do that, but 

 some of the smaller jobs might no 

 longer be cost-effective " 



In late December, 1996, the 1997 

 season was "looking good. We don't 

 advertise — we've been around so 



FEBRUARY & MARCH 



