From siding and paneling to trusses and trims, Heartwood Mills is North America’s premier supplier of Northern White Cedar building products along with White Pine, Southern Yellow Pine, Spruce, Fir, and Maple products. Whether you’re building a traditional log cabin or adding log siding to a conventional frame home to give it the appearance of a log home, you’ll find quality log products, mill direct prices, and experienced staff to answer your questions and help you select the right products for your project.
Get in touch today for more information about using Heartwood Mills for your next log siding, log home building, remodeling or other woodworking project made with the best quality in white cedar, pine, and other lumbers.
Heartwood Mills’ founder, Bernie Kondrat, was raised in northern Michigan alongside the area’s many lakes and forests. By the age of 8, Bernie was a regular in the woods with his grandfather, getting paid to make fences using Pine, Spruce, Tamarack, Balsam, and White Cedar trees.
Through the years, Bernie noticed that the Pine, Spruce and Balsam posts they used severely deteriorated over time but the White Cedar log posts remained healthy and strong. When he returned from fighting in WWII, Bernie remembered that observation from his youth. With a $200 G.I. loan, Bernie and his friend Ben Organek, decided to start a fence building company.
They hitched up two horses and headed into the woods to harvest White Cedar. Each piece of wood was hand-selected and cut from Bernie’s farm. But, because cattle in the area were free-range, fence-building jobs were few and far between.
Cutting their losses, Bernie and Ben decided to leave fence posts behind and try their hands at building custom White Cedar log houses. With a $35 investment in their first mill and a bell saw, they built their first home—a 22’ x 22’ structure. The home was built using white cedar hauled from Bernie’s farm to Ben’s mill. Its exterior took a unique twist on the traditional log home with vertically cut White Cedar logs. The whole thing was built for just $475.
With the completion of their first home in 1947, Boyne Falls Log Homes was born. While Bernie and Ben were busy designing and building custom homes, they realized that their mill had a greater capacity than they could meet on their own so began to offer other home builders and woodworkers quality White Cedar and Pine Lumber products for their own projects.
In 1983, Boyne Falls Log Homes was renamed Town & Country Cedar Homes and the Heartwood Mills division was established to supply mill direct white cedar, pine, and other lumber products to the market. Today, we are a supplier of Northern White Cedar for log siding, paneling, and trusses.