I've worked with plants all my life. Indeed, some of my earliest memories are of "helping" my mother working in her extensive vegetable garden and ornamental beds with an enormous variety of flowers, vines, shrubs and trees.

I've worked in silviculture, arboriculture and fine gardening all of my working life as well, starting with a year-long stint in the Young American Conservation Core for the California Division of Forestry in 1977 (I was seventeen), and the Youth Conservation Core for the U.S. Forest Service in 1978. I worked for many years as an arborist in several northern California communities, and have been self employed in arboriculture / horticulture since the late '80s.

Artistic, creative expression was always supported and encouraged in my house growing up, and has remained an important, essential element of my life journey. Both my father (who has now passed), and my mother have been consistently involved in some form of artistic expression themselves. For many years my main creative ax was writing, although that has never become part of my working life. (I earned an MFA in poetry writing at San Francisco State University in the "90s.)

Towards the end of earning that degree I was really missing using my hands and creative energy in the world of physical objects as well as the world of ideas and writing. One day I happened on a very inexpensive (and poor quality) wood-lathe on a sale table in front of a hardware store. Woodturning was something I had never tried, and as I say, I was craving the use of some kind of tool other than a pen or keyboard, so I bought it and began turning as a hobby. I took to it immediately, and with the help of many excellent books from my local library and several incredible websites began to learn to turn! Over the course of the next several years I finished my degree and after trying it I knew that the most likely avenue to parlay an MFA into a career (teaching) was not something I wanted to do full time. (!) Throughout those years I had been continuing apace with my woodturning "hobby" and had become pretty proficient, and was getting a lot of encouraging feedback on my work. I gave a lot of turnings away, and sold a few pieces, but was still accumulating a lot of work, and at a certain point it just made sense to try and get more serious about sales.

So I launched Salvage Woodworks and set up a booth at one of the local Farmers' Markets, which soon became several local Markets, as well as Arts and Craft shows, etc. I started a website for the business as well, and learned how to include an online storefront, but I was struggling to generate enough traffic on my own website to lead to brisk sales. My shoestring business launch just didn't include a suitable advertising budget. In the spring of 2011 I discovered Etsy and was struck by the number of shops that had really awesome, really handmade goods, and although the number of shops was a little daunting, the site's overall traffic and international presence was impressive, and the set up cost was minimal, so I launched my Etsy shop and here I am! I hope you enjoy it.

Rod Surber
Salvage Woodworks