Our walnut bins are empty.
We still have some nice walnut live edge slabs but if you are wanting regular rough sawn boards then we will disappoint. Walnut has been THE hot selling species for a few years now, understandably so since its look and working characteristics are unsurpassed. We have raised our price incrementally as keeping up with demand has been a challenge; this is our normal practice. It appears however that we were not aggressive enough in raising prices. I found nobody locally selling average walnut for less than $8/bf and our price for our finest boards was only $6.50. And ours has virtually no sapwood since we cut it off at the mill whereas sapwood usually fills the bins around town.
So rather than having no walnut at $6.50 we now have no walnut at $7 for an "A" board (very nice) and $8.50 for premium A+ material. It will still be a couple months or so before the air drying walnut we have will go through the kiln and be in the bins for sale. It will still be the cheapest in town and enviably nice stuff. (Have you shopped around? I have.)
Value is still our niche. But low prices without inventory isn't of much value to anybody.
For a similar reason eastern redcedar is no longer our cheapest offering. At $1.25 demand outstripped our supply of logs so we now ask $1.75 for the lowest grade (B) boards.
