It was an ideal summer to cut trees.
The weather in Maine’s Penobscot county – one of the most heavily forested counties in a state dense with trees – was warm and dry. Yet even as the county’s wood had grown to an ideal size to harvest, the machines Molly London typically uses sat idle.
London and her husband, Alex, who started a logging business nearly 10 years ago, had been waiting weeks for replacement machine parts that were no longer stocked locally because tariffs had made them too expensive.
By August, she and her husband decided to shut down their business, WW London Woodlot Management Company, exhausted after years of fighting ever-climbing costs.
