From coastal salvage to a Palmer slab yard.

Gregory Bottjen has spent years moving between fisheries, logging work, and conifer experiments around Palmer, Alaska. Over the last decade, he learned which trees and cuts hold up best in Alaska conditions, and which boards carry real visual character.

Cantankerous Conifers exists to spread hardy conifers into Southcentral Alaska and share slab stock that comes from salvage or harvest below mean high tide in coastal Southeast Alaska.

This is not a live-tree clear-cut story. Inventory is rough-cut, air dried, and stickered, then sold board by board in person. Each slab is treated like a one-off piece of art.

For environmentalists, this is the core commitment: salvage first, live trees left standing, and a material stream shaped by water and time rather than industrial extraction. Gregory describes the coastal journey as zero-carbon delivery by Pacific decadal currents, with boards recovered from tide-driven paths and given a second life in Alaska homes and shops.