Greenchain answer

My stepfather, Al Sharpe, owned the Whithorn Lumber company sawmill when I lived in Whitethorn in the 1940s so I learned alot about the mill and the logging industry. The greenchain was a platform that had chains on either side of the top of it. When the logs were pulled out from the log pond, they were cut up into different size boards. The lumber was of course green and had not cured like the wood we put into a fireplace. Green wood is heavy with sap. The men would stand beside the greenchain and as it rolled the lumber along and pulled the boards off, according to size. They then carefully stacked them on a pile of lumber sitting just below their station. As the boards on the greenchain rolled past a man, he would pull 2x4s or 4x4s or other sizes that were the same size as the boards on his particular stack. It wouldn't do to have boards of different sizes on the same stack. The lumber could then be loaded on a truck for shipping according to order.

An interesting phenomena sometimes occurred when a man from a town such as Eureka, often called a "city slicker" hired on to pull the greenchain. City Slickers or people who lived outside the Whithorn Valley usually weren't welcome. When an "outsider" tried to pull the greenchain, the lumberjacks would have the greenchain speeded up so everyone had to pull faster. Of course the "outsider" who was generally not in shape for that kind of heavy work would fall behind. His boards would go to the end of the greenchain and fall off the end of it. This often resulted in the man giving up altogether or getting fired by the owner.