Locally, we have small Amish sawmills. They had contracts for years with the state to provide split logs for trails and black locust fence posts. About a year ago, Wisconsin closed a lot of the waysides and curtailed building and maintenance in the parks. Since the cheapest local firewood is slab, there was a lot of worry that the mills would close.
Instead, those capitalistic Amish went out and found other contracts and are still in business.
They burned their sawdust, much to the disgust of the local leftists, who fume about air pollution. Granted, I wouldn’t want to be downwind when they do this. I have heard that instead of burning it, they are selling it for wood pellets.
I was wondering about the bark. About all we do with it now, at the end of the heating season, is chip it for mulch. I just wondered if it could be used in this process. There has been kitty litter made from corn cobs (don’t know how good it is). Again, I wonder if cobs would work in this process.
I’ll have to do some looking, but it seems like any organic material should work for this process. But there may be substances that don’t turn out as aesthetically pleasing, appearance wise, as others. Don’t know how many cow pastures you’ve kicked through, but shrooms LOVE cow patties. So for potential customers, showing them a product that literally looks like crap might not sell well.