Big Sky Shavings was started in 2007 by partners Ed James, Bob Lanford and Ron Paige.  These three retirees - a rancher, a forestry professor and a banker – teamed up to turn the wood that no one else wants into a profit while creating some jobs in a county that struggles to develop economically.

Big Sky Shavings is located in Hall, Montana, behind Ed James' other manufacturing venture - the Sugar Loaf Wool Carding Mill.  The wood they use is all wood that is otherwise considered waste.  Some of it is pulled out of slash piles, where it would be burned eventually.  Other materials come from fuel reduction timber sales on national forest lands that nearby lumber mills can't use. Other piles are gathered from private ranchlands.  They use the bug-killed, fire-damaged and logging slash that sometimes even the pulp mill can't use. They can use anything that's big enough to make a shaving.

The idea for the plant grew from conversations Lanford, James and Paige had after a Granite County Economic Development Association meeting.  The largest private employer in the county is the local lumber mill, which has struggled recently as the timber market has taken a bad turn. Despite the fact that logging on national forest lands is a controversial idea these days, the amount of thinning projects on both public and private lands has increased as a way to control fire hazards and bug kill. 

The shavings produced by the plant are packaged and sold all over the West to a variety of animal husbandry operations.  Big Sky Shavings are also sold at Cenex and direct to a number of other places around the West.