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    About Us

     Indiana Forests

      

       Barclay Wood Toys and Blocks, Inc. is an Internet Company established on-line in 1999.  We are a small factory and we sell about four million blocks a year.  Our location in Indiana places us in the heart of the Midwest hardwood industry. Our blocks are full sized, school size unit blocks with a modulus of 1.375 by 2.75 by 5.5 inches.  Our toy unit blocks are made of American Hard Maple right here in Hebron from woods harvested in the northern Midwest including Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

      Hardwoods forests in the Midwest are not under stress from lumbering.  Total hardwood forest growth in Indiana is considerably faster than the timber harvest.  Net growth to removals is 2.6, meaning we grow 2.6 times the volume being removed by lumbering each year at the current time.  This is partly because a drift to cities has left fallow lands, but it is most particularly because the State has an active and knowledgeable cadre of professional managers and forestry researchers who oversee and supervise the condition of this natural resource.  To find out more about lumbering in Indiana, readers might want to visit the web site for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, here: http://www.in.gov/dnr/forestry/index.htm

         Lumbering constitutes 2.4% of Indiana's Gross National Product and employs over 30,000 Hoosiers. Annual wages in the lumbering industry totaled 1.3 Billion dollars in 2015. Forest-based manufacturing provides $3.2 billion in value added and more than $7 billion in value of shipments to Indiana's economy each year.  Indiana ranks first nationwide in the production of wood office furniture, wood kitchen cabinets, hardwood veneer, and numerous other wood products.  If you have an RV or a camper, it was probably made here.

       Our blocks are typical old fashioned unit blocks just like those when your grandparents bought them.  The machinery is a little better, but the process is essentially the same.  We use no rubberwood.  Our logs are not sprayed for tropical pests.  Our blocks are not fumigated with the insecticides required by international law to kill vermin in all shipping containers.  Our blocks are tested by an independent laboratory.  We are proud to make and sell a product that has over 200 years of history behind it and is, perhaps, the finest and most durable toy ever made.