By The Bemidji Pioneer
Published 11:50 am on December 15, 2025
While it’s been estimated that approximately 9 million trees were lost in the June 21 storm that swept through Bemidji, thanks to Heim Log Homes, 122 of those trees are living on.
Kendra Heim and her husband, Nate, own and operate the Kelliher-based log home company, which started in 1980 and specializes in restoring and building handcrafted log homes all over the country. Nate is a 2005 graduate of Bemidji State University, graduating with a degree in construction management. His father, Ron, founded Heim Log Homes and is a 1975 BSU grad.
Due to the Heim family’s deep ties to the area, along with Kendra running Heim Realty in Bemidji, the morning after the storm hit, they started receiving dozens of calls from folks with downed trees — primarily red and white pines — they thought could be worth salvaging.
“Right away, Nate went and got his loader truck and crane, with our big focus being on helping people get these trees off their roofs,” Kendra recalled. “My father-in-law came up that very next morning after the storm and we kind of made it a team effort. Altogether, we took anywhere from 45 to 55 trees just off roofs.”
After building a relationship with the city years ago by constructing the pavilions at both Diamond Point and Cameron Parks, the Heims also received a call from city workers about collecting trees from the parks following the storm.
Diamond Point was hit especially hard, leaving a now-sparse landscape after it was hit badly by a storm in July 2024, and a majority of the remaining large trees were toppled during the storm this year.
“We had probably about three big loader trucks full of logs just from Diamond Point that we salvaged, a lot of red and white pine,” Kendra said.
She explained that the majority of the white pine from Diamond Point is being used for timbers, tongue-and-groove, accents and log home features, while the red pine has been used for constructing log homes due to the wood’s increased structural integrity.
“We’ve already used some of the logs in a build on a home for a couple in Wisconsin that was just finished,” Kendra said. “We also used some of the white pine from Diamond Point for log accents in a family cabin being built up on Red Lake. And a lot of the other logs are already claimed for future builds, so it’s really nice that we can repurpose them.”
This isn’t the first time the family has collected logs from the community, Kendra said, as they went through something similar after a bad storm hit the area in 2016.
“We weren’t doing it for money, we just wanted to help,” Kendra said. “I know we took a lot of trees off of state troopers’, law enforcement and teachers’ houses. Not that it was our criteria, but we met and helped a lot of nice people. We were able to tarp up some people’s roofs to make sure they were weatherproof. Since, of course, it had to rain the next day.”
The couple lives north of town near Buena Vista, around the area where the storm died out, so they were lucky to only have one tree down in their own yard. That allowed them to give all of their focus to others who were severely impacted without a moment’s hesitation.
“We were really lucky, and so I said to Nate, ‘We have to go help, just think about all of these people that are getting knocks on their doors from tree companies saying, well, for $6,000, I can clean up your trees.’”
And she knew they couldn’t charge for their assistance.
“Some people don’t have the means to run a chainsaw. They don’t have thousands of dollars to remove a necessary tree going through their living room, or fix a big hole that’s causing water damage in their kitchen,” Kendra said. “So I knew we needed to go help, but we couldn’t charge people to do this.”
In the midst of their efforts, Kendra said they heard many stories of tree companies coming from outside the area attempting to charge people thousands just for basic tree removal.
“If somebody had to pay $3,000 to remove a tree from their roof — like some of these costs were astronomical — they can’t pay their mortgage the next few months. And that’s just so defeating for so many people,” Kendra said. “So we definitely tried to do our part in helping and in trying to mitigate that issue.”
While the service was simply a neighborly act of kindness for the Heims, it was also a way to help repurpose the logs and give the lost trees a second life.
“We didn’t necessarily need the logs, but it allowed us to get them out of people’s way who didn’t need them,” she said. “And we can repurpose the logs, and it feels good to be able to salvage and reuse them.”
As many have shared since the storm, Kendra was pleasantly surprised at the humanity she and her family witnessed in those first several days as the community worked to recover from the devastation.
“It was really great to see the community come together and how people were raking each other’s yards and just pitching in to do whatever was needed,” she said. “And what was pretty awesome was in 72 hours, you could really see how much was done and it was really nice to see people come together and get things cleaned up.”
Written by Annalise Braught
Join the Replant Our Roots Project
You can join Bemidji State University's reforestation efforts by contributing to the Replant Our Roots Project and sponsoring a tree that will be planted on campus. Gifts can also be designated to Northwest Technical College, which saw its campus sustain damage as well.
Tree donations are $1,000 each, and your gift will be a permanent, tangible example of your legacy at Bemidji State or NTC. Every full donation comes with a plaque to recognize the donor and/or anyone they'd like to dedicate the tree to. Donors will also be invited to campus in the spring of 2026 to plant their tree themselves.
As a thank you from Bemidji State and NTC, every full donation comes with a wooden gift to commemorate each donor's dedication to tree planting and to our cornerstone value of sustainability. This gift is made possible through an exclusive partnership with Woodchuck USA, whose products are all sustainably sourced and made.
If you want to be involved but can't sponsor a full tree, give whatever amount you can and you can still be part of this important initiative at Bemidji State and Northwest Technical College. Every $1,000 raised means a new tree will rise up, so every dollar matters as we grow a new look for the College and University in the Pines.
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