I still need to get around to getting me a sawmill ... or building my own.
Not a big one, you understand ... one of those portable types I can pack in the trunk of my car and take out to the field!
I have a battery powered chainsaw (which I used to cut down that mesquite tree and cut it into sections), but I have nothing to use to "slab" it with in order to mill the wood into something more manageable. At the moment, I'm limited to cutting off a section of branch that has some nice red in the middle, and turning away all the loose bark and cream colored sapwood on the outside, and hoping that there's enough of that nice strong red in the middle for a full blank.
Beyond that, I can (and have) used a hatchet to split a larger log into quarters and then turned some blanks out of the middle sections, but it's rough going .... termites put some holes through the heartwood.
I didn't go after a life tree ... just one that had been dead for some time and dried out. No need for me to dry or season it.