The fastest way to farm Lumber
Lumber isn't gathered directly — chop Small Logs with Cut, then hand them to a Chop-specialty Pokémon like Scyther to mill them into Lumber in bulk.
Lumber is a refined material, so the fast path is really two steps: harvest raw Small Logs, then convert them. Use Cut (taught early by Scyther in Withered Wasteland) on any tree to fell it and drop Small Logs; trees respawn, and since Lumber shows up in nearly every early building and furniture recipe, it's worth clearing every tree you pass rather than making dedicated farming trips.
The conversion step is the real bottleneck. Hand your Small Logs to a Pokémon with the Chop specialty — Scyther, Pinsir, and Heracross all qualify — and they process them into milled Lumber. Because Scyther is also the Pokémon that teaches Cut, befriending it early effectively covers both halves of the lumber pipeline through one relationship, which is why guides consistently list Chop as the single most important specialty to unlock first.
Regions: Withered Wasteland