Tree Farmer Activities

I'm going to a Tree Farm committee meeting tomorrow!  While I worked at Fairfield we had four Tree Farmers of The Year in my district.  Bernie Podolsky, Terry Wheeler, Jack and Beth Riley, and last year, Gary and Debbie Stratton.  We are meeting tomorrow at the Stratton Tree Farm to plan a field day in the Fall of this year.

All of our Tree Farmers are extra special.  We don't nominate anyone into the program unless they have done many things well.  Jack planted the shortleaf pines you see here when he was a young man.  He got into timber management twenty years ago and he and Beth kept me busy at their farm.  Jack was nearly crushed to death by a falling tree and he cut back on doing chainsaw work.  He needed a big dead tree cut six years ago, so I took it down for him.  He was able to break it down into firewood OK after it was on the ground.  Jack is gone now, and Beth has passed the farm down to the kids.  Here is the snag coming down.

Gary has been managing his timber since he bought the ground in 1975, and he is getting close to having a big harvest.  During the last ten years he has been doing some burns to get oak regeneration established, and it will be fun to walk through it tomorrow and see if the oak seedlings are popping.