Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The last tour ever for Tree Day leaves at 2 p.m., Sherm Sallee announced Saturday at Happy Valley Tree Farm, where forest owners Bert and Betty Udell have hosted the annual event for 27 years.
Family organizers, like Sallee, won’t miss all the hard work that goes into putting on the event, but they will miss the friends they see each year.
Across the tree farm, families learned about every aspect of forestry, taking tours through stands dedicated to thinning experiments, watching trees turn into lumber on a portable mill, learning to buck logs the old-fashioned way and many other activities.
Brad Tye and his family from Burlington, Ontario, was at the event for the third time. His wife, Christy Tye, is Sallee’s daughter, and she has been involved with the event over the last quarter century.
Tye said he’s more of an urbanite, but “this is a great thing for the kids. It’s too bad it’s coming to an end, but there’s reasons.”
“It’s a really neat place,” said Jeff Rice of Sweet Home. Rice has been involved in putting on the event for six or seven years, and he used to attend before he began helping.
“Jeff was in our 4-H class and Fay (Sallee’s wife) has a habit of getting 4-H kids out here,” Sallee said.
Rice will miss Tree Day, he said. He enjoys spending sunny days in the woods folding paper airplanes with the children.
“This parking lot’s fuller than it’s been,” Sallee said. Tree Day easily drew more than 500 participants this year, probably because it is the last one.
Sallee and his wife moved back to the area in 1985, and they have been helping out his in-laws ever since. Fay Sallee is the daughter of the Udells.
“She got started adding the kids activities,” Sallee said. “The kids and family Adventure Day (held the day before Tree Day) was her idea to add it.”
Until then, Tree Day was more for land owners and others interested in forestry, Sallee said.
It’s been “time well spent,” Sallee said. Will he miss it? “No.”
On the other hand, “we’ve met some really fantastic people that have been coming back year after year,” Sallee said. “We are going to miss that.”
In fact, some of the regulars attending Adventure Day and Tree Day want to have reunions, he said. One such woman started coming as a single parent. It was a safe place for her to camp and learn. She was amazed at how much fun she and her children could have for $2.
Losing that part of the event will be hard, Sallee said.
The end of Tree Day doesn’t mean an end to all of the other activities at Happy Valley throughout the year, Sallee said. All of those will continue. They include Scouting events and a School District 55 forestry field trip for sixth-graders.
Tree Day is about educating people about forestry, Sallee said, and he thinks that it has had an impact, along with the other regular events at the tree farm.
“I think it’s very much met that goal,” he said.
“It’s sure different than it was when we first started,” said Jan Udell, the Udells’ youngest daughter. Tours used to involve a lot of walking. Since then, the family added children’s activities and pickup tours plus many new stations with a variety of activities.
“It’s a lot of work to put it together,” she said, and her parents are 86 and 87 years old.
“It will be missed,” she said.
The tree farm also is the site of a 25-year Oregon State University experiment with thinning practices.
Bert Udell has always done what he calls “top thinning,” Sallee said. This form of thinning means he takes the largest trees, leaving the smaller trees room to grow. By comparison, the Forest Service tends to take the smaller trees, called “bottom thinning.”
OSU set up five one-fifth-acre plots. Trees in each are either “top thinned or “bottom thinned,” with the fifth plot being a control.
That experiment will come to an end this year, and researchers will find out which method provides the most value, Sallee said.