Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Want to learn how to make paper? Paper airplanes? Yoyo tricks? History from a pioneer cemetery? How to create a pond?
This is your last chance if you plan to do it at Tree Day.
The event, held annually for 27 years at Udell’s Happy Valley Tree Farm on Bellinger Scale Road, between Sweet Home and Lebanon, will be discontinued following this weekend’s Family Adventure Day and Tree Day, according to its organizers.
“It’s a lot of work to put it on,” said Melanie McCabe of the Oregon State University Linn County Extension Service of the two-day event, Aug. 18-19.
Fay Sallee, daughter of Bert and Betty Udell, said her parents organized the first Tree Day in 1980 “to educate small woodland owners about tree farming.”
“There are a lot of different aspects of the forest that you can learn on this particular farm,” she said.
In the beginning, Tree Day was largely a series of walking tours, in which participants would walk from station to station on the Udells’ 600-acre farm and learn about a variety of woodland-related subjects.
“The purpose was to acquaint people with tree farming and multiple-use tree farming, Sallee said. She said the emphasis was on selective logging as opposed to clearcutting.
“My husband says it’s like carrots,” said Betty Udell of their logging philosophy. “When you cut the dominant tree, it gives the others room to grow.”
Family Adventure Day was added later, Sallee said.
These days the affair is a major production, with Family Adventure Day on Friday and Tree Day on Saturday.
Family Adventure Day, which is booked up, includes classes ranging from archery to how to make beebread, to learning to identify native plants and flowers, making mudpies, learning to use global positioning systems to go geo-caching (treasure hunting).
Tree Day includes forestry booths and demonstration of forestry skills, a firefighting demonstration, 5K and 10K walks in the woods, a tour of ponderosa pine plantations, a tree-to-lumber exhibition, a musket re-enactment, paper airplane and disc golf competitions, and a variety of children’s activities. Participants can see the Ronald Reagan Tree, planted by the Udells after they met the president in 1983.
“We met him in Southern Oregon and they gave him this tree,” Betty Udell recalled. “He looked kind of lost, so we asked him if he wanted us to take it and plant it for him. He said yes.”
Another tour will visit a cemetery that includes graves of people who lived near the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
“Saturday is wide open,” Sallee said. “People can come and take part in activities of all kinds.
Sallee’s son David is going to put on his last Tree Day juggling show on Friday and Saturday nights and will give juggling lessons on Saturday.
Early events were small, usually with a few dozen participants, she said, but Tree Day grew in popularity after the Albany Fitwalkers, a local chapter of the American Volkssport Association, decided to include Tree Day on its 1990 schedule.
“They brought about 1,000 people,” Sallee said, adding that more recently attendance has been around a few hundred each year.
She said the event is being discontinued for a couple of reasons.
One is that other events have begun on that particular weekend.
“When they started, there was not a lot of competition for that Saturday,” she said. “Now it’s getting to the point where there are a lot of things going on. People have to pick and choose what they want to do.
“It was easy for people to come and help put it on. It takes a lot of volunteers to put on this project.”
Sallee said she also has a new grandson living in Toronto, Canada.
“I work heavily with 4-H, so the only time I can go out and see them is this time of the year,” she said.
The other factor, Sallee said, is that other organizations, such as the Oregon Gardens, the Oregon Forest Resource Institute and Oregon Small Woodlands, are now offering forestry information and tours, so the need for Tree Day has diminished.
She said one thing she wants to make clear is that the Udells are not going anywhere.
“Probably the biggest question I get is ‘Are they selling the tree farm?’ she said. “The answer is ‘absolutely not.’ We’re just not doing Tree Day.”
For more information on Family Adventure Day and Tree Day, contact the OSU Extension office at 967-3871.