By Jim Merzenich
LCSWA president
We arrived at 12:15 p.m. Feb. 24 and the hosts invited us to their warming fire. Hot coffee, water, soda, and snacks were provided.
On the two days preceding the tour we had 3 inches of rain and local streams were at flood stage. This did not deter people from attending and enjoying the Linn County Small Woodlands Association event. We expected nine attendees and 17 showed up.
The 22-year-old stand that was being thinned is adjacent to the Fun Forest barn. This stand was planted at about an 8-foot spacing and contained more than 600 trees per acre.
While standing alongside the road, we watched Chris Melcher run the cut-to-length harvester, which cut each tree and then laid it horizontal to de-limb it. The machine was calibrated to separate the larger diameter “chip and saw” logs from the smaller pulpwood logs. The entire process takes about 30 seconds per tree.
The cut limbs are left on the ground and used as a cushion for the processor.
Melcher is a practicing forester and graduate of Oregon State University. After the demonstration, Melcher described the machine calibration and the reasoning for thinning the stand. He also described how trees self-prune dead branches over a short period of years.
After this demonstration host Jim Cota led a road tour where we viewed stands ranging from 20 to 80 years of age that had been managed and thinned over time. Hearing the life history of each stand, we learned that Fun Forest current owners are efficiently managing their land and stands for the generations to come.
The Linn County Chapter’s summer picnic will be held at the Fun Forest Barn on Saturday, July 18. Additional tours of the tree farm are planned for that event.