For
many years George and Aimee Woodruff of Klickitat County, Wash.
owned and ran a local aviation company. An important client was
the U.S. Forest Service, for whom they provided reconnaissance
flights.
As a pilot
through the 1970s and 1980s, George Woodruff saw the growing
legions of clearcuts across the forests of the Northwest. This
influenced his thinking about his and Aimee's forests, 611
acres of mixed conifers that had been in the family for three
generations. He wanted to manage the family forestland more
protectively than what he was seeing from the air.
George's
parents and grandparents had harvested in the way prevalent
in their time, selectively cutting the most marketable old-growth
trees. Still, they had left more big trees standing than most
landowners in the region, and the results are visible today:
colossal ponderosa pine, larch, and fir remain scattered around
the property.
Admiring
these remnants and recalling the impressive old growth of his
youth, George Woodruff set out to bring back this type of forest.
He and Aimee developed a philosophy of uneven-aged forest management
that focuses on bringing back the natural forest. By leaving
the healthiest trees and letting them grow large, they have
foregone some near-term income in favor of a maturing, diverse
forest that is gaining financial value as standing inventory
increases.
The Woodruff
Tree Farm is comprised of woodland parcels clustered around
the scenic hamlet of Trout Lake, at the base of Mt. Adams in
south-central Washington, in a transition forest zone between
the west and east sides of the Cascade Range.
The Woodruffs'
approach to forestry has resulted in spacious stands of Douglas
fir and ponderosa pine, some of which are a century old, and
all offer rich habitat for old-growth forest wildlife like
spotted owls and bald eagles.
The tree
farm provides income and some employment for George, Aimee
and two of their grown children, who comprise the fourth generation
of the family to operate the Woodruff Tree Farm and who have
children of their own. Under the name Mt. Adams Lumber Company,
the Woodruffs own and operate a busy custom sawmill on the
farm, which makes money and diversifies the economic picture.
Forest
Families
The first
of the Woodruff Tree Farm property was acquired when George
Woodruff's maternal grandfather, George Pearson, homesteaded
in the area in the 1880s. George and Aimee now live on a part
of that original homestead.
The sawmilling
tradition comes from the other side of George's family, from
his father's father, who founded the Mount Adams Lumber Company
in nearby White Salmon in 1910. In the mid-1930s, the lumber
company sold its fixed sawmill and moved from work site to
work site with a portable mill. In the 1950s the portable mill
was moved to its permanent location, where it remains in operation.
Woodruff
remembers the big, old growth ponderosa pine and Douglas fir
harvested from his family's lands. As a boy, he would ride
through Trout Lake Valley on top of trucks loaded with giant
logs. "Beautiful logs, number two peeler grade,"
he recalls. "Back then there wasn't a good market for the lower
grades."
Woodruff's
father took over the company in the early 1920s and in the
following years purchased several hundred more acres that were
being sold for delinquent taxes. In the late 1940s, after leaving
the military, George Woodruff became actively involved in the
Mt. Adams Lumber Company, when his family was still harvesting
among its remaining old growth. George and Aimee were married
in 1945, and George's father died in 1954.
George continued
to manage the family forests as his father had. At one point
he traded 200 acres of the original land for lands owned by
the state in a swap that helped consolidate state holdings
in the area.
In the early
1970s his and Aimee's aviation company grew to occupy more
of their attention, and activity on the tree farm diminished.
When they began actively managing the family forests again
in the early1980s, George Woodruff was already thinking about
ways to reduce harvest rates and rebuild the tree farm's standing
inventory.
The tree
farm lies at the base of Mount Adams on the volcano's south
side. The scenic White Salmon River flows along the edge of
one of the Woodruff parcels on its way to the Columbia River
about 25 miles further south.
Although
Mt. Adams rises to 12,276 feet and is the third highest peak
in the Cascades, the Trout Lake Valley has an average elevation
of less than 2,000 feet. Its forests fall in the Cascade Range's
transitional zone, which contains a mixture of west- and east-side
species. Trees typical of the drier east side include ponderosa
pine, western larch and white fir, while the Douglas fir, western
hemlock and western red cedar are more representative of western
Washington and Oregon. Understory species include dogwood,
vine maple, and hazelnut.
The climate
is characterized by cold winters with heavy snowfall, and warm
dry summers. Average high and low temperatures are 23 degrees
Fahrenheit in winter and 82 degrees in summer. The area receives
around 45 inches of annual precipitation.
Site indexes
in the Woodruff stands range from 110 feet (per 100 years)
on the best Douglas fir sites, down to 80 in less productive
Douglas fir and ponderosa pine stands on lava rock soils. The
terrain is mostly gentle rolling hills with slopes not exceeding
30 percent.
The
Management Team
George's
and Aimee's priorities for the Woodruff Tree Farm and Mt. Adams
Lumber Company are to manage the family forests naturally,
save the forestland intact for their descendants, and generate
income.
Family
members do the management planning, conduct timber harvests,
haul logs and operate the custom sawmill. The team includes
George and Aimee, their son David, daughter Diane, and Diane's
husband, Fred Paxson. Another daughter, Karen, works outside
the forestry sector and is less involved in tree farm management.
David and Diane each have children of their own.
Fred Paxson
started working on the tree farm in the mid-1980s and has taken
over mill operations as well as a major portion of forest management.
David runs his own log-hauling and contracting businesses with
his wife and works with his father and brother-in-law on timber
harvests on the property.
Disagreements
crop up in decisions about management and harvests, just as
disagreements arise in most family businesses. "You save the
tree farm, but then the family fights over what to do with
it. There's really a potential for that,"
explains George Woodruff. For example, aesthetics were important
to some family members who did not want to conduct an intensive
harvest on a parcel in the public view next to Highway 141, while
others put more stress on the high income potential of the parcel's
timber.
In another
case, as a way to raise income Woodruff had suggested that
the family sell 20 scenic acres of land on the White Salmon
River, which is ideal for recreational use and is already used
every summer by campers with the family's permission.
"But I got turned down on that," he says.
"I think
estate taxes are the biggest disaster for a family farm, but
the family dispute of who's going to have their way is another
one."
The family
members are succeeding despite their differences in the challenge
to keep the Woodruff Tree Farm intact and manage it wisely.
Their forest management received top reviews from Dale Thornburgh,
a professional forester and California State University professor
who toured the property.
"There's
a family that's doing good forestry," Thornburgh said. "They're
cutting, they're yarding, they're hauling, they're planting,
and they're sawmilling, and doing all of the maintenance that
goes along with these things, too.
"They have
healthy and good-looking older stands. They definitely have
learned how to work with the forest."
Natural
Forest Management
After 25
years of being managed for uneven ages and greater tree dimensions,
today many stands on the Woodruff Tree Farm contain large components
of trees that are nearly a century old. These stands have been
thinned commercially several times, and the results of single
tree selection are clear to a visitor: The trees are straight
and tall, still vigorous in growth, and have healthy crowns.
In its management
the Woodruff family has selected out white fir in order to
promote more spacious, vigorous stands of large Douglas fir
and ponderosa pine. These are valuable when the market for
large-dimension sawtimber is strong. They use group selection
cuts to create small openings up to four acres in size, where
circumstances recommend it.
When Fred
Paxson first started managing the property he focused on salvage
of the white fir and other dead and dying conifers, and such
harvests continue. Paxson tries to access stands for salvage
harvests every other year, while still leaving snags for wildlife
and recruiting a multi-layered canopy. "This is kind of my
philosophy on it, to mimic what would have happened naturally,"
he says.
When they
harvest the older-growth areas they select trees based on two
concepts: leaving the best individuals and looking at crown
closure. Woodruff describes their selection process: "Open
up the crown just so they're not running into each other, and
try to pick out the dominant ones and leave them. That's kind
of hard to do sometimes when you're trying to cash in, but
if you're doing it for forest management, that's the way to
do it. Those are the ones that will survive and do the best."
When the
Woodruffs replant, they don't get their Douglas fir seedlings
from local sources, but when purchasing seedlings they do specify
the elevation and general growing region. They let some areas
regenerate naturally, depending on seed years. Ponderosa pine
and white fir usually recruit naturally in sufficient numbers.
When brush,
mostly elderberry and ceanothus, competes with young trees,
the family relies on hand clearing and browsing by elk and
deer to take care of it. Paxson says he is leery of using herbicides.
In general,
forest health problems are minor on the properties, with occasional
bark beetle outbreaks in the older ponderosa pine and dwarf
mistletoe common in some conifer stands, but not widespread
or crippling to growth. Armillaria root rot pockets are increasing
in susceptible stand types: young-growth ponderosa pine and
Douglas fir on volcanic soil.
Stands
on the Woodruff property that have been actively thinned provide
a woodland structure valuable for wildlife habitat. The Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife told the Woodruffs that they
had fostered ideal spotted owl habitat in their older stands
by preserving dominant, healthy trees and opening the canopy
for growth.
In fact,
the family has not been able to harvest on one 80-acre tract
of land because it is the best habitat in a designated "owl
circle" (an area of restricted logging activity within 1.8
miles of a known nest site). Paxson says the endangered species
regulations don't bother him. "I figure that is part of the
business,"
he said. "If we have good habitat, we must be doing something
right."
Although
there are risks to managing for older trees, Paxson is aware
of the importance of late-seral conditions for wildlife habitat,
and still wants to manage for these types of conditions on
most parts of the tree farm.
One piece
of the property borders the White Salmon River. Since it is
designated as a wild and scenic river, the law limits harvest
to 30 percent of the standing volume within a 200-foot buffer
along the river. The 50 feet closest to the river comprise
a no-cut zone, and these groves harbor some eagle roosting
trees. Paxson said logging crews usually don't enter the buffer
area at all.
Logging
and Roads
None of
the Woodruffs' property is on steep slopes, and when logging
they use a rubber-tired skidder, with cables rather than a
grapple, for all their harvest operations. They choose their
logging time when the weather is right.
"For the
small volume of logging we do, we shouldn't have to fight the
weather. And this is what I try to encourage the boys to do," George
Woodruff says. "If it's real dry in the summertime, there's
no sense in being out there working and risking getting a fire
started. And in the winter there's no sense in going out here
and pushing snow in order to get your logs out."
So they
do a lot of their logging in the spring and fall. Spring is
a good time to sell logs before the summer glut. The soil also
is drier in these seasons and there are fewer dogwood leaves
to obstruct the selection of trees for harvest.
When family
members conduct a single-tree selection harvest they select
their trees as they go. When they hire outside fallers, they
go through the woods beforehand and mark the trees to be cut.
"Doing
it selectively, it takes quite a bit more time to do it right," Paxson
says. "White fir is not as hardy of a species as Doug fir.
In some sections we've lost an awful lot of white fir. It's
just susceptible to injury and disease. You've got to be careful
when you're logging around it. Just a little scar can be fatal."
Slash is
usually left in place, except where it would impede planting.
Sometimes it is burned, and Paxson suspects that this helps
young Douglas fir. On one visit to the property he pointed
out Douglas fir coming up on old slash burn piles and growing
much more rapidly than the trees around them.
The Woodruffs
have had some trouble with water damage to logging roads, but
their road network is increasingly well established. They have
retired poorly located or overly steep roads and rerouted them.
They now have permanent landings, and during harvests they
try to keep to existing skid trails.
They use
an aging logging truck with a loader on it, which they keep
on back roads to pick up their logs without getting on the
highway.
Forest
Income
Beginning
in the 1980s, George and Aimee Woodruff started to depend less
on their aviation company for their livelihood and increasingly
on the tree farm and lumber company. Today they harvest between
75,000 and 150,000 board feet per year from their 611 acres,
and this provides the main incomes for two families: George
and Aimee, as well as Fred and Diane Paxson and their children.
Under the
financial arrangement on the Woodruff Tree Farm, all timber
harvest proceeds go to the Mt. Adams Lumber Company. With those
funds the lumber company pays the costs of harvest and property
taxes. About half of the money then returns to the owners.
Products include saw logs for the domestic and export markets,
dimensional lumber produced at their own mill, poles, and pulp.
One expense
is the annual contribution to an estate tax fund, where money
is accruing for the eventual defrayal of estate taxes. George
and Aimee are willing to make this substantial investment if
it will reduce the likelihood of the land being sold off when
it passes to their children. The family also has established
a limited liability partnership to ease the estate tax burden.
Go to:
Chapter
1
Chapter
2
Chapter 3
Chapter
4
Chapter
5
Chapter
6
Chapter
7
And
stay tuned for further episodes of "Stewardship Forestry
at Work"... |
