Forest Owners Field Day

We recently attended a "Forest Owners Field Day" north of Seattle. Sponsored by the Family Forest Foundation and a host of other organizations, this "out in the woods," all-day event offered 1-hour seminars on all sorts of topics; there were so many topics, in fact, that Corinne and I decided that we needed to split up so that we could attend as many as possible!

All of the seminars we attended were great:

• Protecting Your Forest From Wildfire
  
• Small Scale Forestry Equipment
  
• Special Forest Products
  
• Field and Pasture Afforestation
  
• Wildlife Damage Control
  
• Red Alder Management
  
• Pruning Trees
  
• Identifying and Managing Tree Root Rots
  
• Site Preparation and Reforestation
  
• Early Plantation Care and Pre-Commercial Thinning
  
• Chainsaw Safety and Maintenance
  
• Forestry Taxes - Current Use Property Taxation and Timber Excise Taxes

...and believe it or not, there were even more that we wanted to attend but just couldn't fit in!

The small scale forestry equipment one was particularly exciting. Presented by the owner of Future Forestry Products, this class included demonstrations of all sorts of cool equipment specially and intelligently designed for the small-scale forester. Such cool toys!

Events like this one really energize us about working on our forest. There were probably 200 other small forest owners in attendance. In the near future, we hope to: buy several products from FFP; buy a new chainsaw (with more safety features and a smaller bar) and safety equipment like chaps, etc.; and we're going to try our hand at doing some thinning of trees ourselves.

- Mike (& Corinne)