Another work party!

We had so much fun last Saturday digging a trail from the 580 road down through the recently harvested pole sale that we're doing it again! About half of the 1600 foot trail is completed. If we can accomplish the same distance this weekend, the majority of grunt work will be done and only some easy touch-ups and finish work will remain. All of the details for the coming weekend are the same as listed on the flyer in the pervious post, but the date is this Saturday, October 12th at 9am. Please join us for a morning and afternoon of hardworking fun before the Beaver football game!

Update on the Cameron Tract work party!

Due to a low number of volunteers signed up last Saturday, the work party to build a trail on the Cameron Tract was unfortunately canceled. We're hoping this was simply due to bad weather and a Beaver home game rather than a lack of interest! Hopefully a nicer weather forecast for the coming Saturday will bring people in.  If you have any interest in volunteering for the College Forests and making a difference in your community, this is a great opportunity! Please RSVP to Doug or email me with questions.

Cameron Tract trail building volunteer work party!

This is a great opportunity to volunteer for the College Forests at Oregon State, get dirty, sweat and learn a thing or two about trail building and recreation in an actively managed forest!

The Cameron Tract Twilight Tour

The first twilight tour in several years on the Cameron Tract took place last Wednesday, August 28^th. The goal of the tour was to highlight the currently active utility pole sale and provide an outreach opportunity to the Oregon Small Woodlands Association and to the neighbors living adjacent to the tract. Leading the tour were Steve Pilkerton, an engineer with the College Forests and Brad Withrow-Robinson who works for OSU Extension Services. Also on hand to speak and answer questions were Bo and Bobby of Cross and Crown logging who have been responsible for the felling of the trees as well as Nels Jensen and Todd Merritt of Pacific Enterprises who are the pole buyers and markers. In case you missed out, Steve started out by giving a brief history of the Cameron Tract and spoke about what the College Forests is hoping to accomplish with the pole sale.  A pole sale has been considered for this stand of timber in the Cameron for several years, but only recently has the pole market been lucrative enough to make this a worthwhile venture. Even so, the stand is still being thinned very lightly (about 8-10 poles per acre) and does have the potential to be re-thinned in the future. According to Steve, a high quality Douglas Fir tree pole has a life expectancy of 60 years. The cost to harvest and treat a wooden pole is much cheaper than manufacturing a pole from a man-made material. 

Steve Pilkerton giving a quick history lesson

Currently, the fallers have fell 53 poles at an average length of 90 feet and an average diameter of 19.7 inches. The Nels and Todd talked about what they look for when selecting a pole (see my blog post below about marking the pole sale). Some of the trees in the Cameron are tall enough to yield either two poles or a pole and a saw log. When the pole buyers mark the poles, there is a certain margin of error as there may be defect in the top of the tree that isn’t visible from the ground, such as knots. The trees could also suffer some damage when they hit the ground. So far, about 80% of the trees that were marked and fallen as poles are meet the pole criteria. The rest will be sold as saw logs. A high quality pole can sell for up to double the price of a saw log. On the flip side, the cost of hauling a pole is also almost double.

Pole buyer Nels Jensen  of Pacific Enterprises explaining how the poles were marked and selected

 Some of the Cameron residents had questions about the hauling of the Cameron Pole logs. Unfortunately, a timeline for trucking the logs out of the Cameron and down the haul route towards highway 99 is still TBD. When hauling does begin, there will only be 1-2 truck loads a day coming out, which will have both a lead and tail truck to help mitigate safety for the long load on the curvy roads. The group also viewed the road construction including a large culvert replacement to accommodate the track traffic hauling both equipment and the long harvested poles.

Combined, about 20 members of OSWA and Cameron Tract neighbors attended. The great turn out shows how important demonstration forests like these can be for educating small scale forest owners about potential management options for their own land emphasizing forest health, revenue and aesthetics.  

Important Upcoming Dates for Cameron Tract Activities!

August 28th: Cameron Tract Twilight Tour.
Elizabeth Starker Cameron Demonstration Forest Pole Harvest Tour
The twilight tour will look at the pole harvest from marked standing
trees, to poles on the landing, and road issues. This is a little bit
different than a regular log harvest, requiring different marketing,
harvesting techniques, road requirements and other things. It is a
great chance to get close up and learn about  the process from the
experienced folks at the OSU College Forests, pole buyers from Pacific
Wood Preserving, logging representative from Cross and Crown, and
other participants.

Date: Wednesday August 28th
Time: 5:30 pm
Location: SEE ABOVE – ADAIR FIRE DEPT. SUBSTATION,  37096 SOAP CREEK ROAD
Directions:  Points North of Adair Village:
South on Hwy 99W to Coffin Butte Road (landfill), west on Coffin Butte
Road to Soap Creek Road.  Continue west on Soap Creek Road,
approximately 3 miles to the Adair Fire Substation.
Points south, west, and east of Adair Village:
North on Hwy 99W to Tampico Road, turn west onto Soap Creek Road,
approximately 3 miles to the Adair Fire Substation.  Alternatively,
take Highland Drive north to Lewisburg Road, west on Lewisburg Road to
Sulphur Springs Road, over the hill and down to Soap Creek Road, then
east approximately 1 mile to the Fire Substation.

September 28th and October 5th will be work party days to give
volunteers the opportunity to help with the construction of the trail
linking the lower Fire House road/trail with the 580 road/trail of the
McDondald Forest. Stay tuned for more information!

August Update!

Another update! New culverts have been installed and the widening of the Firehouse road (trail) was completed last week. Felling of the trees is expected to begin either this coming week or the next. We are in the process of trying to plan an educational Twilight tour to discuss the mechanics of a pole sale, so stay tuned for updates! This will hopefully happen by the end of the month.

The haul route for the utility pole logs will be Soap Creek Road, to Hwy 99 to avoid the winding and busy Lewisberg Saddle area. The log trucks will have a pilot car until they reach Tampico Road. After felling starts, there will be an estimated 4 loads per day between the hours of 4am to 1pm. We're still not entirely sure how long it will take to extract all the poles, but 2-3 weeks is a safe bet. See the post below for more information on utility pole sales in Douglas Fir stands!

Marking the Pole Sale

During the last week in July, pole buyers from Pacific Wood Preserving came to pre-mark the poles for the Cameron Pole sale which will be logged later this summer. The map in the post below shows the location of the pole sale which spans about 20 acres adjacent the Firehouse Trail (or south road) in the interior of the tract. Those 20 acres contain some of the tallest, straightest, most perfect Douglas Fir trees I have ever seen! It was thought several years ago by my advisor John Bliss that the stand would be an ideal utility pole harvest. Luckily it seems he was right!

Douglas Fir trees in the Cameron Pole sale

Boundary tag for the pole sale

Steve Pilkerton, an engineer from the College Forests, Brad Withrow-Robinson and myself had the pleasure of tagging along and learning a little about the process. Marking poles is surprisingly intuitive. A pole tree should be relatively uniform in diameter from DBH (diameter at breast height) until about 60 to 90 feet up the tree. The tree also has to be as strait as possible with little sweep and free from defect such as rot, funny branches, wiggles, crooks and sweep. Below are some examples of what the markers tried to avoid:

This tree had a broken top when it was younger

Tree with a defective arm

Tree with a swollen butt and wood sweep

The sap on this tree is indicative of a scar or heart rot

 

The trees selected for cutting by the pole buyers were marked with a red band

We have a winner!

Currently, timber prices are the highest they've been for several years, with the utility pole market being even more lucrative. Some places of the unit will be a little clumpy, but over all the trees will be cut uniformly over the entire stand to mitigate erosion and wind damage. This pole sale is an ideal demonstration of what a small, private woodland owner could do with a similar stand of timber. The goal of this particular pole sale is to remove only 8-10 trees per acre. Even a such a small volume of timber will generate a substantial revenue for the Cameron Tract that will help contribute to future education, recreation and demonstration projects!

It was a beautiful morning on the Cameron Tract!