The forest and the trees

In 2003, we purchased a sizeable piece of raw forest land, in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains, near Hood Canal(click on the map for a much bigger version with an arrow pointing to the general area of our land) We initially viewed this land as strictly a future homestead, viewing the young stands of mostly alder trees as "easy to clear". The trees you see in the picture at the top of this blog are all Red Alder. After we purchased the property, we began educating ourselves about this tree. As you can read here, Alder is extremely valuable as a timber resource! Not only are alder saw log prices higher than Douglas Fir in recent years, it also: puts nitrogen back into the soil, ROI in 30 to 50 years compared to over 70 for conifers, it does not have pitch or extensive lower branches so it is actually used to create fire breaks in softwood plantations, can be made into beautiful furniture and cabinets, imparts wonderful flavor to foods when used in cooking (especially salmon, it's Ivar's Salmon House's signature method of cooking!) and makes good firewood with very few branches to cut. Alder forests are also the perfect growing space from many "special" forest/non-timber products, such as herbs (ginsing, golden seal, bloodroot), mushrooms, berries and floral products such as salal. Lots of other ideas here. So we revised our thinking about this property and how to be the best stewards of it. We hired a forester to file our forest management plan, as required by the State. We have started the process of thinning and removal of non-commercial trees that are in direct competition with the Alder (sprouted big leaf maple).