Boardman Tree Farm in Oregon, USA

Sep 10, 2013 15 comments

The Boardman Tree Farm is located in Morrow, county Oregon, along Interstate 84, 5 miles west of the I-82 junction. Owned by the GreenWood Tree Farm Fund and operated by a Portland-based tree farm management group GreenWood Resources, this 25,000-acres land consist of thousands and thousands of hybrid poplar trees. The trees are neatly arranged in evenly spaced rows, and they are about the same size, same height and same thickness. It’s such a surreal sight that GreenWood Resources would conduct group tours for those visitors willing to invest some time and effort.

The Boardman Tree Farm is just one of the many holdings of GreenWood Resources in North America, South America, and China, but clearly one of the most accessible, being located next to the interstate. The farm is broken up into 40-acre and 70-acre plots with access roads separating the plots from each other on all sides. Each plots consist of about 600 trees per acre.

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For irrigation, the farm employs nine 1,000 horsepower pumps that pull water from the Columbia River at a rate of up to 117,000 gallons per minute. In fact, the facility is the largest drip irrigation system in the country, with over 9,000 miles of drip line. All of this is controlled by computer so that each tree gets a very precise amount of water, allowing it to grow at an incredible rate while not wasting water or money. Use of chemical pesticides is limited, as integrated pest management processes are employed. Sawdust and the refuse from harvesting is chopped back into the soil, limiting the need for chemical fertilizers.

The type of tree they grow at the Boardman tree farm is called Pacific Albus, a trademarked name that loosely means Pacific whitewood. It’s a hybrid of four to five different poplars, cross strained for better yield, faster growth, less use of irrigation water, straighter growth, and things like that.

The trees take 10 to 12 years to reach maturity after which they are felled and sent to the mill where they are shaped into boards and wood chips. The wood chips are used for paper manufacturing, while older, taller trees are harvested for lumber products. Any part of the trees that can’t be made into boards is turned into pulp or hog fuel. Even the sawdust from the sanding mill is compressed into bricks for fireplaces and wood stoves.

Harvesting is contracted out to independent logging companies. Joe Nash, who is responsible for felling and harvesting of the trees at the Boardman Tree Farm, says, “On a normal day, we’ll do 25 loads of saw logs and another 25 loads of chip logs from the saw log side, and probably 13 loads of chip logs from our thinning side. So that’s up around 65 loads a day that we’ll deliver to the mill, and each load averages about 35 to 40 net tons.”

The sawmill, operated by GreenWood Resources, is located roughly in the center of the tree farm, and process the produce of 2,000 acres of land each year.

The processed lumber is then sold all over the world with China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, along with Mexico, aa the biggest off-shore buyers.

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Sources: Timber West, Hollis Bredeweg

Comments

  1. I can't count the number of times I've driven past this place. It's hypnotic to watch the rows of trees go by.

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  2. Absolutely beautiful. We just drove by there and I thought the trees were so pretty so I googled it and found this page. Do these trees grow in the south? We are from Alabama.

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  3. I agree with you Judy. The sight is amazing. I had never heard of the place before I first drove by on the interstate. I am going to Alabama in a couple of weeks for the first time. Excited to see nature in the south.

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  4. Interesting to read "surreal". We thought it and my husband, driving, said it as I googled the farm info. Especially on a foggy, cold day in November watching the bare trunks of metered rows receding into the fog. Cool!

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  5. Does anyone know if you can walk around in it?

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    1. T has private property/ no trespassing sign everywhere. I lived a few miles from this place. I also bought poplar trees from the guy that helped developed these farms

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  6. Just drove by, I want a grove with a little cottage right in the middle.

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  7. My fiance and I are truck drivers and drive by here once a week we always wondered what the trees were. So I googled this page read the information and enjoyed the article now we know what the trees are about.
    Thank you and keep up the good work

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  8. Completely AMAZING. Just a shame those beautiful trees get cut down every 10 to 12 years. Can you imagine if they never got cut down. The human race probley wont even havr a need for paper in 10 years.

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    1. Did you read about the tree farm? It's much more than paper. You realize that they need to cut down and plant more trees or they go out of business, right? What good is it to plant some acres of trees if you're never going to harvest them. How about you go plant some trees on your acerage and never cut them down so you can feel better about yourself.

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    2. Trees are also used to make toilet paper. I'm sure in 10 years the human race will still have a need for that.

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    3. This is a renewable resource. Before those trees were planted all those thousands of acres were nothing but parched sag brusnd. Since they only harvest once every ten years, that means that 90%of the land has trees on it at any one tim. And immediately after harvesting TH land is made ready and new trees are planted. This is so much better than defrosting entire mountain ares. Also these trees are planted dose to TH pulp mills so transportation cost and fuel consumption is at a minimum. Everybody wins

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  9. Try this test: Take a walk through the woods on a hot day. Notice how much cooler it is? Leaves block sunlight. Take the same walk in the winter. It feels warmer because the trees, now without their leaves, allow sunlight through, while the trunks and limbs serve as a wind-breaker, thereby reducing windchill. http://peerh.com/

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    1. The hot day part is correct. The winter part is wrong. No limbs and trunks can cut the icy winter wind. It feels warmer because of the water sap circulating and retained in the vast underground root system. Since this cannot be frozen, it rises the ground temperature above the ice melting point, so it's always hotter than the ambient air temperature.

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  10. Travelling to Salem we passed this beautiful sight of rows of tree stands. Thanks to Google found the story about the Greenwood Tree Farm and learned the story. It is amazing. Wish we could pass it more often since we are from CO this is not possible. Hope it is kept for many more generations.

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