MNN - Mother Nature Network

Chuck: Well you know, I am very proud to be called a tree farmer, and quite often I get the question, “Well, what is a tree farmer, what is a tree farm and what does a tree farmer do?”

Well, certainly a tree farm is not like any other farm that would have row crops and cows and pigs and that sort of thing. And certainly, we are involved in growing trees. That is primarily the first thing that we do: we plant them as seedlings and we nurture them and we manage them as they grow and then at one point in time, we are certainly going to harvest them.

And I am very proud that some of the trees that we harvest here at Charlane Plantation go to build somebody’s first home or maybe they go to make some books that a student in high school or the university might be studying.

But tree farms are so much more than that.  It’s not only about the trees in the forest. It is about everything that’s inside the forest. It is about biodiversity, about the entire ecosystem. It’s about the wildlife and everything that exists inside the forest.

So I guess if I had to put it in one word, I would use the word balance. It’s using the resource very wisely, very carefully and don’t forget, trees are renewable. They grow back. That’s the marvelous thing about them – is that we can continue to have our forests from now on - if we manage them properly.

And don’t forget, mankind has been connected to the forests since the beginning of time, and if we take care of our forests, our forests will take care of us.