MARKETING SUSTAINABLE TIMBER
As you scan the aisles in nearly every grocery store
you see a growing share of organic groceries and “buy
local” marketing. According to a 2016 report by USDA,
the organic food market grew by 300 percent between
2002 and 2015 and continues to show sustained double-
digit growth.
Ben Deumling of Zena Forest Products says the wood
market isn’t as direct or developed as the organic food
market, but the latter is a good model for wood producers
in Oregon. He sees similar opportunities to grow a woods-
product industry built on a sustainable relationship with
the land and consumer’s desire to buy local.
Deumling, who’s in his mid-thirties, spoke to EW
at the family mill with his infant son cradled against
his chest. With a big smile, short dark hair and a wiry
build, Ben Deumling runs the mill and his mother, Sarah
Deumling, manages timber harvests on more than 1,000
acres in the Eola Hills outside Salem. The Deumlings
employ four full-time mill workers and crews of around a
dozen seasonal workers. With three generations living on
the property, maintaining a healthy forest for the future
and making a living now are of equal importance.
“We try to just tell a different story and tap into a
different market,” Ben Deumling says.
Telling their story and inviting people to tour their
forest has resonated with customers who are concerned
about how their wood is produced, he says. It’s also
important, he says, that Zena can add value to its products
by milling the timber onsite before they go to market.
While Zena has been successful in marketing their
hardwood products, which often become furniture and
flooring, the market for Douglas-fir lumber and other
softwood products offers fewer opportunities. “It’s
embarrassing that there’s no continuity between the forest
and the end user,” Deumling says. “Regardless of the
product there’s a desire on the part of the customer to hear
that story.”
“I would love to be able to go to Parr Lumber and have
a grown-in-Oregon stamp rather than a grown-in-Chile
stamp,” he says. “That’s a step in the right direction, but
then the next question is not only where was it grown but
how was it grown.”
About an hour north of Zena, Peter Hayes of Hyla
Woods is working on telling a similar tale. Hayes wears
a practical outfit of running shoes, shorts, a blue button-
up shirt and a gray hat as we tour the Mount Richmond
forest outside of Gaston. Hayes is a fifth-generation
woodsman with a penchant for experimentation. He sees
the development of a more ecologically informed forestry
as a way to build capital for the future while continuing to
produce timber.
But so far he hasn’t been able to tap the local market
for sales of construction staples like two-by-fours. Hayes
refers to the wood going to local markets from Hyla Woods
as the “appetizers and desserts.” Regardless of their intent
to keep their wood in local markets, much of their wood
is still exported.
One solution Hyla Woods, like Zena Forest Products,
embraces is adding value to their timber by milling onsite
and making products like cutting boards. The cutting
boards Hyla Woods sells are stamped with the coordinates
of the forest they were harvested from. Hayes says the
idea is for consumers to be able to look at a satellite photo
online and see that where the wood came from is still a
forest.
Hyla Woods collects data on the growth of the forest
and the health of the habitat. “We are one of the few forests
that can actually quantify our biodiversity,” Hayes says.
He says in the long-term he could see people investing
in the biodiversity provided by their forest, but options
for entering into the carbon market have yet to meet their
expectations for forest management.
“We’ve probably been approached by 20 different
outfits that have wanted to buy our carbon,” Hayes says.
He says Hyla Woods is interested in getting credit for
their carbon but don’t want to enter the market until
they’re sure they will get a fair price. While Hyla isn’t
BEN DEUMLING WITH THE
MILL HIS FATHER USED
TO TEACH HIM HOW TO
CUT WOOD
COMMUNITIES TAKE CHARGE OF THEIR FORESTS
“If you think about secure communities and you think
about safety and security and self-sufficiency — what is
more important than being in charge of your own water?”
Don Andre asks. “I can hope that some distant corporate
bigwigs would care about my water, but I’m guessing that
I’m going to care about the water near my home more than
they are.”
One of the first campaigns of the Oregon Coast
Community Forest Association was to work with the
city of Toledo, near Newport, to manage the forest in
its watershed and protect its water supply. In developing
a plan for the forests in the watershed, the city isn’t
foregoing logging completely but crafting a strategy that
integrates a healthy watershed with a productive forest.
Toledo hired Trout Mountain Forestry to achieve these
goals through a timber management plan. Included in the
plan is a desire on the part of the city to support the local
economy by encouraging access to forest products for
local artisans, woodworkers and foragers, a major focus
of OCCFA.
Mark Miller, a partner in Trout Mountain Forestry, has
worked at forestry with a conservation objective for three
decades. He says demand for the services the company
provides has been steadily increasing. Trout Mountain
manages multiple watersheds for municipal governments
across Western Oregon, including a 2,352-acre portion of
the Rock Creek Watershed for the city of Corvallis.
Because they’re tasked with managing the forests for
water quality, Trout Mountain’s operations are trying to
change plantation forests into forests that are best suited
to the city’s goals. Miller says that one of their objectives
is to create older and more diverse forests that consistently
supply clean, high quality water.
In order to create a more diverse forest structure, Trout
Mountain thins plantations and creates gaps in the forest
to more closely mimic natural processes. Unlike typical
plantations, they also maintain hardwood species and
PHOTO: CARL SEGERSTROM
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managing exclusively for carbon, their holistic approach
does increase the carbon stored in the forest. Hayes says
that in a given year they only cut about 25 percent of the
growth in the forest, which means that they are producing
more timber and sucking in more carbon each year.
For The Joinery, which just celebrated its 35-year
anniversary, timber operations like Zena Forest Products
and Hyla Woods are a meaningful part of their business.
The Portland furniture company has 35 employees and
produces furniture and cabinetry, primarily from locally
sourced hardwoods.
Jon Blumenauer, CEO of The Joinery and son of
Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from
Portland, says “they help support our business and we help
support them. A common denominator is an alignment of
values.”
The craftsmanship and quality of their products must
stand on its own merits, Jon Blumenauer says, but “for
a lot of folks it makes a difference that we source local
wood.”