(Photos courtesy Dave Townsend and family)

By Anne Higuera
Special to West Seattle Blog

If you go to a tree nursery, they will often tell you that the best time to plant a tree is today. For one West Seattle family, the best time started 70 years ago, when their grandfather began purchasing regenerating timberland with an eye to the future. Just this month, Robert Wise’s vision and his family’s work stewarding that land led to his grandchildren and their spouses being named National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year by the American Forest Foundation.

(The family’s 2023 award paved the way for this year’s national award)

Wise settled in West Seattle almost a century ago, after finishing a business degree at the University of Washington. He came to Washington State from Iowa after serving in WWI, determined not to be a farmer, but he was wowed by the vast forests of the Pacific Northwest as rode the train westward. Summer breaks from college were spent at logging camps, and after graduating, Wise continued to work as a logger, and started a fuel business with his wife Beatrice from his property on Harbor Avenue SW.

(Robert Wise, 1960)

While the Wises were raising their two sons and daughter in the city, Robert wasn’t initially able to realize the dream of owning his own timberland.

But in 1954, he had the opportunity. Thirty years prior, a wildfire had decimated the area around Eatonville, and now, some of the slowly recovering acreage was available for purchase at a relatively low price. Wise picked up two parcels totaling 280 acres and named it Coburg Tree Farm, after the town in Germany from which Wise’s family emigrated. Knowing the long timeline from planting to harvest — 75-80 years — he directed one of the parcels to his daughter Lane and the other to her 4 sons.

Those grandchildren — Steve, Dave, Carl and Keith Townsend — grew up in West Seattle and spent weekends and summers working at their grandfather’s tree farm, pruning, clearing, and planting. “My brother got 50 cents a day for helping. I got 25 cents a day for not getting hurt,” Dave recalls. While the boys appreciated the pocket change and vividly remember the hard work involved to earn it, the farm was never intended as a full-time job for any of the adults, and it hasn’t been. The trees have become a generational passion for this family, though, and the siblings’ devotion to their grandfather’s legacy and to doing the right thing for the trees and the land is a large part of why they’ve earned the AFF award.

The Townsend brothers and their wives — Kay, Jan, Jennine, and Yvonne — have not just maintained the timberland, but have consistently improved practices, including land and water management and some experimentation with planting, which has included Douglas fir, Western red cedar, and red alder. “We could harvest and replant 3 acres every year. Forever,” says Dave. “But 3 acres is too small for a commercial harvest. By dividing the property into 13 manageable units, we have a harvest every 5 to 10 years.” That means harvesting about 20 acres at a time, but also timing that harvest by keeping an eye on the economy, the state of the lumber market and also needing to try new things, even when the harvest will be a lifetime in the future.

After one disastrous planting effort, during which deer descended on newly planted seedlings and nibbled them down to 1/3 of their size, the Townsends had to go back and install labor-intensive 18” tall rigid netting on those 20 acres of trees to protect them from further deer “browsing.” In 2019, they tried something new when it was time to replant: They put in 10 acres using netting (which involves not just initial installation, but adjusting and disentangling the netting from the trees as they grow) and they planted the other 10 acres using a process called “pair planting,” where a Douglas fir seedling is planted in the same hole as a Sitka spruce.

The spruce has unpleasantly sharp needles, which deters deer and elk, and when the fir tree is big enough and established, the spruce is cut out, leaving the fir tree to thrive. Five years in, with what Dave Townsend says is the first major test of this method on Douglas Fir at a tree farm, the pair-planted seedlings are 75% taller than those in the netting, a promising outcome.

UW’s School of Environmental and Forestry Sciences is analyzing the results of this experiment with great interest.

The American Forest Foundation commends the Townsends’ adherence to a 90-year forest management plan that includes “sustainable timber production, wildlife habitat preservation, and water quality protection.” Dave says that as Wise’s great-great grandchildren become old enough to help on the farm, they divvy up tasks by skillset and make most decisions by consensus, keeping an eye on growing trees that will enhance the land and wildlife and ultimately be useful after harvest.

A single 100’ tree can go to 4 or even 5 processors— the base to make plywood, the straight middle 40’ to a utility pole, the next 40’ to export or local mills for lumber, and the final bits to a pulp mill making boxes. Sometimes, as with the bomb cyclone in late November of this year, there is a small bonus harvest of trees blown down in the storm:

Despite the many intervening years since Wise first arrived in Seattle, the Townsend family still keeps a foothold in the forest and one in the city. If you happen to visit Don Armeni Boat Ramp and sit on the benches looking east over Elliott Bay, you might notice plaques in memory of the former property owners who sold it to the city in the run-up to the World’s Fair in 1962. Dave says the shoreline was largely industrial at the time and the city wanted to beautify it so that visitors to the fair could enjoy the uninterrupted view of downtown Seattle, a view his grandparents enjoyed for more than 30 years before agreeing to sell, allowing everyone to enjoy that special vantage point.

(Editor’s note: Thanks to Dave Townsend for letting us know about the award! Got a story tip, feature, breaking, otherwise? westseattleblog@gmail.com – thank you!)