Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE – The Maine Tree Farm Committee has announced that Laurence Park of Presque Isle has been named the Maine Outstanding Tree Farmer for 2008.
Contributed photo
THE MAINE TREE FARM COMMITTEE has named Laurence Park of Presque Isle the Maine Outstanding Tree Farmer for 2008. In addition to winning the state Outstanding Tree Farmer award, Park also received the Aroostook County honor. Park’s 100-acre woodlot has been a certified tree farm since 1982, and is managed for multiple use including snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, hiking, and woodlot tours for schools and others. Here, Park, pictured at right, helps Abby DeGraw, a student at Bridgewater Grammar School, put on cutting pants and a hardhat to demonstrate logger safety. Park will receive his Maine Outstanding Tree Farmer award at the 2008 Maine Agricultural Trades Show Jan. 16 in Augusta.
Park’s 100-acre woodlot has been a certified tree farm since 1982, and is managed for multiple use including snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, hiking, and woodlot tours for schools and others. Bruce Wilkins is Park’s consulting forester.
In addition to winning the state Outstanding Tree Farmer award, Park also received the Aroostook County honor.
Park, the son of John Bird Finch Park and Isadore (Hawes) Park, took over his family’s Echo Lake Road farm in 1954 at the age of 24, and for the last 50 years has been harvesting trees on the property.
“In 1982, my woodland was recognized for management for continuous production and scientific forestry practices,” said Park. “It was also designated a tree farm under the State Tree Farm Committee and the American Forest Institute.”
In the early 1950s, the farm was only 150 acres and featured potatoes, oats and hay. From 1957 to 1980, Park planted 20 acres of Red Pine, Norway Spruce and White Spruce on non-tillable or poor potato land.
“Some parts of the land were too inefficient, so you put trees on it,” Park said. “I mowed some of that ground for a few years and thought, ‘What the heck am I mowing it for? Why not plant trees on it so I don’t have to mow it and can somewhere down the road get some income from it?’”
Park estimates that he has planted around 27,000 trees on the now 320-acre farm.
“Lately I have planted a few Black Spruce and Red Oak from acorns I have gathered,” said Park, who studied agricultural economics at the University of Maine at Orono before enlisting in the U.S. Air Force during the time of the Korean War.
Park received the Central Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District’s Conservation Farmer of the Year Award in 1973, as well as the Goodyear Conservation Award, which landed him a trip to Florida for conservation tours with winners from other states. In 2003, Park was the SWCD’s Forest Landowner of the Year.
Park will receive his Maine Outstanding Tree Farmer award at the 2008 Maine Agricultural Trades Show in Augusta Jan. 16. A Maine Tree Farm Field Day will be held at the Park Tree Farm next summer for the public to tour.
