Record sales, long hours at Covid-modified Linn seedling sale

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By Bonnie Marshall

LCSWA Director

The 26th Annual Linn County Small Woodlands Association Seedling Sale is one for the books — with record sales and Covid challenges.

Almost 250 pre-orders were delivered via curbside pickup within 5 hours by our dedicated and masked volunteers.  As one satisfied customer told us after the sale, “We hit it out of the park” with our well-planned and executed Covid-safe delivery of seedlings.    

Fay Sallee, volunteer coordinator, was as diligent as ever rounding up Linn County Small Woodland members, 4-H members and their families, and scholarship recipients.  Despite fewer volunteers, social distancing requirements and expanded work areas, our volunteers rose to the challenge with long hours (a 13-hour day for some) and staggered shifts.  Early Friday morning Don and Carol Cree, Jack Lowers, Jim Cota, and Lance Marshall picked up seedlings at the various nurseries while some of Friday’s 33 volunteers helped set up tables in preparation for the seedlings.  These committed volunteers processed over 11,000 seedlings and 2,000 protector tubes into 1,400 separate bundles in about nine hours.

Steve and Katie Kohl generously shared the bounty of sword ferns from their property.  Prior to the sale, Steve, Katie, Fay Sallee and others gathered to dig and package over 150 sword ferns to fill the pre-ordered requests.

Despite the extra-long day on Friday processing orders, some of those same volunteers returned on Saturday to put in another six hours.

Kudos to Brad, Christy, Connor and Haley Tye, Larry and Nancy Mauter, Glen and Sharnie Crouch, Kari and Kaden Holt, Katie Fortner, Dan Thackaberry, Bill Bowling, Jim Cota and Lance Marshall for doing double duty.  Their dedication is very much appreciated and helped create the smooth transfer of seedlings to our customers.

Proceeds from this year’s sale topped previous years and will continue to fund college scholarships for Linn County students attending an Oregon school and majoring in forestry or a natural resource field, as well as monetary awards to Linn County 4-H forestry students.

This past year $7,600 was distributed in scholarships and awards.  Funds will also be applied toward other forestry education activities supported by the Linn County chapter of OSWA.

While this year’s seedling sale saw the cancellation of the Local Woods Fair and Saturday sales of seedlings, we plan to have both those events return at next year’s seedling sale, to be held on Saturday, February 5, 2022.

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