Herb and Grace Payne are retirees with a passion for the land that has been handed down in their family for close to a century. Herb was a stockbroker and Grace was a teacher during their professional years, but now the Paynes are spending their retirement planting and caring for the 130-acre tree farm in Skagit County they call “Limberlost.”

Herb’s grandfather bought the first piece of this parcel in 1914 for $1 an acre. “This property is just loaded with springs,” says Herb, “that’s why my grandfather bought it, for the water and the swamp. Herbs grandfather hauled logs across the property for the English Logging Company, which is how he got acquainted with it. Herb has pictures from that time showing ten men sitting on a huge log that fills a railroad car. The stumps from those harvests now fuel the Paynes’ long-term ambitions for this property; they want cedars of that size to stand here again — a goal that will take several generations to achieve.

It hasn’t been easy to keep the parcel intact over the years, and Herb’s family hasn’t always agreed on how to manage it. “My grandfather’s Irish and the Irish divided all their property up so there’s nothing left for anybody — especially if you have ten kids,” he remarks. Herb’s grandfather died in 1950 and in 1952, during the Korean War, his grandmother had the property logged.

When Herb’s parents died, the property passed to the two remaining sons and the family of a deceased son. Because the new owners did not agree on how the land should be managed, the future of the property was uncertain. Fortunately, Herb was able to buy out the other family members in 2004, and he and Grace assumed ownership of the full 130 acres.

Today Herb and Grace only harvest alders and other hardwoods, and are replanting and nurturing cedars, in the hope of re-creating the old-growth stands that were here a century ago. If the topic is not family history, Herb lets Grace do most of the talking because he says she is better at sticking to the point. Grace summarizes their land management objectives: “When we inherited this land, our goal was the same as it is anyplace we go – whether it’s a house or a campsite or a beach – to make it better than it was before we came.”
 
Herb and Grace immediately realized that the plantation on the upper portion of the land was being taken over by alder, so they trimmed out a lot of alder so that the fir would grow. Grace says, “Cedar is what is suited for this property because it’s on the north side, it’s wet, and it’s shaded. We want to bring it up to capacity production and pass it on to our children with the understanding that it will be kept as a tree farm. Our goal is to leave the conifers; we want the firs that are here to grow as big as the stumps.”

In order to meet their goals, the Payne’s found there were some significant legal hurdles to overcome. Their property is saturated by springs and streams, including one that meets the criteria as fish-bearing, even though a manmade barrier downstream has meant that no fish have actually been there for almost a century. State forestry regulations require 150-foot buffers on either side of any potential fish-bearing stream, which is a serious limitation in the Payne’s case, given the relatively small property size. However, the same regulations also allow for small forest landowners to apply for an exception to this rule, if their long-term management goals meet or exceed stream protection standards. It means a daunting array of government paperwork and forest planning, but the Payne’s persevered, with some assistance from their county Conservation District and the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

Says Herb, “We personally hugged 583 trees along the stream to get their diameters, along with species and tree type.” This information was used to determine the desired future condition of the land, which was an important factor in the state’s assessment of the proposal. Herb recalls, “It required eight to ten people from various agencies and locations around the state to gather at our property to walk the proposed area along the stream, take notes, and come to a consensus regarding our proposal.” The consensus was in the Payne’s favor, because their plan to selectively log only deciduous trees and replant with cedars will, over the long-term, better serve forest and stream health. The Paynes agreed to leave a 50-foot stream buffer untouched and harvest only during the dry season to protect the fragile wetland soils.

In 2001 the Paynes hired a forester to log about four acres of alder; the next year they planted 1000 cedars on that land. In each of the subsequent years, they have logged a similar-sized parcel and planted 1000 trees to fill in the logged area. Even though cedars are suited to the conditions on this property, they are not necessarily easy to grow when you are trying to accelerate the process of forest succession. It takes five to seven years of cutting back brush before the cedars are safely established. That is why the Paynes limit their harvest and replanting to five-acre units. Says Grace, “We can only handle five acres physically because our family plants the trees ourselves. And after a planting there is so much work in keeping the brush down and thinning around them.”

Herb adds, “What we haven’t done is spray the brush. The elderberry and shrubs are eaten by the deer; they nibble it and nibble it. The big companies have trouble on their cedar plantations because they kill out all the other foliage, so all the deer have to eat is the cedar, but we are not bothered by the deer.” Herb uses the old stumps as guideposts for the future forest. “When you are in a swampy area, you plant where the old stumps are. We’ll plant four seedlings in a circle around a stump because that is the only place the conifers have grown.”

Herb and Grace earn enough money from their small selective harvests to pay their property taxes. “That’s about it – it helped us to buy 30 acres of my brother’s that almost got away from the family,” says Herb. “Keep it in the family, that’s the key so that it doesn’t get subdivided.” Herb and Grace are planning for the long-term continuity of their forest management plan, and part of that is planning harvests that can at least pay for property and inheritance taxes that will come up. Says Grace, “We don’t know what is ahead of us. Our kids might have enough money when we die that that it wouldn’t be a factor, but we don’t know. If we leave them some trees, that seems more lasting than money. They could do the same thing that we are doing: take five acres at a time and then pay the taxes so they wouldn’t have to give up this property.”

One of the bigger challenges in implementing stream restoration on a scale that is truly effective is coordinating the efforts of the various landowners that impact a particular waterway. Serendipitously, just downstream from the Payne’s parcel where Bulson Creek passes under state highway 534, the state Department of Transportation installed a new culvert restoring fish passage. A bit further on, a retired farmer and his wife chose to fence out their cows, plant trees, and put an easement on their quarter-mile of Bulson Creek frontage.

Herb remembers his father fishing in Bulson Creek, and he is optimistic about the prospects for fish with the recent stream improvements. “Cutthroat should be in the stream, and I was told there was a run of summer steelhead. They found some silver redds down below between the hill ditch and that big new culvert. I wouldn’t be surprised if there might not be some chum come up!” With the work and plans the Paynes have in place, Herb’s optimism seems well founded.

Contact
Limberlost Tree Farm
Herb & Grace Payne
9355 Reef Point Lane
LaConner, WA 98257
Tel: 360-466-4452
grace.payne@verizon.net