10.. Old-Growth

10. Old-Growth

Bob Zybach: On that timber that you describe as old growth. Jim [Hanish] and I looked at some trees on Forest Peak, and he said this is about the size of old growth on the hill. And it was about 30 inches and we counted the rings and it was about 75 years old. Is that what you were calling old growth in those days?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Okay, so it could have been

Neil Vanderburg: I was calling it old growth right now. It's the first time I ever called it old growth.

Bob Zybach: What did you call it then?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, I didn't call it anything, but just the fact that the moss was so deep there made me think that it was probably old growth.

Bob Zybach: Okay. But how big were the trees about?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, I would say they were 30, 36 inches. Same as Jim's dad, that's the way the timber on his place was. It would run 30 inches on the stump or so. But his was nice straight good stuff.

Bob Zybach: But he said there was larger trees every so often, which they called the "grandfathers," and then he said they called them the "kids", the smaller trees. Do you remember anything about that?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, we always figured that there had been a fire had gone through there many years ago and there was a few of them lived through it was kind of what we always assumed. And we called 'em grandfathers, just the same as what he.

Bob Zybach: Okay, so the trees that had seeded in those younger trees, you called the grandfather trees?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, and we figured it was a fire that had. .. we always kind of figured the Indians had burned it. I mean, that was just our assumption, but. . . I worked in the woods, and what we called an old growth tree, was one with thick bark, It didn't necessarily have to be old. But it was this growth of bark on the outside that made it an old growth. Now I had trees down here on my place in Smith Loop that were old growths that weren't very big. I had some that probably weren't over 18 inches across the stump. But they had that big, thick bark and us old timers called those old growth, regardless of the size.

Bob Zybach: How about, did you call them anything like "bastard fir," or "yellow fir," or "red fir?"

Neil Vanderburg: No, we'd call red fir, red fir and white fir, white fir, clear back then. But the old growth were always called red fir, but they had a real coarse bark on them.

Bob Zybach: So you went by the thickness of the bark on them?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: How about the ones you called the grandfather trees? Would you call them old growth too, or would you just call them grandfathers for a different reason?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't believe they were. There was a lot of those that were white fir.

Bob Zybach: So grandfather just had to do with the fact that they seeded in all the younger trees.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, they were bigger trees was all. But I wouldn't say that they were necessarily old growth, because see white fir had, at that time, had a quite a smooth bark even though they were three feet across the stump. Now these trees that Mr. Hanish was having me help him fall, we would fall them, he would cut them into 16 foot lengths, and then he would peel the bark off them, with a spud. And then they would log, take those logs into paper mills, with no bark on them. And, of course, they had to get them when the sap was up. They were big trees, but the bark wasn't more than an inch and a quarter thick. They'd be big enough to call an old growth, probably, but they were white fir, and that's what they wanted was white fir for paper mills in that

Neil Vanderburg: day because it made nice white paper, I guess. Less pitch in them, and so forth.

Bob Zybach: And they were easier to peel than the Dougs anyhow.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Did you say Doug fir or did you just call them red fir?

Neil Vanderburg: We called them red fir.

Bob Zybach: So the white fir would be what we call grand fir now, and the red fir would be the Doug fir, and the old growth would be the Doug fir with the thick bark?

Neil Vanderburg: You don't call white fir white fir anymore, huh?

Bob Zybach: Well, yeah, different names.

Neil Vanderburg: White fir, the way you could tell them was that the limbs came from the trunk and went down before they went up. The red fir, the limbs went up.

Bob Zybach: Did you have any hemlock in there?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, down lower.

Bob Zybach: Not too much?

Neil Vanderburg: No, huh uh.

Bob Zybach: How about cedar?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Not very much, though, really. We didn't cut any cedar, except usually you'd find the cedar down on the creek or something to make fence posts out of, and that was about all the cedar we cut. There wasn't really, I don't know, there wasn't enough cedar there apparently to make it worth bothering with because I did work west of Valsetz, down on the coast side, we cut quite a bit of cedar in there when I was logging. And I don't know if you ever wore a pair of corks in a logging show or not and stepped on a cedar, but it's a fast trip to the bottom of the

Bob Zybach: Yes, that bark kind of peels off a little quick and easy.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, the bark gets in your corks and then you don't have corks and the next step you've got slick bark and away you go, and.

Bob Zybach: I've worked a lot of that country west of Valsetz for twenty years.

Neil Vanderburg: I worked for Werner Timber Co., we went up the Siletz River and then went on up in there and most all of us had a scar on our back where carrying our old hand tools so it's get you in the back when you went down, rode down a cedar tree! When a man first went to work in the woods, well they would warn him about it and then they'd stand back to watch him to see when he was gonna do it! Cause nobody learned until he did it. A man that's pretty good could stay on there for two steps.

Bob Zybach: Did .. . do you remember much oak or alder?

Neil Vanderburg: None in that area there at all.

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