Christmas tree project teaches forestry Pupils will harvest crop in 12th grade

DOVER-FOXCROFT – He’s known to local youngsters as the “tree man,” and that name suits Stephen Law of Dover-Foxcroft just fine.

Law, 79, is spending his retirement teaching youngsters about the value of trees and the need for a sustainable forest.

He is so devoted to the effort that he and his wife, Elaine, 75, deeded 115 acres of their farmland on Routes 6 and 16 to the Natural Resources Education Center based in Greenville to serve as a demonstration forest.

“I just wanted a place for the kids to have a chance to be introduced into a forest environment in an objective setting,” Law said this week. “I took an early retirement to come back to Maine to help Maine get their forestry program into the 21st century.”

Troubled by the conflict between landowners and forest users because of changing management techniques and greater public interest, the former U.S. Forest Service civil engineer saw a need to teach children early about the working forest, land ownership, stewardship, forest management and sustainability.

“Everyone agrees education is the answer because one side doesn’t understand the other side,” Law said. “A forest if used properly is a renewable resource.”

As part of the demonstration forest project, Law, an NREC member, works with elementary pupils in SAD 4 (Guilford area), SAD 41 (Milo area), SAD 46 (Dexter area), SAD 68 (Dover-Foxcroft area), and Union 60 (Greenville area).

Kindergartners in each of the districts harvest seeds from spruce cones, which grow downward and are easier to harvest than firs, whose cones grow upward, according to Law.

When the pupils advance to the first grade, they plant the seeds in peat pots. The pots are taken to an indoor greenhouse in Law’s home where they are sheltered until spring.

Each year thereafter, the pupils will be engaged in learning how to grow Christmas trees, from transplanting them into the ground, laying out a plantation, recording the costs of growing trees to harvesting them.

When done, each grade at the five schools will have two rows of trees that will be harvested when the pupils become high school seniors. The seniors will be allowed to use the profits from the sale of the Christmas trees they planted for a class project or trip, according to Law.

Field trips to the demonstration forest are conducted throughout the year when Law shows the pupils the nursery, takes them on a field trip through an existing forest and talks about forest wildlife.

Law and his wife care for the seedlings with help from local volunteers.To Law, the time spent weeding and watering the seedlings is worth it. Landowners need to be educated about the wants and rights of forest users, and forest users need to learn the wants and rights of landowners.

Through this program, a generation of children will be well aware of the needs of both, he said.