The Pinecone Caper

A Very Short Business Venture

Pinecone bunny — photo by author

Ponderosa Pine doesn’t grow naturally on our old farm, 360 acres in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains of Western Oregon. When my grandfather purchased the property, over 80 years ago, it wasn’t growing much except grass and brush. Just a few years before his purchase, a forest fire had swept through the partially logged area and reduced the remaining Douglas fir and hemlock to ash and a ghost forest of black “snags.” After Dad inherited the property from Grandpa, it was his task to cut down the snags and remove the huge stumps left from the previous logging ventures. Felling burned snags is tricky since the dead, rotting wood is unpredictable and can collapse and fall back on the sawyer. Nevertheless, by the time the land passed on to the next generation, the blackened forest had been cleared, and the huge stumps blasted out of the ground. Douglas fir seedlings were regenerating on their own, spottily, and thick brush — vine maple, wild cherry, salmonberry — filled in the gaps.

Dad had tried to keep the land cleared, creating meadows and pastures for raising livestock, but my brother, who assumed the role of farm manager, began to fill in the open spots with fir seedlings and developed a new forest. By this time the new generation of trees — called “second growth”- was marketable. In earlier times only the original, old-growth — the monster trees for which the Northwest is known — had value to lumber mills. Over the years our farm, which originally was home to pigs, cattle, horses, and sheep, became a certified (and award-winning) tree farm with no livestock, but a modest annual income from timber.

My brother was innovative. At one point he participated in a carbon sequestration project, turning twenty acres of brush into a stand of Douglas fir and Ponderosa Pine, financed through a program to offset carbon emissions from a power company in another part of the state. He also participated in a Willamette Valley Ponderosa Pine conservation effort.

The Valley Pine groves were long thought to be transplants from the eastern side of the mountains — the high desert, the dry side where pine grows naturally — until researchers discovered that the species of pine that grew in small groves in the wet western Willamette Valley was genetically unique to the area — and it was disappearing fast.

The group collected seeds from existing groves and regenerated the species. It was understood to thrive only in the valley, not above 800 feet, but my brother planted about 20 acres of the Valley Pine on our farm, at 1200 feet on the rocky soil it likes and that Douglas fir does not. The pine thrived. And then — the ultimate test of survival — the trees began producing cones.

What a thrill it was to discover a fallen pinecone on the farm road that bordered the stand, the long-needled pines swaying gently far above our heads. The cones were large and plump. Having spent a few decades living on the east side of the mountains, I was familiar with pinecones of all shapes and sizes, and these were beauties.

Timber, as a cash crop, is hard to beat, but my daughters and I had long believed there were other potential sources of revenue from our family forest. Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) have several categories including, but not limited to: edibles (berries and mushrooms), Medicinals (wild herbs), specialty wood products, floral supplies, and craft and art supplies. While the edibles were easy and plentiful (berries were everywhere), we are a crafty bunch, so focused on what we could provide for the home décor and craft industries.

We had many acres of Douglas fir as well as a healthy number of hemlock trees, so we began there, collecting both fir cones and the tiny, delicate hemlock cones. These we cleaned, then dried in a slow oven and packaged for sale through our Etsy shop or on eBay. There was some interest — someone in Taiwan asked about the fir cones, and fellow crafters bought a few, but business was slow. To speed things up, we began making things from our supplies — just to show what could be done, you know, and offered fir cone wreaths for sale along with the instructions for DIY. To our surprise, it was the wreaths rather than the supplies (or the instructions), that sold. We worked out the most efficient way to paint fir and hemlock cones and invented new styles of wreaths for various seasons.

Fir cone wreath — photo by author

Then we remembered the pinecones.

We were misled by the few that had fallen into the road, believing the trees were only beginning to produce cones. Once we stepped off the beaten path and explored inside the grove, we found many more, but they were hidden in the thick grass and shrubs. It was, my daughter said, like hunting Easter eggs, and we were as thrilled as toddlers finding eggs, each big, plump pinecone a treasure of home décor potential.

These cones, too, were cleaned and dried, used as-is, or sprayed with glitter for holiday wreaths. Then we learned to make cone flowers, cutting the cones into sections and painting them to look like daisies or chrysanthemums, depending on which way you turned them. These went into wreaths as well. Did you know pinecones can be turned into turkeys, rabbits, hedgehogs, and other furry animals? I still have a collection of pipe cleaners, felt, and googly eyes.

Cone flower wreath — photo by author

Our sales, and our little cone wreath business, came to an abrupt halt about a year after we started, ending with another forest fire. The fire, one of several catastrophic fires in the year of 2020, decimated the fir trees, our cash crop. We salvage logged and replanted, but the farm will not be a forest again for decades.

The pine trees, however, lived. Both those in the mixed stand and the twenty acres of Valley Pine survived the fire, which is understandable: pine is more fire resistant than fir and actually needs fire to open the cones and regenerate. Some months after the fire and the salvage logging, my daughter and I checked on the stand that had been producing cones. This time finding pinecones on the track that ran beside the grove, which stood like a green oasis against a backdrop of bare hills where a fir forest had been, was more than thrilling — it was a sobering, awe-filled moment. And once again, more were lurking in the weeds inside the grove.

What we found and took home that day was our last. In the aftermath of the fire, my siblings and I partitioned the farm and the brother who planted the pines got the pines.

We, however, still have the cones — a reminder of what was, what could have been, and maybe just a little hope for the future.