A student calculating the height of a tree at Chimacum Ridge Community Forest with a DBH tape.
“This program puts students in control of making the most of that tree and the opportunities offered by that tree. That’s the real power of education: connecting meaning with knowledge.” – Devon Buckham, Education Coordinator
“This program puts students in control of making the most of that tree and the opportunities offered by that tree. That’s the real power of education: connecting meaning with knowledge.”
– Devon Buckham, Education Coordinator
For 14 years, the Land Trust has offered high-quality outdoor education experiences to public school students on our local lands. Now, we’re excited to share the Land Trust’s innovative new “Tree to Table Saw” program, which connects local high school students with the full life cycle of sustainable forestry — from the living tree to finished wood products they design and build themselves.
Students measuring the felled tree to learn its actual height.
“Students are involved from start to finish,” says Devon Buckham, the Land Trust’s Education Coordinator, who founded and runs the program. “Short of having their own hands on the chainsaw, I don’t think there’s a way to get them any closer to being part of the process.”
The program, developed over the summer of 2025, is currently being piloted with high school students from the Port Townsend and Chimacum school districts who are enrolled in the districts’ Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs.
Following in-class lessons with Land Trust and school staff members, the CTE students are invited out to Chimacum Ridge Community Forest (purchased by the Land Trust in 2023 and officially opened to the public in September 2025). Between discussions about forest management, connected career paths, and more, students measure a selected tree and then, from a safe distance, watch as it’s felled. We then transport the tree to their school, where they see it milled to their specifications for a wood product they’ve designed to serve the community (for example, a bench or table to be installed in a public place).
Finally, they use this hyper-local lumber to craft a finished product — and never forget the tree, nor the forest, that the product came from.
The felled tree and mill on campus.
Students not only gain a personal and meaningful experience with our region’s defining natural resource, but also learn how forest management supports long-term ecosystem health; the science of tree growth, carbon storage, and forest succession; hands-on skills in sustainable woodworking and design; and how local resources can be used responsibly to meet community needs.
Critically, the program also connects them to real career paths, from forestry to biology to woodworking and beyond.
“Tree to Table Saw” is an exciting addition to the Land Trust’s existing youth education programs, which annually serve hundreds of public school students from kindergarten through twelfth grade with hands-on learning experiences on the land — at no cost to schools or families.
“Outdoor-focused youth education can be harder to bring to older students because academic rigor and demands on their time are greater,” Devon explains. “This is a way to give them an experience that’s very relevant to what they’re doing in the classroom, and that also serves as career-connected learning, which is in high demand in our education system right now. Hopefully, we’re creating interest in career fields that directly impact the well-being of our community — and which can help students find livelihoods here.”
Education Coordinator Devon and students with cut and milled timber.
The program also fulfills the educational role that our community envisioned for the community forest in the strategic visioning process. The forest was created by and for the community to bring educational, social, recreational, economic, and ecological benefits to our community forever.
Though the program is new, the response from students, teachers, and local timber and wood professionals has already been overwhelmingly positive. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has also taken notice, and is following the program with interest, with the hope of creating, or helping other teachers and schools create, similar programming in the future.
“I’m not aware of another youth education program that connects students to the full process of timber harvest,” Devon says.
Students using clinometers to calculate the height of trees in Chimacum Ridge Community Forest.
Before the students come out to the community forest, Devon visits the school to discuss forest health with students. For many, he says, it’s the first time they’ve been asked to think beyond trees to the larger ecological systems that make up a forest.
Next, students visit Chimacum Ridge Community Forest to experience its living classroom. Here, they get the opportunity to meet, measure, and assess the tree(s) slated for harvest and to connect their classroom learning with real-world applications. Using clinometers and DBH tapes, they measure tree height and diameter.
Forest Manager Ryen Helzer joins each group to share a bit about his unique job managing Chimacum Ridge Community Forest and to start a discussion about the various career paths related to forests, forest management, timber, and others, available to students in the future.
Student inspecting the stump of a freshly felled tree.
Then the big moment arrives: from a safe distance, students observe as Ryen fells the tree selected for harvest. Once it’s down, the students converge upon the fallen tree to examine growth rings, discuss forest management, and reflect on what sustainable forestry looks like in practice.
Next, we transport the tree to campus thanks to the generous support of two wonderful local partners: Olympic Equipment Rentals, which donated an excavator for loading, and Secret Gardens Northwest, which provided the use of their delivery truck.
As the logs arrive at their own schools, students can truly connect the full cycle of the wood — from forest to raw material.
In the meantime, students are designing a community service project with the timber in mind and determining the lumber dimensions they’ll need. At their school shop, we help them mill the logs to their specifications. The students will build the project themselves, and any leftover lumber will be available for future CTE classes.
View from the top of Chimacum Ridge. This bench was made by a Land Trust staff member using timber from a selective harvest in the forest. This is an example of the kind of finished product the students will make in the “Tree to Table Saw” program.
“This program puts students in control of making the most of that tree and the opportunities offered by that tree. That’s the real power of education: connecting meaning with knowledge,” says Devon.
