Member Profiles

By Margaret & Tom Culbert Our woodlands, located in Holcombe, include a 40-acre mixed hardwood forest that backs up against some 2,000 acres of Chippewa County land. We were familiar with the property 25 years before we purchased it, as a friend of Margaret’s family bought the property in the late 1960s and Margaret’s father helped build the rustic A-frame cabin that has become our traditional deer hunting meeting place.

Share the Passion… for Your Woodlands By Abby Krause & Geary Searfoss Sudden may be a good word to describe how Geary Searfoss and his wife, Kay, acquired their second piece of property. The two were not unfamiliar with buying woodlands; they already owned 32-acres in Dunn County.

Dave Hall strives to engage his kids and grandkids in their woodlands. He wishes they love the smell of sweet, spring air when the wild geraniums are in bloom as he does. But he also wants them to know and care about the biology of managing such a place. That’s why walking and working in the woods with family is his favorite thing to do on the property.

Aaron Burmeister’s passion for sustainable forestry and logging goes back to his high school days when he cut and sold firewood to his teachers. In the 1980s he bought his own land- 5.5 acres of hayfield- that he planted with red and white pine and walnut, with the intention of growing the pines to train the walnut.

Dale Parker was looking to come home when he purchased 80 acres in northwest Richland County in 1978. As a teenager, he had hunted the property, but as an adult, had an added interest in producing high quality timber on the land. A lot of the property was mixed hardwoods like ash, oak, and maple, but about 18 acres of it was on an old ridgetop meadow overrun by brome grass.