Andersen Windows employee Dale Brathol has explored the land around the Hammond, Wis., area since he was a kid. It’s not surprising then, that he now calls the area home, living in his own 87-acre forest.
Dale and his wife have owned the property since the mid-1980s. “I just wanted some privacy,” said Dale, a production supervisor at Andersen’s Bayport, Minn., facility, who has worked for Andersen for 33 years. But Dale has done much more than live on his land. He has partnered with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to create a stewardship forestry plan for the woods on his property as part of the DNR’s Managed Forest Law program.
Taking what he describes as burned out crop land and turning it into forest, he has planted a variety of soft and hard woods over the decades he has lived on the land. In December 2008, the Brathol’s forest and others in the Wisconsin program gained certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the responsible management of the world’s forests.
“Approximately 56% of forest land in the United States is privately owned,” Dale said. “There are a lot of us out there, and I’m not the only one at Andersen with property that is FSC certified. It gets in your blood when you work at a place like this.
“A lot of landowners [in general] don’t look at their forest land as something that would benefit from being managed. Many people just harvest timber when they need money or when a logger may tell them they should sell. When you do that, you alter the succession of the forest and eliminate sustainability.”
In 2001 he began working with a local forester on a forest stewardship plan that will guides the planting, thinning and harvesting of trees along with providing food plots for wildlife until 2026.
It’s not likely that Brathol’s trees will find their way into Andersen products, as the variety of species he grows ends up in local mills. “It’s a legacy. My daughter works in forestry now and a lot of things I’m doing will come to pass long after I’m gone. But that’s okay. [Working on the land is] not work. It’s good medicine.”
