The circle of life: Trees rounded up by scouts Saturday turned into mulch for parks

By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news 

Ashland’s Christmas trees gain a second life as mulch throughout the city’s parks and trails through a decades-old tradition of multiple organizations coordinating across generational lines on one of the new year’s first weekends. 

Saturday, Jan. 11, the scouts of Troop 112 will spend the morning ferrying trees from curbs around town to the area of Hunter Park where Ashland Parks & Recreation Commission staff will be waiting with a woodchipper. Chris Ward, park technician II, said in 14 years of assisting in this operation, he’s seen last year’s Christmas trees spread far and wide. 

“They go all over, all over our trials, all our properties. … The Acid Castle property, Lithia, flower beds around town,” he said. 

The tradition of Ashland scouts picking up trees is in its 39th year, said John Ourant, now assistant scoutmaster after six years serving as scoutmaster. 

“There’s a huge dance we do here,” he said. 

Some of the trees lying on the curb Saturday will have come from the scouts of Troop 112 months earlier. For 66 years scouts have sold trees to support their organization and events such as their annual summer camp, Ourant said. Around 140 trees are sold by the troop with 100 coming from a Christmas tree farm in Corvallis and 40 felled by scouts themselves.

But the scouts are only supplying a fraction of Ashland’s demand for Christmas trees. Over the last few January’s, the troop gathered around 1,000 trees, Ourant said. The effort to collect them starts early and takes many hands. 

Scouts and the adults assisting them are to arrive at the Ashland senior center at 7:30 a.m., with a briefing at 8:10. 

“Coffee up, hot chocolate up, maybe throw in a doughnut or two and they’re off,” Ourant said. 

The city is divided into 30 sectors. Two sectors are assigned to each grouping of scouts and the adults driving them. 

At this time Troop 112 is 30 scouts strong, with seven girls who Ourant described as “hell on wheels, let me tell you, they’re awesome.” Between 70 and 80 adults volunteer to assist as drivers of trucks and SUV’s with trailers. Often this is a mixture of parents, Lions, Elks or Kiwanis members. But as these kinds of volunteer organizations age out, parents and older friends are increasingly stepping into the void, he said. 

Recology donated two “monster-sized dumpster bins, like the kind you see at construction sites,” to place at either end of Ashland and make quicker work of driving the routes and compiling the trees. All-in-One in Talent donated the use of four trailers, part of a long standing tradition for this business to assist in this effort, Ourant said. 

Two troops in Medford do something similar, he said, but the size of Medford necessitates pick-up only for those who call to schedule. Troop 112 is serving a town so small it’s possible to offer something more thorough — driving every street in town, twice. 

“We tell everybody and then we tell’em we told’em. … Always somebody sees us drive by and drags their tree out. No matter how many times you drive through there’s always more trees,” he said. 

Scouts drive through town again on Sunday to gather up the straggler trees, usually around 15. 

It’s hard work, and the scouts often arrive a little grumpy about the hour and it being a Saturday. 

“But it’s a great service to the community and the kids really get behind it, my God, when they get to throwing trees they get all jacked up,” he said. 

Around 10 moms usually spend the morning working in the kitchen at the senior center making chili, cornbread and soup for scouts to refuel as the morning turns into afternoon or stop and enjoy lunch once the work is done. 

Christmas trees supply between 30 to 40 yards of mulch material, Ward said. The rest of the mulch for trails and flower beds in Ashland come from reusing fallen limbs or trees on park properties. Trees too big to chip go to the Jackson County Fuel Committee to become firewood for those in need to make the most of every tree all year round, Wade said. 

Residents of Ashland wanting rid of their trees should be sure all decorations are removed from their tree and then place it at the curb in front of their house by Friday evening, Jan. 10.

Donations for this service will be accepted for use to help send scouts to summer camp. Scouts will leave an envelope, or you can use the form on their website (troop112.com/tree-recycle-donation/ ) to make a donation.

Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].