Woodland - Spring 2013 - (Page 25)

© Rob AmbeRg Saplings Tara Olver: Nursing a New Generation by kathy westra T ara Olver has been involved with woodlands since birth. She toured her family’s woods in a backpack on the day her parents, Craig and Janet Olver, brought her home from the hospital as a newborn. She spent her childhood years learning about forest management, logging and cutting firewood alongside her father on the family’s Tall Timber Tree Farm in Pennsylvania. “Once I could walk, Dad put me to work,” Tara says with a laugh. “It was tough at times growing up with so many acres, because there was always stuff to do. I didn’t want to wake up at 5:30 in the morning in 15-degree weather. But at the end of the day, it was always a good day. We work really well together.” At the age of 20, Tara shared the 2007 Pennsylvania Tree Farmer of the Year Award with her parents. Now, at 25, she is a confident young college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, a challenging 60-hour-a-week job as an operating room nurse, and a home of her own in Bethany, Pennsylvania, that she and her fiancé, Will, purchased last year. Growing up on a 568-acre Tree Farm taught Tara some important life skills that serve her well in her demanding new operating room job—skills such as “balancing long hours of work with time for fun,” and being part of a team where “we all knew our parts” to get a job done as she worked with her father or helped coordinate field days for the community on the Tree Farm. Getting the younger generation engaged in woodland management is crucial for the future, Tara believes. “Thank goodness my parents got me involved when I was younger. Even though I couldn’t do a lot of work when I was 4, 5 or 6, just getting up there, going to the river, playing in a puddle, chasing salamanders made this place special to me.” While growing up, Tara enjoyed attending the annual American Tree Farm System® conventions with her parents, and having an opportunity to learn how other families were managing their woodlands. “Not a lot of young people are involved in the conventions, and that worries me,” she says. “If you don’t get family involvement, it puts the future in question.” The future of Tall Timber Tree Farm is a big concern for Tara, an only child. “The thing that has me the most concerned is the management of this land in the future. It’s scary to know that I’m going to have to do everything by myself. One of my other worries is how I will manage and keep the woods to do what’s best for the woods. I think that’s a main concern for many future landowners like me.” For now, though, she is leaving the day-today management of her family’s woodland to her parents as she focuses on her new career. The Tree Farm is “definitely part of my future,” she says. “But in the meantime, I’ve found where I want to be: in the O.R.” Twenty-five-year-old Tara Olver (above) has a demanding career as a nurse, but her family’s award-winning Tree Farm in Pennsylvania is “definitely part of my future.” woodland • Spring 2013 25 © NATe AllReD/SHUTTeRSToCK.Com news forests and families

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Woodland - Spring 2013

Woodland - Spring 2013
Contents
Overstory
On the Ground
Faith and Forestry
Take a Hike!
Tools and Resources
Forests and Families

Woodland - Spring 2013