Published 11:09 am Friday, May 16, 2025
When Jacob Huber visits his coastal redwood forest, he hugs a tree and says, “Hello! How are you?” After a day of forestry management among the trees, he hugs a tree and says, “Thank you. I’ll be back soon.”
It’s that kind of passion that earned Jacob and his wife, Mary Huber, recognition as the 2024 Douglas County Small Woodlands Tree Farmers of the Year.
The Hubers have 1,500, 20-year-old redwoods spread over 5 acres alongside the main Umpqua River northwest of Roseburg, Oregon. On a nearby hillside, there is a 70-acre Douglas fir forest.
All of these trees were planted as seedlings by Jacob Huber with help from son Jacob and daughter Heidi in the years immediately after the Hubers purchased 150 acres in 1999. In addition to the Douglas fir and the redwoods, a few European larch and some Ponderosa trees were planted. There’s also a small orchard of apple, pear, quince, persimmons, furry kiwi, Asian pears, plums and fig trees.
When asked about the attraction of planting and caring for trees, the 82-year-old Jacob was hard up for a detailed answer other than “I just love trees!”
Heidi Huber said of her father, “He just wanted to plant something for the future beyond his lifetime and it is also how he grounds himself to the world.”
Tami Jo Braz, president of the county’s small woodlands association, said the Hubers are “an excellent example of active and dynamic stewardship forestry and land management.”
While forest management on his property became his passion, Huber grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Switzerland. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1960 at age 18. His first stop in the states was in the dairy state of Wisconsin where he worked on a farm.
In order to get out of the cold and to some warmer temperatures, he soon moved and found work with a landscape contractor in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“That’s where I got excited about redwood trees,” he said. “I planted some redwood seedlings during that work.”
On a vacation trip to Washington, Jacob and Mary, who married in 1983, made a stop in Southwestern Oregon’s Douglas County.
“When I saw this property, I knew this is it, immediately, instantly,” Jacob said.
“He loved the hundred valleys of the Umpqua,” Mary said. “They reminded him a little bit of Switzerland.”
There was 40 acres of recently clearcut timber ground. That same year of the purchase, 1999, Huber and his high school-aged children began the work of planting 3,000 seedlings, mainly Douglas fir, annually for the next several years. The redwood seedlings were planted between 2005 and 2008.
“I was aware Douglas fir was the tree of Douglas County and this part of Oregon, but I also wanted some different species,” Huber said of planting some other varieties.
Other than doing some thinning himself, there has been no commercial thinning or logging of the trees the family planted.
“There’s nothing wrong with logging, I just want the trees to be bigger, to be at their maximum for the mills,” Huber said of the Douglas fir. “Hopefully, somebody will eventually make a common sense decision on what to do with them. Eventually, somebody will have to put them on the ground.”
Regarding the coastal redwoods, he said Oregon lumber mills are not set up to deal with them and it’s too expensive to haul them to California mills. So he sees a long future for them as they can live for hundreds of years.
The couple said the small woodlands award was an unexpected honor.
“It’s a wonderful association and we are of the same thinking; trying to keep our environment in good shape,” Mary Huber said.
