HOSKINS — The field was choked with dead fir trees, blackberries climbing out of them. The ridges were barren, picked over by timber harvests going back years. And somewhere in there, a creek ran through ground so flat and wet that Dave and Sarah Ehlers stood looking at it and saw something most people wouldn’t — potential.
Sarah Ehlers remembers her mother’s reaction on that first visit.
“We had three very small children and my mom was like, ‘What are you guys doing?’” she recalled.
Gallery: J2E Tree Farm (June 2, 2026)
A collection of photos of the J2E Tree Farm in the Hoskins vicinity owned by Dave and Sarah Ehlers on Tuesday.
Dave Ehlers’ parents, visiting from the East Coast, were equally skeptical. His mother sized up the Coast Range property and delivered her verdict: “You can’t plant soybeans out here.”
They bought it anyway.
In June 2000, Dave and Sarah Ehlers, now 68 and 64, purchased 338 acres in the Luckiamute River Valley. What they’ve built there in the 25 years since has earned them recognition as the Benton Small Woodlands Association’s 2026 Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year — an honor that comes with the responsibility of hosting a farm tour, which takes place Saturday.
“It’s kind of congratulations, condolences,” Dave Ehlers said with a laugh. “But it gives us a chance to showcase what we’ve done out here.”
The path to that purchase started with a conversation during a medical procedure. Ehlers, then a diagnostic radiologist in Corvallis, was talking with a patient who happened to be a tree farmer. The patient laid out the economics simply — ag ground runs $3,000 an acre, but cutover timber ground goes for $300. Buy something in the Coast Range with flat, wet ground for ponds and ridges for timber, the man told him.
Ehlers went home and told Sarah. The search was on.
Before closing on the purchase, Dave had hired a water rights engineer to assess whether they could build a pond — a contingency of the sale. Test digs on both sides of a small creek revealed clay deposits up to 12 feet thick. They had their answer.
The property the Ehlers named the J2E Tree Farm — J2 for their children Jessica and Jake, and E for Emily — would become something far more than a fishing hole.
The long game
The early years were about rehabilitation. The Ehlers spent the first several years getting the property up to stocking, planting trees across multiple ridges and replanting areas where earlier efforts had failed. They also began building what would eventually become several ponds — the Bass Pond, Trout Pond, South Pond and a series of vernal ponds.
Financing ambitious conservation work on a private forest requires creative partnerships, and the Ehlers proved adept at leveraging them. Over 25 years they’ve utilized an array of cost-share programs — the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Stewardship Incentives Program, the Forestry Incentives Program, USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board grants and the NRCS Conservation Stewardship Program, among others.
Their first major restoration effort came through an OWEB grant secured in 2000 to address Vincent Creek and Sarah’s Run — a small waterway they named after Sarah, who is an avid runner. (Growing up in Virginia, Dave said that creeks there are called “runs”).
By 2002, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife crews had removed blackberries from 15 acres of upland grasslands, replaced undersized culverts along Sarah’s Run with properly sized pipe arches and documented cutthroat trout and Pacific lamprey moving upstream that first winter. Over 7,000 trees were planted in the riparian zones, including Douglas fir, western red cedar, Oregon ash, big leaf maple and Oregon white oak.
It was the beginning of a restoration effort that would eventually touch nearly every corner of the property.
Balancing the books and ecosystem
The J2E functions as a working timber operation — that hasn’t changed. The Ehlers conducted their first commercial thin in 2015 across 60-plus acres and managed timber stands for pre-commercial thinning and pruning throughout the decade. All their stands are pruned, and the roads are built to handle log trucks in winter when timber prices tend to rise.
But Dave Ehlers is clear-eyed about the dual nature of the work.
“Basically, if the ground is suitable for growing merchantable timber, that’s what we’re doing there,” he said. “And if it’s not, then we are trying to restore it to what it would have looked like historically.”
That philosophy has led the Ehlers to manage roughly 62 acres of riparian management area with a focus on biodiversity and ecological function rather than timber production. They’ve used longer rotation cycles to sequester more carbon and build better wildlife habitat, and they’ve planted thousands of native shrubs across more than 20 acres of the property.
“We’re about growing merchantable timber to pay the bills,” Ehlers said. “But we want to sequester more carbon, we want to store more carbon. We want to use longer rotations, which makes for better habitat.”
The signature achievement of the J2E’s conservation work is the River to Ridge Diversity Project, a major OWEB-funded effort that began in 2020 and covered more than 52 acres of riparian zones, pine flats, wet prairie and dry prairie habitat. Partners included the Luckiamute Watershed Council, Benton Soil and Water Conservation District, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Xerces Society and the Institute of Applied Ecology.
Instream work placed 11 large wood structures in Vincent Creek to improve habitat complexity for cutthroat trout, Pacific lamprey, winter steelhead and coho salmon, as well as to support beaver activity. Planting of roughly 60,100 native shrubs and trees took place across riparian areas, pine flats and prairie corridors between 2022 and 2024. The dry prairies have been developed as habitat for the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly, a species of conservation concern.
A federal challenge grant tied to the Taylor’s checkerspot work was cancelled by the current administration, but the Institute of Applied Ecology has stepped in to manage the prairies going forward.
Building community, not just forest
After retiring from his career as a musculoskeletal diagnostic radiologist at Corvallis Radiology in 2014, Dave Ehlers didn’t slow down. He moved to the property full-time the following year and threw himself into the network of small forest landowners and watershed stewards that had helped make the J2E possible.
He joined the Luckiamute Watershed Council board in 2016, the Benton Small Woodlands Association board the same year — serving as president from 2020 to 2024 — and the Oregon Tree Farm System board in 2018. He credits the web of partners as essential to everything the J2E has accomplished.
“OSU Extension — hands down, we can’t do this without them,” he said. “No way. There’s no way I could have done any of this without them. And Oregon Department of Forestry, same thing.”
He describes the support structure for small forest landowners as a pyramid, with organizations like the Oregon Small Woodlands Association, the Oregon Tree Farm System, OSU Extension, ODF and OFRI forming the foundation — and watershed councils, soil and water conservation districts and federal agencies layered above.
“That’s why our theme is partnerships,” he said. “Because we got a bunch of people out here.”
The J2E has continued to grow. In 2019 the Ehlers acquired about 21 acres of Luckiamute River frontage, and in 2024 they closed on an 80-acre parcel — the OakHill tract — that fits into the northeast corner of the farm. A new road to access that ground is planned for construction as soon as the weekend tour wraps up.
A new NRCS Conservation Stewardship Program grant for 2025-29 will fund native shrub and small tree plantings along Sarah’s Run and eventually within a large Douglas fir stand, with the added purpose of getting the Ehlers’ three young grandchildren involved in the work.
Saturday’s tour will rotate through three separate 70-minute sessions, with experts from ODF, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the Luckiamute Watershed Council, NRCS and OSU Extension leading participants through the ponds, riparian areas and timber stands. About 94 people registered for the event.
Sarah Ehlers said the day is about more than showing off what they’ve built.
“The theme is partnerships,” she said. “All of these entities will be here to support how to do it, who to call, who to connect to, if you see something that you really like — you want to build a pond or you want to do restoration.”
Her husband framed the J2E’s 25-year journey the same way he hopes visitors will feel after walking the property Saturday.
“What we’d like to do is give people ideas,” he said. “We want people to say, ‘I could do that.’ We want them to be inspired.”
Asked if there was a particular spot he was especially eager to show people, Dave Ehlers said no — it’s the whole thing.
“It’s the diversity out here, which is amazing,” he said. “If you don’t like where you are, just walk 100 feet. It’s going to be different.”
