Richard Rodewald retired from General Motors 10 years ago at age 55 and has been "busy ever since."
A lot of his energy has gone into planting trees on some of his 270 acres south of Eudora. The land has been in his family since the 1800s when his great-great-grandfather moved to Kansas. Rodewald will receive the Kansas Forest Service District Stewardship Award for the Northeastern District.
He has about 60 acres of forest enrolled in the CRP program, with the rest of his land in grassland. His oldest stand of trees is about 10 years old, and contains ash, oak and hickory.
"It took a lot of work," he said. "I did a lot of handwork in here the first two years."
Rodewald now mows the grass to reduce competition with the trees, and he spends time pruning the trees to encourage straight growth.
In recent years, he's tried a new way of growing trees called the "Iowa method." In this method, seeds are scattered over a plowed field and left unmowed. Herbicides are used to reduce grassy growth around the small trees. Already, hundreds of 2-year-old trees are poking their way through the grasses in fields planted that way.
Rodewald said he expects the trees to be cut when they are 40 years old, but the trees are more than just a money-maker. They've helped stabilize a flood-prone region of his land and they improve the environment by purifying water and removing carbon dioxide from the air.
Rodewald said he thought the government should do more to promote planting trees and sign international agreements on global warming, such as the Kyoto Treaty.
"America will suffer for this once the rest of the world starts heating up and melting," he said of the treaty.
So why does a 65-year-old stay interested in trees even though he might not be around to profit from them when they are cut?
"I can see ahead," he said. "I want to plant even more trees. I think trees are important."
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