“My father walked behind me, replanting all my seedlings!”

“I always loved helping with family planting sessions and enjoyed our forest for recreation as a child, but it was really in my late adolescence that I realised I wanted to devote more time to the family estate. I did a five-year degree in forest management and worked for the forestry services side of Södra for 15 years.

We have two houses on our estate. My parents, now joint owners of the farm with me, live in one of them, my family and I in the other, which used to be my grandparents’ home. My father is still dedicated to the estate and devotes around 30 hours a week to its management. He has a lifetime of experience.

Spring is a great time of year. It’s planting season. I have fond memories of carrying buckets of seedlings as a child, my father walking behind me, carefully replanting all my efforts! Nowadays, it is my own children who like to be involved and help with plantings. With 10,000 seedlings to plant, anyone willing is welcome to join in to get the job done!

When my grandfather joined Södra, the estate was 60 hectares. Today we have 300 hectares and our standing timber density has increased too. A fifth of our land is contracted to a diary farmer and the rest is forest which we manage with guidance from Södra’s service, within our individual Green Plan. We also have incentives from Södra, for example to be certified to FSC or PEFC schemes, and to set aside more forest than stipulated for conservation. That doesn’t tend to be a problem because our estate is not just about economics but also legacy. We want biodiversity and a beautiful place to enjoy at the weekends, a place to relax, to forage with the kids and to hunt for farm-to-table food. We recently harvested some ash trees to construct a floor for our summerhouse so now they will continue to store carbon in our forest for as long as the house stands. 

About two thirds of my neighbours are also members of Södra. No two estates are the same, but we all share the common goal of looking after the forest for future generations. The lifecycle of a tree in Sweden is 60-120 years so the decisions I make today will largely be for them, not me. 

I am just starting to harvest the first cut from seedlings I planted as a boy (trees are thinned to encourage healthy growth and the thinnings are used to make pulp, this is known as the first cut), but I may never see a whole tree that I planted harvested. That will be for one of my children if they choose to take over the forest one day. I very much hope that they will.