Good luck to the new Riceville Wood & Forest Exhibition set for that community’s fairgrounds Sept. 10. We wish it a large audience and the revenues needed to repeat the show next year.
The event is rising from the ashes of the Glengarry Wood Fair held for eight years at Dunvegan. Hosted by French-language woodlot owners Boises Est, the objective at Riceville is to promote wood and forest-related products, as well as relevant services provided by local individuals, companies and other organizations.
Exhibitors will include artisans, forestry consultants, maple syrup producers, sawmill operators, woodlot owner organizations, health-related agencies, and many others. As it was in Dunvegan, the highlight will be an auction of 100 lots of slabs, boards, carving blocs, and burls representing several wood varieties.
As an anticipated, a high-profile event, it’s a good place to get out a message about trees, says the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Chapter of the Ontario Woodlot Association which will have a booth there. The message it wants out is that clearcutting must cease and that trees are a useful crop that must be assigned prime growing land.
“Trees benefit from good land too,” says chapter executive member George Velema who has donated some of his own treed acres to South Nation Conservation to protect for future generations.
In a second major attempt to reach the general public, the SDG Chapter is organizing an information seminar in late November to be called “Balancing Our Landscape: Farming, Forestry and their Relationship.”
Proposed venue for the second event is Avonmore Community Centre where information booths will be set up and several sessions and a panel will deal with related topics such as the merits of a conservation bylaw. Forestry and agricultural representatives are being invited to the seminar.
The impact and management of clearcutting is a discussion that must continue and the two venues mentioned are appropriate places to move it forward.
