It looked as easy as plucking a daisy.

The arm of the mammoth harvester extended into the thick stand of trees, its jawlike head encircled one spearlike pine, and the saw blade cleanly severed the trunk. The arm lifted and pulled the tree back out, sheared off the limbs and cut it to the right length, and dropped the rough log onto a neat pile.

“These machines can harvest anything from one inch to 38 inches” in diameter, Mike Schmidt, forestry biomass project manager for John Deere, told the appreciative crowd of about 30 visitors.

The harvester moved on to clip some smaller trees, brush and shrubs. Next came a forwarder, sorting the logs from the smaller material, and a bundler, which baled up the slash. The material was left in orderly piles for transport to either the mill or the co-gen power plant in Prairie City.

The precision display occurred June 11 as John Deere crews demonstrated the potential of the three huge machines not only to thin forest stands but also to produce compact bundles of forest slash for energy production or other biomass applications.

The demonstration, the first of its kind in the United States, took place on private Malheur Lumber Company land in the Bear Creek drainage north of Prairie City. The work is expected to continue into next week, but organizers set aside June 11-13 for industry and public tours of the project.

Observers, who were bused to the site from the Grant County Fairgrounds, hailed from across the state – and a few from farther afield. The turnout included logging contractors, mill operators, government officials, power plant developers and folks who were just plain curious.

The equipment operators came from even farther. John Deere brought Mike Womack and Greg Freeland from Louisiana to run the forwarder and the harvester. Juha Hakkinen came all the way from Finland to operate the slash baler.

Schmidt said they brought Hakkinen to the United States for the demonstration because he is an expert with it.

“He knows this machine inside and out,” Schmidt said.

The process was pioneered in Scandinavia, where using forest materials for energy production is more common.

Schmidt said the potential for this type of operation in the United States is growing – for several reasons.

First, he said, it would speed up thinning and fuels reduction in the overgrown western forests, and that in turn should reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

The process also provides fodder for energy production and allows easier removal of the material from the forests.

Schmidt said that on average, only about 10 percent of the roads on our forests are accessible to chip trucks. That makes it difficult to chip usable materials in harvest and thinning sites, or to get rid of slash quickly.

“It can take two to four years to get slash removed or destroyed on site,” he said.

The three-machine approach accomplishes harvest, thinning and slash removal in one operation.

That also dovetails with the Forest Services emerging emphasis on stewardship contracting, which combines commercial operations with treatments to improve forest health.

Curt Qual, a Malheur Forest stewardship officer, was instrumental in bringing the John Deere demonstration to Grant County. He told the industry reps viewing the site that for this type of project, his agency would be looking for proposals not to do just one part of the process, but to “go in and do the whole job, from start to finish.”

Walt Gentis, a forester for Malheur Lumber, said the company was pleased to host the demonstration.

The 40-acre tract being used is part of a larger belt of land that is infested with mistletoe, a parasitic plant that deforms and stunts a wide range of tree species.

The company prepped the site before the equipment arrived, marking the healthiest trees – large and small – to keep. The others will be cleared away, hopefully with the mistletoe they carry.

“We’re saving the fir and larch, and the healthy pine – as much as we can,” Gentis said.

He called the project a “great opportunity to see what happens here, compared to areas that don’t get treated.”

He believes that while the project won’t produce much lumber for the mill, it will improve the health of the stand.

It also will provide data for officials researching the emerging biomass industry. One of the observers on the site was Dr. Dalia Abbas of the University of Minnesota, who is researching the costs and benefits of such operations, compared to the cost of conventional forest treatments.

The demonstration had its roots in discussions between officials from John Deere and the Malheur National Forest. Sponsors included the National Forest, Oregon State Department of Forestry, Malheur Lumber Company, D.R. Johnson, and Jackson Oil.