Staff/Supervisors

Raoul's family moved to the area in 1954 when his father got an English Professor job at Wabash. In 1956 his family moved to a 40 acre hobby farm north of town at junction of Walnut Fork and Sugar Creek. They grew most of their food and truck farmed for some income. His father did timber stand improvement and planted a hard to access field near the creek to trees in 1958. One of those walnut seedlings is now 24” diameter at breast height (DBH). The Moore Family Farm currently has about 700 acres of woodlands with about half of those as plantations from 25 different years. The changes in AG have made many smaller, high perimeter to volume fields uneconomic to farm. Some soils since the clearing off of the state and 100 years of plowing have lost fertility also making them unattractive for farming. Trees on good soils can return well over row crops but require tree time to mature. Raoul's hope is to get more people nurturing their woodlands and converting areas to trees.