For us, that certification reflects an important part of caring for this property as a whole. Stewardship does not stop where the vineyard rows end.
What Certified Family Forest Means
The American Tree Farm System works with private forest owners who actively manage their land according to recognized standards of sustainable forestry. Becoming a Certified Family Forest involves more than simply owning wooded acreage. Participating properties maintain a written forest-management plan and are evaluated by a qualified inspector against standards addressing forest health, conservation, wildlife, water, and long-term stewardship.
The goal is to keep privately owned forests healthy, productive, and ecologically valuable over time. That requires landowners to understand what is happening within their woods, identify areas that need attention, and make management decisions with the future of the forest in mind.
53 Acres Beyond the Vineyard
Approximately 53 acres of Knudsen Vineyards remain forested, providing a natural counterpoint to the cultivated portions of the property. These areas are not simply land that has been left unused. They are part of a living forest system that requires its own kind of management and care.
The forest includes mature Oregon white oaks, an important native tree within the Willamette Valley landscape. Along with other native vegetation, these trees contribute to the diversity of habitat found across the property and help preserve some of the natural character of the Dundee Hills.
Restoring and Caring for the Forest
Forest stewardship sometimes means protecting what is already thriving. In other places, it means helping native plant communities recover. Knudsen Vineyards has worked with the Yamhill Soil & Water Conservation District on restorative forestry projects within our non-vineyard acreage.
One documented project focused on sword fern recovery. Young sword ferns were moved from portions of the woods where they were abundant to nearby areas where they were lacking, helping reestablish a native plant that naturally belongs in this forest ecosystem. Projects like this may be small in scale, but they demonstrate what active forest stewardship looks like on the ground: observing the landscape, understanding where intervention may be useful, and helping native ecosystems remain healthy over time.
Managing a Forest on a Different Timeline
Vineyards and forests ask us to think about land in very different ways. A vineyard follows a visible annual rhythm, from bud break and flowering through harvest and dormancy. Forest management operates on a much longer timeline.
The decisions made in the woods today may shape the property for decades. Trees protected now, habitat restored now, and management choices made now may still be influencing the landscape when another generation is responsible for caring for it.
That long view is one of the reasons Certified Family Forest stewardship feels particularly appropriate at Knudsen Vineyards. Our responsibility to this property is not limited to the vines we farm or the wines produced from them. It also includes caring for the forests, native plants, wildlife habitat, and natural landscape that surround them.
Caring for the Whole Property
The vineyard and forest serve different purposes, but together they make up the landscape that our family has been entrusted to care for. Maintaining our Certified Family Forest gives us a framework for looking beyond the cultivated acres and considering the long-term health of the land as a whole.
It means recognizing that the woods have value of their own and that thoughtful stewardship sometimes requires thinking not in growing seasons, but in generations.
