Page 12 - Tree Line - North Carolina Forestry Association - First Quarter 2023

Above: Teresa Bodenhamer. Top: Container seedlings growing at Bodenhamer Farms.
out on my own and I went to the NCFA convention in Asheville 19 years ago. I’ve known Commissioner Steve Troxler for
a long time. His group includes someone from each county in North Carolina. I’ve been on trips with him to Brazil, China, and England representing forestry for North Carolina.
Q: What brought you from Kernersville to eastern NC?
A: In Forsyth County, I couldn’t have grown any larger as a farmer. Forsyth County had become congested with traffic.
To move equipment from farm to farm was hard. Where I am today, my farm is all in one place, so moving equipment is easy and safe.
Q: What was your original reason for joining the NCFA?
A: First of all, we’re a business and people that buy trees go to the NCFA.
I go to and am in several associations in the Southeast. The goal is to stay friends with everyone I’ve met in the whole forestry business. I’m constantly meeting people and making friends over the course of time. It’s a vacation to go and share a meal with your friends. If you don’t keep your name in the public, you might as well close it up.
Q: Tell me about your organization.
A: We sell longleaf and loblolly pines from an eight-acre nursery. If all
my trees lived, it would be 8.5 million, but only about 75% live, so we produce between 5 and 6 million. All container seedlings start as 5.5-inch and 6-inch plugs. We don’t raise bare root seedlings; the large companies do bare root. We have about 95% of our container growth living and when you compare that to bare root, bare root is a lower percentage. We’ve got
10 ncforestry.org / FIRST QUARTER 2023