Robin Warner
I have four major interests in life, any two of which would be enough. For years, I’ve split my time among trees, dancing, Quakers, and computers. When I retired from my work as a network administrator, instead of taking time off, I filled my days with trees.
In the spring of 2008, I expanded my tree growing avocation into a retirement business and gave it the name Dexter Tree Farm. I’ve always seen trees as a way to get outdoors and keep fit as I approached old age as slowly as possible.
In January 2008, I met some folks at a nursery convention who were selling special pots that grow better trees. There were two competing companies claiming to have the very best equipment for doing this. When I found out that they both based their products on the research of the same person, Carl Whitcomb, I bought his book and read it from cover to cover.
I started seriously growing trees for fun and profit back in 1999 when I bought some superior Walnut seedlings that were supposed to grow into highly valuable veneer trees worth thousands of dollars each in only 35 or 40 years. I was 55 at the time and I had seen other people retire with nothing to replace the old job when they retired.
Robin Warner on a visit to California reviews the growth of the Sequoia his daughter planted for him.
The idea of having an investment to manage that was fun, would occupy me for several decades and would pay off just about the time all the other retirement investments ran out was very attractive. Now I think that both the value and the time to market were overly optimistic, but I have learned a lot about planting and caring for trees.
10 years before that my wife and I had bought a very large barn in the country that was partially converted into a house. We had gotten married the previous spring and had spent the spring and summer preparing for a series of dance performances in Denmark with 40 dancers and musicians from Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky.
In the summer we spent two weeks in Denmark eating, dancing and making lifelong friends. Then we spent 10 days in England introducing me to my new English relatives. It wasn’t the best time for shopping for a new house, but this barn was/is a one of a kind for a couple of folks who have a use for a really big ballroom.
In the deal, the barn came with 50 acres of land and this was the beginning of my fascination with planting trees.
Email Robin Warner (robin@dextertreefarm.com)