By James Ronald Skains
Journal Correspondent

"Our normal business activity is growing hardwood seedlings and planting them in wetland areas," said Pete Williams founder and operator of Resource One Nursery in Lettsworth in Pointe Coupee parish. "However, a few weeks ago we got a call from the Army Corps of Engineers that they wanted to talk with us about a special project in the New Orleans area."

"Instead of planting trees, they wanted us to remove trees along the London Avenue canal that broke during hurricane Katrina," said Williams, who became a Louisiana Master Logger in 1998. "We met the Corps people on the site and they explained that the trees on the inside of the canal flood wall needed to be removed so that the Corps could inspect the flood wall for potential problems."

"They explained several scenarios on how we could remove the trees including bringing in barges to the canal by truck and off-loading them into the canal," Williams pointed out. "They suggested that one way to do it was by placing an excavator on one barge and using the other barge as a temporary storage place for the trees that were cut down before they were loaded onto trucks for the trip to the landfill."

"Finally they asked me what did I think that I needed to remove the trees between the water in the canal and the flood wall which was about a ten foot strip of land," Williams noted. "Most of the trees were small, what we call just brush with a few eight and ten inch trees. I told the Corp that all I needed was 24 men and 8 chainsaws."

"They gave us about three miles of canal bank to get the trees out of," Williams, who officially founded Resource One hardwood nursery in Lettsworth 1999, told the Journal. "We actually cleared the three miles with chain saws and boots on the ground in three weeks."

"Another crew with heavy equipment was working on another section of the canal doing the same thing that we were doing; however, we were able to clear twice as much area each day by hand as the crew with the heavy equipment," Williams noted. "The Army Corps of Engineers are now talking about giving us more work. They have about 50 more miles of levees that need the trees removed."

"We saw a lot of snakes in cutting those trees along the canal," Williams remember. "We saw at least one alligator and found a sinkhole near the base of the floodwall."

Prior to founding his hardwood tree nursery, Williams worked as a physical education teacher in Pointe Coupee parish. In the late 1990's, the Pointe Coupee school system experienced some severe financial difficulties and had to layoff teachers so Williams looked elsewhere for opportunities, finding them in forestry and agriculture.

"During my spare time I had begun to do some work with the USDA on a voluntary basis talking about alternative crops for minority farmers and land conservation," Williams explained. "I began to see some opportunities in wetland conservation with the re-planting of hardwood seedlings. One contact led to another and I found myself growing and planting hardwood seedlings all over Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas."

Later, Williams became active in the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and the National Agriculture Statistic Service. He serves as a panelist at numerous farm organization meetings and workshops, and does consulting work for several minority farmers and business men in southeast Louisiana.

Williams, who also makes frequent trips to Washington, DC to keep up on the latest USDA programs and operations, told the Journal, "Keeping our small farms in business is a priority."

"It is tough to keep the small guys going because of the high cost of fuel and fluctuating farm prices." Williams pointed out. "We are looking at some new type projects that will enable farmers to make their own fuel from their own products they grow."

Resource One Nursery, in Lettsworth off Highway 1 near the Port of Pointe Coupee Parish, consists of 47 acres where Williams grows 3 million seedlings a year. Williams also brokers hardwood seedlings around the country for various other tree planters and forestry companies.

He has seven full-time employees at the Resource One location. Two of the seven, John B. Williams and James Moore, have been with him since day one of operations at the tree nursery.

"During planting season, which runs from December to March when the sap is down and the seedlings are dormant, we usually have anywhere from 20 to 140 planting trees on a daily basis depending upon the size of the job," said Williams, whose official title with the NASDA is Supervisory Enumerator. "The most people working for us at one time was when we planted 7,000 acres of seedlings off Hwy 28 east near Deville on the Delta Plantation. We had guys unloading trucks, some carrying the seedlings to the planters and then the guys who used the dibble," Williams noted. "We averaged planting 90,000 seedlings per day with that big a crew. Each man is usually good for planting 1,000 seedlings in a days work."

"We plant 302 hardwood 18-24 inch seedlings per acre on a 12x12 grid system, so the guys with the dibble take four steps, put the dibble in the ground opening up a hole in which they place the seedling," Williams explained. "After the seedling is in the hole made by the dibble, the planter stomps the ground around the hole closing it up to protect the seedling so that it will root quickly."

Since 2003, Williams and his crews have planted roughly 20,000 acres in wetland hardwood seedlings. The most popular seedlings are nutall oak and cherry bark oak.

"We raise a lot of our seedlings from the acorn but we do get some from the big tree nursery in Woodworth," said Williams. "We gather some of the acorns ourselves but we do have different non-profit organizations that gather acorns for us as fund-raising projects."

Williams and his with Alfredia have four children, two boys and two girls. The oldest is Cornelius who just turned 16. The other boy is Nathaniel, 14, and the two girls are Alana, 13, and Jasper, 11.

During his spare time, Williams pastors a small church in Lettsworth.

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