LARKSPUR RUN

Larkspur Run is a 40-acre working forest at the end of a quiet road, about a fifteen-minute drive from Corvallis. It includes a log house, a fenced vegetable garden, year-round Belden Creek flows, and a spring-fed pond of roughly an acre. It is a private place, but not an untouched one: the land has been shaped by earlier logging, roads, water systems, planting, and the ordinary work of living here.

 

A forest-management plan guides the work in the woods. That includes maintaining access, reducing hazardous fuels, managing invasive plants, supporting regeneration, and making selective harvests where and when they fit the long-term health of the forest. Along the protected creek corridors, young Douglas-fir are being given time and room to become part of a much older forest over the generations ahead—an old-growth nursery, in effect.

 

The two branches of Belden Creek meet near the pond, influencing much of the property’s character and day-to-day management. Water, drainage, wildlife habitat, roads, soils, and vegetation all require attention, and conditions change from season to season.

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The log house was built in the early 1930s, as near as can be determined, and has sheltered several families over the decades. The garden and surrounding grounds continue that practical connection to the place.

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This website is both an introduction to Larkspur Run and a working record of its care—its history, systems, maps, projects, questions, and decisions. Together, those records describe a covenant with the land: a commitment to make decisions with the long-term health of its forest, water, soils, and wildlife in mind. It means paying attention to the pressures already at work, including invasive species, wildfire risk, and a changing climate, and doing what is practical to help the property retain its character and resilience for those who follow.