Bend USFS facility sows seeds of renewal across U.S.

The snow may be flying, but it’s still harvest season for the Bend Seed Extractory.

“We get deliveries almost daily,” Manager Kayla Herriman said Friday.

Herriman is talking about plants — packages of shrubs, grasses, flowers and conifers employees open before they get to work using machines to shake, blow and rip seeds from their pods and cones.

Other workers have more delicate tasks, like hand-counting each and every seed before it’s shipped out.

Fourteen people work at the facility, designed to give Mother Nature a hand all across the nation.

The fruits of their labor are the seeds literally planting the future:. After processing, they’re sent back out for restoration efforts in forests, grasslands, parks and projects spanning all 50 states.

After extraction, refinement, testing and shipping, more than 3,000 species of plants will be able to trace their roots back to Bend. Herriman said the facility also stores about 53,000 pounds of seeds on site.

The facility is one of just two of its kind in the nation operated by the U.S. Forest Service. The other one is in Mississippi.

Employees told NewsChannel 21 most people are surprised the operation exists in Bend.

“That’s how most people are,” said one worker. “‘They’re like, ‘seed what?'”

Th woman recently started working full time at the extractory after volunteering for two years. She won an award from U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell for her dedication.

“This is my passion: native plants, restoration, helping the ecosystem,” she said. “This is what I’m about.”

Processing plants native to Central Oregon is just a small fraction of the work done at the extractory.

“We’ve gotten a rare orchid from the Midwest, a Joshua tree, and that came from southern Nevada,” Herriman said.

There’s just a few different machines in the facility, and with thousands of varieties of plants, workers have to get creative.

“Ironically, we use a lot of soil sieves, food processors, rolling pins,” Herriman said. “Our employees — I would say they’re innovative, inventors. They think on their feet. It really is a problem-solving type job.”

The job also has a real impact on the landscape in Central Oregon. On Friday, technicians refined Douglas fir seeds that will be used to restore the areas that lost vegeetation from the Bridge 99 fire near Sisters. Their work is also now growing in the 2014 Two Bulls Fire area, west of Bend.

“Wildfire is definitely one of our biggest supporters, in terms of restoration efforts,” Herriman said.

The Bend Seed Extractory processes seeds for any type of government agency, all the way from the federal to city levels.

The facility is open to the public for tours. To schedule a visit, you can call the Deschutes National Forest at 541-383-5300.