The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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    Tree donation 7-12

July 11, 2008

The grand prize: A free tree

Winners get trees to call their own

By Dan Nienaber

MANKATO — For the past several years Scott Austad has been chipping away at the big job of landscaping his yard in a rural neighborhood south of Mankato.

As anyone who has done they’re own landscaping knows, it can be an expensive, labor intensive process. Trees aren’t cheap, even when they’re seedlings, and digging holes isn’t easy when the ground is dry and as hard as cement. Then there’s the constant task of keeping the new trees watered.

So Austad was wishing the dozens of tree planting jobs he’s done in the past could have gone as easily as things went Friday. He just snapped some pictures and made a few wise cracks as a professional did the work.

Joe Koberoski used a truck-mounted tree spade to dig a huge hole — with one big bite from the spade’s metal teeth — and drop a 10-year-old blue spruce in Austad’s backyard. The extra bonus was it was all at the expense of the Minnesota Forest Industries organization and McDonald’s restaurants.

“That’s how trees are supposed to go in,” Austad said as Koberoski finished the 15-minute job.

“It looks a lot better here than at my place,” Koberoski added.

Austad was one of about 55,000 Minnesotans who stopped at a McDonald’s around Arbor Day this year and bought one of the meals that came with a free tree seedling. And he was one of the 3,200 people in the state who entered a drawing to have a mature tree of their choice purchased, delivered and planted on their property.

There were a total of five winners throughout the state. Ray Higgins, field representative for Minnesota Forest Industries in Duluth, was making deliveries to two of them Friday. The other winner in the area was Donald Bruckhoff in Wells.

“We’re all about taking care of forests, and this is part of that,” Higgins said. “The deal is you can get any kind of tree you want, as long as it grows in Minnesota.”

Austad’s tree was the first tree delivered this year, and the largest that’s ever been planted for a contest winner. After Higgins called him a couple weeks ago and told him he’d won, Austad went to Koberoski’s tree farm to pick out a spruce that would block the view of a weedy hill at the edge of his yard.

It beat building the retaining wall he’d been considering prior to Higgins’ call.

Austad had stopped at the McDonald’s in Jordan with seven other people who didn’t want their seedlings. So he planted the small trees in the acre of wooded property he owns beyond his yard and sent in the eight entry forms.

“I mailed the envelope in and forgot what it was all about,” he said. “When Scott called from a Duluth I was thinking, ‘What did I do there, I haven’t been up north since deer hunting season.’”

It was one of many jokes the happy winner made as Koberoski did the work. And Koberoski, who also delivered Bruckhoff’s tree, said it was a bonus for his Mankato business, too.

“I wasn’t expecting the call,” he said. “That’s one of those things I never enter because I know I’m never going to win.”

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