By Ron Brown
NEAR GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Thanksgiving is next week, and Christmas is only five weeks away. That means the rush is on for a Josephine County agency that helps challenged people learn to work and become independent.
For nearly 30 years, Greenleaf Industries has provided work opportunities, including making and selling of Christmas wreaths.
It takes a lot of fir, cedar and other boughs and natural materials to make the 1,700 or so Christmas wreaths that Greenleaf Industries makes and sells each year. A small crew went up in the Granite Hill area Tuesday morning to cut and gather Douglas fir boughs other Greenleaf workers will use to create holiday greens for sale.
Greenleaf get permits from the Forest Service and BLM to trim boughs from trees in nearby forests, or sometimes buy from Christmas tree farms in the Willamette Valley, but the idea is to get the best materials and give Greenleaf clients a paying job.
There's hardly anybody that doesn't really enjoy the smell of the green boughs at Christmas, whether it's a Christmas tree or a wreath. Once these boughs are collected and gathered up, they'll be taken back to Greenleaf's plant where they'll be put together into Christmas wreaths and swags to be sold to help fund the program for another year.
Anyone interested in purchasing a Greenleaf wreath can get more information by calling Greenleaf's Grants Pass office at 541-474-0571.