By Jodi Hausen,Staff Writer

FARMINGTON – When “an elderly gentleman” told Trudy Marshall he’d never used a chain saw before, but intended to do so, she got an idea.

Marshall, the manager of Labonville, a forestry and arborist supply store, invited students from Foster Applied Technology Center’s forestry program to present logging safety demonstrations outside the store Wednesday.

About 25 people came to learn more about chain saw use and care.

The high school students set up four stations covering different topics: chain saw injury reduction, chain saw care and maintenance, dressing appropriately for weather conditions and working environment, and personal protective equipment.

Patrick Ridley carefully cut a bent sapling, showing how to do so without its snapping back at him – a skill foresters need to learn and one that he was taught at school.

More dramatic perhaps were safety demonstrations in which students exhibited what might happen when a running chain saw meets Kevlar chaps worn on the legs to prevent serious gashes.

The chaps, when cut with a chain saw from the outside on a board, looked completely mangled.

But when reversed they were intact, showing their effectiveness.

By contrast, Chris Nightingale carefully slashed through a packaged ham in an effort to demonstrate what might happen to a chain saw user not wearing the protective chaps. It wasn’t pretty – a gash six inches long and several inches deep running through the center of the meat.

Juniors Nate Webster of Vienna and Kris Arnold of Farmington, watching from the sidelines, said they both took a class in forestry fundamentals last year and are in the forestry technology program this year.

Webster, like many of his classmates, said he wants to work with heavy equipment – excavators seemed to be the machine of choice. Ham-cutter Nightingale said he plans to attend Washington County Community College to learn how to work with the machinery.

Arnold said he hopes to pursue a career building motorcycles, but if that doesn’t work out, he said, he plans to start a small logging operation with his friend and fellow student Kris Allen.

The vocational program is not only educational but fun, according to the students. The time just flies by, said Jeff Stevens of Chesterville. The instructor, Dean Merrill, jokes and makes the class fun, he added.

“He’s like one of our friends,” Stevens said.

And Merrill clearly enjoys his charges – he wore a never-fading grin on his face as he encouraged and guided his students Wednesday.

“What makes this class fun to teach is the kids want to be here,” he said.