Text and photos by Karl Kessler.
Red Oak
Kitchener (Steckle)
Steckle Heritage Farm in Kitchener
Age: Over 150 years old
Height: 72 ft (22 m)
Diameter: 40 in (103 cm)
“It’s a bit out of the way, here at the front of the house. Most people who come to the farm don’t see it.”
Executive Director of Steckle Heritage Farm, Amber Baptiste, is noting a paradox that is also a study in superlatives: here is a very big red oak, tucked far enough out of the way that even in this very busy place it is very easily overlooked, for all its “very bigness” and in spite of being right at the front of the nearly two hundred year old former Steckle farmhouse that faces, just metres away, a very, very busy Bleams Road.
When the oak was a sapling and just getting started, Bleams was still a quiet road in the country, not a buzzing through-route in an expanding city, and anyone who visited the Steckle family farm would have arrived here at the house, not the visitors’ parking lot at the back of the property.
And it’s not just the red oak that often escapes notice. Although it was established in 1988 as a place where city kids can visit a “farm in the city” to connect the dots from their food to our farms to the environment, Steckle Farm itself also remains a secret to some folks, even some who drive right by it at the top of a rise in Bleams Road. The green, hilly site on a little over 10 acres, with its heritage house, barn and outbuildings, is surrounded on three sides by light industry, and partly camouflaged behind hedges and trees along the roadside. It is a place that, once discovered and explored in person, delivers the feeling of a hidden retreat. As Amber says, “People are sometimes surprised to find we’re here!” But with school group tours through the spring and fall, Agriventure camps running all summer, drop off programs for kids, community tours, and every second Tuesday open to the public, the farm is undeniably “here.”
All oaks are precious, and red oak in particular may become even more precious, because oaks in the red group, which includes pin oak and black oak, are the most susceptible to the usually fatal oak wilt disease, first detected in Canada in 2023. Not pruning an oak from April to November reduces its risk considerably.
Our native oaks are living, growing superlatives. They can feed and shelter so wide a range of wildlife, can grow so large, can live for so long, that Aaron Boonstra, arborist and tree programs manager at our region’s Tree Trust partner, Reep Green Solutions, says, “They’re such important trees in terms of carbon sequestration, habitat, shade . . . oak is really the perfect tree!”
Thanks to Tree Trust and the Echo Foundation for making the “Tree of the Year” initiative possible. Tree Trust is a program started by the Elora Environment Centre, and delivered in Waterloo Region by Reep Green Solutions, with a mission to conserve legacy, mature trees for their significant environmental value. If you wish to contribute to the specialist care and protection of mature trees across the Waterloo Region, you can donate here by selecting ‘Tree Trust – Waterloo Region’ from the dropdown provided.
