rain

Brian w · December 15, 2018, 12:33:59 PM

Has anyone ever seen such a wet year in the North Central part of the country. Ohio in particular.. I haven't worked a full month all year. Even the middle of the summer was very wet.

mills · December 15, 2018, 03:33:35 PM

Kentucky was wet as well. I cut less bft this year than I have in the last ten. >:(

Southside · December 15, 2018, 03:53:09 PM

We have had over 20" here since September 12 when I set up my little weather station and it was already wet before that. No sun at all, beans still in the fields, never did any fall ground work. Absolute muddy mess.

nativewolf · December 15, 2018, 05:13:27 PM

It is why I took the lot clearing job with dry ground, 40k feet but I needed some income in the worst way. Today flooding all around, my walnut job will be a washout. Sigh. If i could get 2 dry weeks we'd finish putting 40k feet of walnut on the ground.

Skeans1 · December 15, 2018, 05:44:26 PM

You guys can't run on the brush mat and work all year like we do out here?

mike_belben · December 15, 2018, 06:30:10 PM

Theres a small clearcut down the street from me on a wet rolling lot with a brush road and i have to say its exceptionally sturdy. Anywhere the grapple skidder went off it is still deep pooled ruts. I pity the fellow that builds a house on it someday.

dsroten · December 15, 2018, 07:19:52 PM

20 inches of snow here in NC from winter storm Diego and now more rain has made a wet fall completely ridiculous. Good thing I do this as a side gig.

BargeMonkey · December 15, 2018, 07:44:21 PM

I guess the parameters for a "tropical rain forest" require 80"+ of rain a yr, we are up to 78" so far here in NY. Almost every business I know has suffered this yr, the last guy milking here sent the cows last week because he couldn't get enough hay in and with the price of milk it wasnt worth buying enough. Firewood is incredibly short, I've rarely ever turned people away but I've probably lost 100k bucks this yr just in firewood sales, we really only had 4wks this summer that was dry.

Skeans1 · December 15, 2018, 08:01:39 PM

How many of you guys are running clear cuts? How many are doing thins? Is there a better way to run all year vs using a skidder that will sink? We run year round out here in the rain wonder if shovel logging is possible or going to CTL.

Southside · December 15, 2018, 09:08:12 PM

A big part of the problem in this area is 1) clay based soils - it holds every drop of water and 2) complete lack of under brush, especially in plantation pine. Many are sprayed to prevent any brush and once the canopy closes nothing grows underneath, and I mean nothing. So you may have 1/2" of pine straw on top of red clay for a surface to ride on, one tire track across it and the surface is pumping water.

mike_belben · December 15, 2018, 10:06:16 PM

Its a tough year for beef farms in TN. Beef is down, winter came early and hay is high. Half from the extra herds having to be overwintered that are normally sold off into a strong market, and partly because it was so wet this summer a lot of guys struggled to get both cuts done. Theres a a lot of moldy rounds sitting out. We had a ton of fungal blight hit trees top to bottom. Same with the gardens.

nativewolf · December 15, 2018, 10:20:31 PM

@skeans1 the other issue on the east coast is that brushmats are hard to get unless you are doing ctl. Everyone is setup for skidding and don't have any ability to create a brush mat. If you look at the swamp logging show that was on tv a few years back (some thread here referencing the youtube channel they have now) you can see how they do it on the coastal swamp forest of the carolinas, cut roads of wood lay it down and drive in on that. Not a brush mat per se, actually a log road. Even then they have huge swamp tires on everything, sometimes duals. Crazy stuff.

Southside has explained the real issue we have mineral soils and an organic layer on top of a mineral layer is just a good excuse for grease. The soils do great in drought because they hold quite a bit of moisture and it is available to trees but when it gets this wet all games are off and this is the wettest year ever on the east coast. Compound that with our true winter dormancy. Nothing is pumping this rain out. Then top it off with a cherry, the ground froze a few inches last week, still a bit frozen so this water is just racing off the top. Every stream here is flooding today.

At least in the tropics the environment can pump that 80" of rain right back into the air pretty quick. One of the strangest things I have ever seen is being in a tropical rainforest and not being able to find water anywhere because as soon as it gets dry for a couple of weeks the water is all gone. Walk for miles and not see a stream with water. Crazy.

Ianab · December 15, 2018, 11:33:36 PM

Where I live we have 80+ inches of rain, and we aren't tropical (apart from this week :D ) Up closer to the Mt it's more like 120", And up in the National Park, more like 200. But we have terrain that can handle it, fast flowing streams etc.

Locally famers do "wrapped silage" this time of year, (early summer). Cut the grass, let it wilt for the day, then bale it green and wrap in plastic. It then cooks up and "pickles" like regular silage, and by mid winter the cows are loving it. Into the New Year the weather is usually more settled and you can get hay dried normally.

2 weeks without rain here and the farmers are starting to grumble about it "getting bit dry". :D

But Winter can be pretty miserable. More days of rain than not, so things turn to mud. Not cold enough to freeze, rain 2 days out of 3 etc, temps around 40F etc.

Skeans1 · December 15, 2018, 11:33:57 PM

We deal with a lot of clay out here as well as the big duff mat on top that's part of reason they went to shovel logging year round, it's less trips per pass. Also with the reach you have less trail less ground getting tore up. If an area is bad it'll tong it out so they won't even touch the area, it's just an idea to try.

nativewolf · December 16, 2018, 08:58:50 AM

So I guess I need to get some pictures of all the flooded streams. I finally got tired of the rain here in VA and sent it up to eric, bargemonkey. He seemed a bit too dry. Excuse me a sec, the catfish have gotten into the chicken coop again, got to set a better gill net.

mike_belben · December 16, 2018, 10:53:29 AM

I think the SE vs the PNW is just an entirely different economic picture and probably always will be.

Autocar · December 16, 2018, 12:16:21 PM

Wet all summer and hasn't changed this fall or early winter wet wet wet . Like some of the other guys are saying less bd. ft. then ever in my career.

lxskllr · December 16, 2018, 01:03:39 PM

Wettest year ever, and that was before this weekend's rain. Worst part, is it didn't get me out of much work. Most of it was between 1530-700 and weekends. I also had an unprecedented amount of creek work. Most of the troubles affected the contractor, but it made my life more miserable too.

nativewolf · December 16, 2018, 02:09:55 PM

Quote from: lxskllr on December 16, 2018, 01:03:39 PM
Wettest year ever, and that was before this weekend's rain. Worst part, is it didn't get me out of much work. Most of it was between 1530-700 and weekends. I also had an unprecedented amount of creek work. Most of the troubles affected the contractor, but it made my life more miserable too.

Almost every saturday this fall it has rained buckets. Lucky parents that got to miss youth soccer.

Brush Hog · December 16, 2018, 02:49:11 PM

Soggy here in New England also as its raining as I type this.

Brian w · December 16, 2018, 05:09:22 PM

Well I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one getting rained on every other day. I seen the post about the brush mats and that is a good idea if you're a flat lander but it's not practical here in the foothills of the mountains. I also have been cutting in the state Forest so I'm limited to what I am allowed to do. I would tryy the shuttle logging but I'm limited to the equipment I have already. Especially with the weather I can't afford to buy anything else can barely keep what I have running.

nativewolf · December 16, 2018, 05:35:38 PM

You are not alone Brian. What a year.

quilbilly · December 17, 2018, 09:50:14 AM

Although y'all might not be able to do brush mats for other reasons I'm pretty sure it's steeper here than there. We use brush mats nearly all the time. I'm thinking the lack of brush mats might have to do with the type of wood, it's probably harder to do in a hardwood stand as opposed to our softwood stands. We often, not always, have small shade loving trees like WRC and WH mixed in with our Doug fir stands to drive over in combo with the limbs from the mature wood.

Skeans1 · December 17, 2018, 10:02:59 AM

Quote from: quilbilly on December 17, 2018, 09:50:14 AM
Although y'all might not be able to do brush mats for other reasons I'm pretty sure it's steeper here than there. We use brush mats nearly all the time. I'm thinking the lack of brush mats might have to do with the type of wood, it's probably harder to do in a hardwood stand as opposed to our softwood stands. We often, not always, have small shade loving trees like WRC and WH mixed in with our Doug fir stands to drive over in combo with the limbs from the mature wood.

And if we don't, I'll cut pulp up for slash in the trails just to keep from sinking out.

mike_belben · December 17, 2018, 11:20:49 AM

Guys running processors can do that with a push of a button. The bulk of appalachian mountain logging is beat to death cable skidders, dozers and even tractors. The "bigger" outfits are mostly grapple skidders pulling to a knuckleboom or maybe a shovel loader. Tops stay in the bush. Very few harvesters around compared to the prevalence of older stuff. The coop stocks chokers and winch line but not harvester chain.