Establishing a New Pine Plantation

[Wudman]

I've been scrapping and cleaning up lately, the dibble bar went up, and I couldn't do it, though I'll never use it again. We were hoedad planters back in the day, usually bare root stock, i think at 6x9 spacing, the frame on one of my old trucks was welded back together with worn out hoedad blades  . At one point we planted a lot of "Hugo Hells", after the storm a good bit was too tangled to harvest, too loose to burn, it was climb and crawl trying to get some growing trees back in the ground.

I got my forestry start in the "Hugo Hell".  I came out of school in December of '89 and landed on the NC/SC border.  Even months after the storm, I-95 still had trees laying on the shoulder.  The tops had been cut to allow passage of traffic, but the bulk of the stem was still there.  I started salvage operations down around Manning, SC and worked north and west over the next year and a half.  I kept a crew within the city limits of Charlotte for about a year.  The last salvage work I did was in Lincoln County, NC.........blown over Virginia Pine with backberry 15 feet tall.  Truly a nice place to work. 
Wud

[SwampDonkey]

Sounds like the fun running a clearing saw in softwood, knee high and pole wood that died and fell down or rotten fir that got buried in the green strips during harvest. Trails were nice and clean though, except wild raspberries. And the rocks to strike the blade on. Those green strips were like pitching hay with a saw, nothing would fall because limbs of trees grew into other tree limbs, limbs to the ground. 4-8 foot tall stuff. Could only cut about 1/2 an acre a day, 8 hrs.