The walker/planner for the logging company and I were expecting them to drop the feller not drive all the way into the landing. I don't know why we thought that because there is no place to turn a truck around but the landing which is at the top of a steep-ish hill.
Dragged that low boy over the hump and here we go !!!!
I had a friend who was going to do a drone inventory but we can't cause the prison was built 4-5 miles away and the drone GPS won't let it fly... do they think we are going to launch something from that far away ???
Not much that is very good, here. Moose chewed maple and balsam past it's prime ( some Way past). Some spruce and poplar. I feel lucky to have a logger come at all. They came this time of year last year and we sold about 15 acres of spruce/fir. No road bans between my land and the state highway.
I'll try to update when it gets more interesting.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/feller_truck2-6.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1517936857)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/fellerArr2-6.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1517936916)
They can cut a lot of medium size trees in a day with that, and do less damage too.
It's always impressive watching the guys with the hot saws work especially when they start cutting oversize double and triple cutting out here there's not much ground left they can't cut.
They came with the buncher. a dozer and an excavator last fall and widened the road I had, widened the trail and cut a new section to straighten it out before the gas line crossing. They did a really nice job smoothing it all out.
I guess they buried a bunch of top soil but I got them to stop burying rocks.I have uses for rocks and some people will buy them for retaining walls. It's only intended to be a winter road. Next summer I'll take my excavator out there and fix up a few little things. I expect we will be extending the road further next fall.
The snowmobile club and state did the same sort of work on the snowmobile trail a few years ago and it has set up pretty nice.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/newroad11-17_28129.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518005212)
That's some nice ground you have there.
Sprucebunny,
You must be in Berlin? I know we have the State and Fed prisons there.
Matt
Looks like the perfect spot for two of my favorite hobbies....hunting grouse and cutting firewood. Hope the harvest goes well, congrats!
Scott B.
Thanks, Ray. Lots of wet spots, swamps, all that stuff. A few rocks, too :D
Matt: in Milan.
Scott, yes good grouse hunting. If you want to burn red maple or balsam, there's lots of those but no 'real' hardwood. I gave up cutting anything but w.birch for firewood there. I have r. oak and beech nearer to the woodstove :)
I went up and checked on progress today but I doubt if any of the pictures of the buncher came out well because there was lots of snow in the trees.
Joan, Is that up by the rabbitdog training area? I used to go up that way when the gunshop at the farm was open. I dont get up that way much any more ,used to sell a lot of hemlck to White mtn.lumber. Don
How's the wood coming out? Have logs,going to chip,pulp? All three? ;D
thecfarm did you hear what sprucebunny said, she sells her rocks! Ray you may be richer than you think! :D
I know I saw that. Them Flat Landers are a numb bunch. I can't give any away to people in Maine. :D If I could get any amount,I would tell them to start hauling.
I have bunches of stone walls,or I should say miles. Run out in the fields,I could send them in the woods to find more. Really amazes me when I see a stone wall in the woods. But they cut by hand than,or had a 3 foot cutter bar on a horse drawn mower.
Winter weather stopped me from hauling one wall up into the bog. I will attack it again come summer!!!!
Funny thing about stone walls out in the woods. Once upon a time they were actually on the edge of a field.
This is family land that I own. My Grandparents owned both sides of Gordon Hill Road in Chesterville and than both sides of the Ridge Road in Fayette. I know where the old houses was. Or the general area. So much has changed in 50 years,with cutting wood and building houses,it's hard to find the exact spot.
My Grand Parents was storing hay in one of those old houses. Someone came to them and wanted to rent it. My GrandFather said,I will have to move the hay out first, And he did. I had someone come to The Farm that grew up in that house. I offered to take them to it,but kinda on the old side,hard for them to walk.
I am claiming back the old pasture. Sure is a hard row to hoe.
Other than accents and forests Maine is a lot like tennessee. My uncle owns the starter and alternator shop on 1A in ellsworth. Been there couple few times.
And the coast, and potatoes... ;D
Don, I don't know of a rabbit dog training area. I'm sure plenty have been trained on my land in one way or another. Bear dogs and thier people have learned some things, too ! I had one guy in shorts that I intersepted on the powerlines chasing some bear/dogs to keep them out of corn near the river. Hope he brought band-aids cause they were all headed for a large, wet and prickly with young spruce area :D
They will be bringing the chipper in today or tomorrow. Pretty much the only sawlogs will be balsam and the larger ones mostly have butt-rot. I was hoping some of the r.maple would be good/big enough for mat logs but not many of them straight enough. Like I said; I feel lucky to have a good logger who does not insist on clear cutting it.
Quote from: Southside logger on February 08, 2018, 11:30:39 PM
And the coast, and potatoes... ;D
Can't forget the taters. ;D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzRvDaJaSMo
Nice road in, nice equipment to. Hope the harvest goes well. :)
The moose around here tear up any red maple as well. They scrape up the bark and break down the tops of the small ones. Did I say we have too many moose? :D
Need a bigger freezer
Much nicer weather today. Things are going good.
They are waiting for the ground to freeze in a corner of the landing to set up the delimber unit but the other grapple was sorting stuff to go into the chipper.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18chprCl.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518468994)
Pretty cool how they planned to turn the bunches in towards the crane with the skidders.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18skdrTurn.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518469164)
Skidder action shot :)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18skdraction.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518469308)
Pulp piles. The wood isn't very good here, I think it's been too wet and too crowded. We'll fix that :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18pulplogs.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518469480)
Lot of popple and white maple, that popple dont get very big before it gets heart rot. I been hoping to see enough of a truck ,or slasher to see who is doing the job ! ;D I know a bunch of hose north country guys !!
I hope the day will come when I just will be the camera man and watch the action. ;D
Nice pics.
I like the pictures.
I'm impressed with how fast the process is. The delimber/slasher thing has a broken swing motor ( a seal) so that's slowing down spruce/fir production. I got to see the insides of it but forgot to take a picture.
Here's a before and after comparison.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18before.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518779532)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18after.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518779574)
In 20 years we may be accused of 'high-grading' but it's because there is nothing very good to start with. Especially no good hardwood. We want to see softwood regen and leaving some shade will help that as well as keep down bindweed and other nasties.
With it thinned out majorly, I'll be able to get around better and thin the younger softwood stands.
Loading poplar.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18loadingpoplar.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518779783)
Delimber
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18dlimbbroke.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518779983)
Some spruce
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18sprucelogs.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518780040)
We are all hoping the weather stays kind of cold but we are currently having March temps.
A skidder pic. Still hoping for an awesome buncher action shot :)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18skidder.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518780395)
One of the skidders squeaks. They have greased it to death and it still does it. I'm guessing there is somewhere that has a blocked grease way to a pin ???
I am enjoying watching Joan. They will find the squeak when the pin wears and becomes a "wiggling pin in a wobbling hole". (old saying) ::)
Wow, all that equipment needs quite a landing and then the trucks wanna turn around too.
Really nice pictures. Keep them coming. Are they getting any fir/spruce saw logs ??
gg
They figured the landing size pretty close ! Barely room to park another pickup truck :D
Yes, there will be some spruce/fir sawlogs. The cutter/buncher just leaves bunches out there and they sort them when they are dragged in to the landing. The delimber/slasher was broken the other day with almost a truckload of s/f sawlogs piled around it. Lots of the balsam has butt rot but they cut off a few feet and it's usually ok. We are leaving most of the pine.
Looking good. Forrest Hicks?
as long as your happy with the job thats what counts. i am no fan of whole tree chipping
What would you do with it, snowstorm ?
Too crooked to easily truck in anything but 4' bolts, plenty of rot and Berlin biomass buying chips 5 miles away. If it doesn't qualify as pulp or poplar, what would you do with it ???
Yes, Rick.
I know several that chip and they all drive what should be round wood or studwood through the chipper cause they have a quota to meet.
Spruce for studwood if the size is there, but sprucebunny is seeing a lot of rot and crook in the fir I believe. You can't really judge an operation from the laptop. ;) Some mills here will put up a fuss if they see a tree length stick that looks like it was squared off the top of a good log and been known to reject your load over it. Also stud mills want next to no fir at all unless it is exceptional. In our area, Irving and one other mill right now don't want any studwood at all. Currently, Gardner pays about $50/tonne for spruce only.
Here I can sell fir studwood down to a 4" top. The spruce logs need to top 6". The mill is fine with cutting the logs out and sending the tops as long as they get the logs
Since chips is the least valuable and the company owner is doing the sorting, I doubt he would chip anything he could get a log out of. I don't believe he has a quota.
Today they had some piles of hardwood sawlogs. I don't know if he groups mats in with sawlogs when speaking but I'll know later.
Yes, SD we were talking about it...the fir is in poor shape and the spruce is good. One of the guys mentioned that they seldom see both species be good on the same lot/section.
Pictures later :)
Yep, spruce grows pretty good on a lot of sites where as fir needs good well drained ground and needs spaced apart well to grow nice sound logs. :)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_BigTrees-bal.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1192063131)
18" dbh @ 50 years. I know the age of these from counting rings on the but of the logs after the neighbor harvested them. They were mostly chalk white, but one once in awhile was full of ant galleries. Anything larger than 18" was ant hotels mostly. They were thinned in the 80's. There was white spruce up to 24" scattered through the stand and a bit older to.
Great pictures sprucebunny. What are the hardwood species being retained. Looks like yellow birch and maple in the pics but wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong. How many load a day are they doing to justify the equipment on site?
SwampDonkey, thanks for reminding me that fir wants drier feet and better spacing. Makes me wonder why they lived as long as they did ??? Some of the ones that fell down were 10-12"dbh. It's entirely possible that the water level in the land has changed because of a stream nearby being higher than when the trees were youngsters. A dam of mineral soil and cut logs had formed .... some weird things have happened out there !
Thanks, Ken. Yes, yellow birch and maple. The cutter has done a great job of finding nice trees to leave.
Next trip I'll get a picture ...I didn't know there were that many mostly straight trees out there :D
I don't know how many loads but I had to get a CB radio 'cause the road is busy and icey.
They have started cutting an area of mostly hardwood. Crooked maple, birch, poplar and b. cherry. There was one ash log and I think they'll find another. All between 8-12+"dbh. There was very little regen under it. Both wet and rough ... oh and large rocks.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18underskidder.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518904204)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18buncherfir.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518904274)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18buncher1.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518904318)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18Dlmpinebehind.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518904361)
More pics.
Birch looks a little crooked...
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18birch.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518905713)
4 grapples in this shot.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18landingw-truck.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518905783)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18uphill2buncher.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1518905831)
Nothing like the smell of fresh wood cutting.
My Father use to say,that tree is so crooked it would not even make straight smoke.
I sure would like to get a steady supply of logs like your birch and maple for our firewood operation :) Looks like a fun project! Beautiful country up there.
Sprucebunny
So you are trying to do an irregular shelterwood? Do you plan to remove the remaining overstory when the softwood regeneration gets established? Or is your goal to create a multi-aged stand? Just wondering.
I have a white birch patch, I call it, mixed with ash, elm and poplar. It is an old cedar stand actually, so on the wet side, runs the entire width of the lot, but the north half has white birch. The understory is returning to cedar. But the white birch is also crooked on that ground. I'm just trying to get them established to produce seed. And I don't have many yellow birch. Trying to get them to produce seed to. Out by the road, the one white birch I have on old farm ground is nice and straight. Hard to get a good catch of birch with the moose coming long and snapping off the tops. :D
Thanks, Pclem. Do you sell red maple as firewood ? I don't find much heat in in it. I've switched to cutting around my house 50 miles south where I have beech and oak.
Tarm, I'm not sure there is a name for this kind if cut. We are keeping some shade to encourage softwood regen and discourage birch and poplar. It would make a mess of it to try to get the hardwood out before the softwood is ready. I like multi age stands; makes me feel like not all the eggs are in one basket. I'll probably try to plant 100 or more spruce a year and thin out most balsam. But I'm getting a little old for those big ambitions.
SD, I have cedar scattered around but flooding from beavers killed my big stand.
Yes, I have seen that to. I thinned a cedar patch on an adjacent woodlot. There was 5 acres of young cedar. The beavers moved in and made a big pond. ::)
I find red maple is OK in spring and fall, but not good wood for real cold. I will be burning anything I can gather from thinnings, mostly in the shop or fall wood in the house. Fir, red maple, aspen she all burns. I'll be getting 4-1/2 cord of hard maple for the real cold days of winter. I thought apple wood might be good heat wood. Then I cleared the old orchard and tried some, I was glad to get that out of the way and into the hard maple. I never got much heat from the apple wood, it was seasoned over a year to.
Just curious of what kind of Cedar you guys have back there? Typically in a mixed hardwoods in our Doug fir we'd be doing everything we can to move every hardwood we see for shading reasons, thinning so each stem has 2.5 sides normally open.
If you can ever find hickory cutoffs or rejects from a handle mill or pallet mill, etc.. the stuff is like rocket fuel. Itll turn the flu red if you arent careful.
Joan, to me that is a big operation. About how many acres are you cutting/improving?
Quote from: Skeans1 on February 18, 2018, 08:10:26 AM
Just curious of what kind of Cedar you guys have back there?
Eastern (northern) white cedar,
Thuja occidentalis(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_NWCedar.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1192063247)
Old growth
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_white-cedar3.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1339440541)
Young Thicket
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_cedar-regen2~0.jpg)
Yes, we love red maple, birch, cherry, [most mixed hardwoods] for the packaged wood. This is for the summer camping season at campgrounds. It splits, dries, and packages better than oak. And I like the different fragrances for a campfire . We're selling an experience too ;D For homeowners fall/winter, we only sell oak. We used to be able to have the loggers sort processor "mini bolts", but the amish mills around here keep paying more for anything down to 7", so it's harder to get decent stuff. They would buy that pile of birch of yours cut 8'8" for $140-$150/cord :)
All my cedar,I can shove my arm up the butt log 4 feet. :o Well I could if you took all the rotten wood out. I had my land cut off,about 5 years ago. I told them to bring out any cedar they had to cut that was in the way. Really no market here. I had a pile from the last time I had it cut. I had a hard time to get a 8 foot 4x4. The butt maybe almost 16 inches across,but by the time I get into good wood,it's down to 10 inches. But I got a lot of side lumber to build some tomatoes cages.
We've always had a market for cedar here, a lot of it is sold to Maine actually. I saw a big load of tree length Cedar down in Smyrna a couple weeks ago. They was all solid wood. I like the smell of cut cedar rolling bye. :) Doesn't Ward buy it?
I see a lot of 30" cedar left to fall down on cut land on public land, also big piles road side. Such waste of wood. Some day they will wish they didn't waste cedar wood. Those that hold the license to that land have all the control, if someone wanted it, they couldn't have it unless the license holder said so. And knowing how they operate, they would fear that 100 guys would bother them for it, when they'd rather deal with 2. ::)
Good picture documentation of the timber harvest project.
I have a few cord of cedar at the woods yard,as I call it. Maybe 2, high 3 cords. I doubt I could get a cord from all that cedar,I mean good saw logs. First off,it's old,probably 100 years old,the first 4-8 feet has rot in it. Not really no lie about it being rotted hearted. Remember I said I had a hard time getting a 8 foot 4x4 out of them?
I will be sawing it up into cants and sawing alot of short lumber off from the short logs. This is what is called side lumber?
Ward,never heard of them. I know of one small sawmill that saws cedar,on the way to Charleston. I have no idea what town it's in. A good 2 hours from me.
A lot of guys will split posts or make shakes out of the western red cedar.
Quote from: Magicman on February 18, 2018, 08:28:08 AM
Joan, to me that is a big operation. About how many acres are you cutting/improving?
A big operation to me, too ! We are cutting on about 90 acres.
It will be a little more 'cause we are going to clear next year's road. The owner says one spring when they pulled out the bunches left last fall , there were sleepy bears under them :)
Quote from: thecfarm on February 18, 2018, 06:26:57 PM
Ward,never heard of them.
I mean down in Smyrna, too far for you for sure.
They make cedar log homes. Been around almost 100 years. First place in the US to make log homes actually. The office is in Houlton, but the manufacturing is down Smyrna way.
Ward Cedar Log Homes | Log Homes and Log Cabin kits (https://www.wardcedarloghomes.com)
We've had a couple cedar mills retire here in the last year or so. Lindsay Lumber and Hainesville Lumber. There is a old guy near here that makes cedar posts. I go there for raspberry cane tie-up posts.
Some of this is salvage. There were lots of standing dead fir with spruce mixed in and a couple acres of 12" dead fir on the ground with recent softwood blowdown on top of it.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18salvage.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519076265)
The foreground of this pic was like that, too. The hardwood in the center had some larger not great trees.
I really didn't know that there were that many straightish trees out there !
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18southHardw.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519076398)
Studs.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18landingdust1.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519076675)
Sorting and chipping.
There was a deerstand on one of the poplar logs.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18sorting.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519076832)
you make awesome pics! Keep em coming
They wouldn't put a deer stand through the chipper ??
Nah...too noisy
Someone took the deerstand over a weekend. Solved that problem.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18treeLstuds.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519774720)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18feedChpr.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519774826)
I got to ride to the biomass plant with one of the truck drivers. It's pretty hard to see the truck picker-upper from the road but I got a close up view !
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18bbtower2Baframe.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519775045)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18bbbackingin.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519775088)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18bb2trucks.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519775127)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18bbgoingup.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519775155)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18bbbackstop.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519775191)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/C18bbup.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1519775220)
Huuh, I wouldn't wanna be in that cab. ;D Almost straight up.
Quote from: lopet on February 27, 2018, 07:21:01 PM
Huuh, I wouldn't wanna be in that cab. ;D Almost straight up.
Nope, couldn't pay me to go on that ride!
Don't forget your coffee either
I sent up 1200 + yards, the drivers go in a booth and dump there own trucks.
It's not as vertical as it looks in the pic. Maybe 50 degrees.
For those who don't know, this is an old pulp mill site.
How does the truck hold on that ramp? are they tied down? or just the brakes?
Quote from: sprucebunny on February 28, 2018, 06:27:49 AM
It's not as vertical as it looks in the pic. Maybe 50 degrees.
For those who don't know, this is an old pulp mill site.
Dump your own rig - that must be fun !! Is that Berlin ?? Haven't been thru there in years.
gg
Berlin burns 110 TT loads a day. :o
Quote from: teakwood on February 28, 2018, 06:32:30 AM
How does the truck hold on that ramp? are they tied down? or just the brakes?
That was my first ? also.
There is a brace at the back of the ramp that contacts the back of the trailer. You can see just a little of it in the second picture. Gravity does the rest :)
Yes, Berlin.
The paper mills in Wisconsin use the same type of truck lift to unload trailers. I remember the story years ago where a trucking company came in with chips in a regular dry van trailer, as soon as it went up to unload the sides caved in like a pop can. (https://forestryforum.com/board/Smileys/default/shocked.gif) Figured out quick they needed vents cut into the walls at the front of the trailer.
Even with vents, there is a noticeable sucking in of the trailer walls.
I used to send chips to whitefield,they were open 24-7 back then ,dump your own load. you need a lot of vents in those trailers or you are asking for trouble!! looks like there doing a nice job keeping that young understory upright, once they leaf out and the winds come up you will probably have a bit more firewood.
Yes and it will be possible to see it and get to it !!!
Grain elevators and cotton oil mills had those lifts too. I have used them with tandem grain trucks, but we had walking floor trailers, so bypassed them. I did get to see a nice pete that was on one at an oil mill when she broke and came crashing to the ground, lots of damage and the hood flew off to the side.
Out on the mill road from Deersdale to Nackawick the chipping vans were extra wide and not allowed on the highway. I can tell ya those things sure do sway back and forth. ;D Their tree length trucks the same, terrible wide beasts. :o You want a radio for sure. ;)