Having a blast

[Woodhog]

I looked at that real estate ad and noted the price 1 million dollars... this seems to be the norm nowadays, the best wood is gone, if you tried to grow anything on the cleared land you would have to invest another load of money in equipment etc, even if there was some wood left it might pay the taxes every year...

Most farmers are just hanging on with loggers not far behind, who buys these places and what do they do with them????

Good woodland around here is 1000 per acre plus with the returns of the logging at toilet levels , its gone beyond me!!!!

[SwampDonkey]

Well in this case, your federal tax dollars went into buying it for Dutch immigrants. They farmed 3 years and started an immigration business, now looking to sell the farm. That acreage is only half what we sold them. Those parcels add up to (approx):

75.10 acres natural regrowth
43.12 acres established plantations
261.50 acres farm fields

I drew up the map and stratified the land.

There's another 365 acres (including 148 acres field) up beside my woodlot, not included. That price also includes a huge potato storage facility that cost close to $650,000 to build as well as a 4 year old bungalow, a barn and a conset building. Farmland sells for $2000 to $4000 acre in these parts. They're not asking much for the buildings.

if you tried to grow anything on the cleared land you would have to invest another load of money in equipment etc.

I certainly don't agree 100 %, all you need is a thinning saw. Hmm, maybe $1200 and time. If it's poplar, it's free future wood, no need to thin. When I reflect on the activites on my woodlot, I would have much rather thinned than planted. I have alot of natural softwood and hardwood. Herbicide was used to kill poplar and hardwood over topping softwood replanted, which I think is not always a good way to manage our forests. At the time I had no say in it and was 4000 miles away. So I gotta work with what I have. I'll have a nice crop of fir and poplar to harvest in 30 years, my hardwood and spruce will go beyond that. ;)

She's been hard on the woodlots the last 20 years. Now what we're running into is highgrading hardwood for sawlogs and veneer, pulp price is way down and most is moving state side until Burla wakes up. I'm seeing alot of 6 inch (small end) hardwood being bought now to, it took 50 years to get that big. :'(

These people in Fredericton who say cedar isn't regenerating on harvested sites have got to wake up. I've never seen a harvested cedar stand that isn't regenerating with cedar, plus many other species (spruce/fir/poplar/elm/ash/pine/maple). (baring beaver flooded ground) They were relating this to thinning post assessment data where nothing under a meter is counted and some crews will cut a cedar and leave a fir. If they were doing a proper assessment they would tally cedar as present and the fact the that cut cedar, to leave a fir, was poor crop tree selection. The only thing I would favor over cedar is a spruce and I might leave the cedar tight without snipping it off if it's not actually overtopping the spruce. I walked quite a few of them sites with landowners and loggers who wanted to reforest them untill I showed them how well stocked they are with spruce, cedar and poplar coming back. Some people just go in the woods with $$ blinders on. No mature wood, no value, NFG.  :

[Tillaway]

I we have a hard time finding bunk logs. ;)  I know a guy that creased a car pretty good with a load of those. 

[slowzuki]

In the Fredericton area browsing by deer pretty much does the cedar in, I hardly have any on my property.  On the other side of the road by the river it isn't so bad as it is open and the deer don't like being over there.  There is a handful of little cedars growing.

Certainly a valuable wood at the moment, many contractors trying to get their hands on it.  I had a fellow approach me to buy the 4 acres of cedar at the front of my place.  It had good road access I guess and it is quite large diameter so it could have been profitable for them.  Too bad I like it myself!

These people in Fredericton who say cedar isn't regenerating on harvested sites have got to wake up. I've never seen 

NFG.  :

[Corley5]

White cedar regen doesn't survive deer browsing around here either.  Once it's above the snow pack it's done for :

[SwampDonkey]

Yup deer are a problem in some areas. I'm just lucky we have very few deer in my area. I saw one deer track today the first I seen in 3 months. I also seen 4 sets of coyote tracks since yesterday's hike. The deer keep eating the trees on my father's lawn in Woodstock, they come at night. Most deer are docturnal around here.

[pigman]

Most deer are docturnal around here.

smiley_confused   Not sure if your deer are working on their Phd or if they are preoccupied with doctrine. ;)

[SwampDonkey]

 ;D  Piggy boy  ;D

What's up Doc?

[Kevin]

[SwampDonkey]

 ;D 8) 8) :D

[Scott]

 Another nice string of pictures Paul I think you guys might be having a bit too much fun out there  :D.
  It's amazing how much goes on on this forum in the run of a couple of weeks. I've been away from home working in a Michelin tire plant in Pictou Nova Scotia as a college work term. I try to get home whenever i can but its a 4 hour drive so its usually only every other weekend. I don't have a computer down there so i ahve to try to catch up on the forum when i come home.

[Paul_H]

Hi Scott,
good to see you back  8)
When I took the pic of the D8H,I was thinking you'd appreciate it because I know you like the old machinery.

What are you doing at the Michelin tire plant ?

[Scott]

  Yeah I really like to see the big dozers at work. I see a lot of those big old D8s for sale on the Finning site and other equipment dealers out there, they must be a popular machine. Are many guys buying new dozers or are they just replacing them all with excavators? What models of newer dozers seem to be popular out there?
  I'm working as a student industrial mechanic. Mostly I do belt changes, pump rebuilds, pneumatic cylinder rebuilds, light welding, stuff like that. I also respond to general maintainance calls if something goes down on the production line. I work in the part of the plant where we make the rubber, its pretty interesting to see the stuff that goes into the mix.
  Its a super dirty place. the wrost part is what they call carbon black, its what they put in the tires to make them black. Basically its just jet black dust and its all over the place, nasty stuff. i look like a coal miner by the end of the day. The compnay actually supplies ALL your clothes right from coveralls and boots to socks and undies. At the end of the day you throw them in a bin to be washed and go hit the showers. Taking a shower befor you go home is actually a job requirement. I guess the chemicals in there can be really bad if they stay on you.
  All and all its a pretty good spot though. Great bunch of guys to work with and the plant has a really nice cafeteria 

[Paul_H]

I this area here there are mostly D7's and D8's or their equivalent like a Terex 8230,8240.Most of the bulldozers are oldtimers held over from the time when they were the main piece of roadbuilding equipment( late eighties,early 1990's) They work well with the excavators for spreading and light grading as well as pulling and snubbing equipment on hills and plowing snow.

It sounds like you have an interesting job at the tire plant.Mainteneance work puts you in different places all through the plant and not stuck in one place.I'd love to tour through that place and see how tires are made

That carbon Black sounds like nasty stuff,I hope you have a mask or type of respirator.
A cafeteria at work would be top notch  8)

[Paul_H]

I've been working on the road crew with the same outfit down Lillooet Lake and it's been pretty good because I get to do a little of this and a little of that which I like better than a steady dose of any one thing.

They have been heli logging the steeper areas and one of my jobs this past week was to clean out under the helicopter with the frontend loader(Cat 966D) til the Kobelco hydraulic loader had finished loading out of the bottom landing.
That was a long busy shift because they can really pump the wood in.I didn't have my camera for those two days but after the Kobelco got to the new landing,I went back down to where the Kobelco came from and loaded out the short chunks,8' and longer on the hayrack.

I was enjoying loading out the chunks and the chopper would still drop turns in on me at the end of every cycle on their way down to the service area.
They called me one morning to pull a fuel tanker up the steep winding driveway from their service area on Art Frank's homestead.

These next pics are at the service site and you can see old fruit trees and the remains of one of the old hay fields.This place is 10 miles from the nearest neighbours but the nearest town is Pemberton which is an hour and a half away.

The Maroon tanker is behind the Yellow truck




The chopper coming in for fuel







As I was waiting to pull the tanker I took this pic of the neat old house.It is a near vertical slope from the back of the house up to the logging mainline above.

The branch over the motorhome is pointing the way towards the mainline



Back up at the bottom landing,Jason turns the hayrack around for a load.A fine load too if I say so myself ;)





Jason hams it up a bit.He's originally from Nova Scotia so he doesn't speak so good although he figures it's us guys in BC that have trouble speaking right



These last shots are of turns dropping in



This was the last turn of the day coming in.It was rough trying to get decent pics in the morning because the chopper was in line with the Sun but afternoon was much better.

Lots of noise,dust and wind kicked up when they drop.








The log in the grapple here is the same log that was just flown in last pics

[TexasTimbers]

That looks like great fun and, very rewarding too. Sometimes the one doesn't necessarily follow the other but you seem to be in a great place right now . . . geographically too. ;)

I used to be a fling-winger. Aircrewman. Spent alot of time over the GOM - it never crossed my mind to be hauling logs out with one. Those things must be maxxed out on lifting capacity on some of those logs because our max cabled payload (not counting wet and cargo weights) was only 4 tons. Of course we had alot of lifeaving stuff we had to carry around and those HH-3F Pelicans were at the end of their lifespans.
What kind of max weights are they doing and what kind of helos are those? It looks like an H3 variant. And who figures the weights on the logs etc? It is *critical* that a heliopter not take on excessive weight as I am sure you know well.
i am sure they have it simplified but is there some guy on the ground who has a chart with a table with the diameters and species who tells the pilot what his weight is gonna be etc?
Are you using the Forestry Froum calculator on your laptop and calling up the weight ??? ;D

[Paul_H]

Kevin,

I am a highlead logger and haven't been around the heli logging much but I could hear the pilots calling their weights on the radio before they headed over to the landing.They have scales on board but the riggers on the ground know their weights pretty well and so do the fallers.That's why there are so many short fat chunks(beer cans)

The hook on the end of the line has colour coded slots  and the pilots can release one choker at a time or the whole works.






Sawguy21 has worked with the heli outfits and would be able to add a lot more,and I hope he does(or anyone else for that matter)

[SwampDonkey]

Near as I can remember it's 10 tons capacity on the heli-cranes used on the Charlottes. They are all motor.






From this forum thread


Nice job when the weather is nice Paul.  ;D 8) Nice old homestead to btw. Most have been torn down and cleared back to fields in my area. Some set ablaze and busted up by local mischief makers.

[Norm]

Cool stuff Paul, thanks for the pictures.

[Jeff]

Now thats the avatar you should be using Donk...

[Tom]

Could be, but member DonK might, quick like, tell you that it's the wrong flag.  :D

[SwampDonkey]

Surprised you missed that Jeff a while back.  Come on, ya got to keep up.  :D :D :D

[Don K]

Get rid of the antlers,perk up the ears, change the flag and hat and it might make a passable DonK. :D :D

[Jeff]

Donk not Don K Tom.  I save typing 7 letters and the shift key by using donk. Besides, Swampdonkey likes it when I call him donk. :D  Its like BONK only with a D. ;D

[Tom]

I still think we have an Alabamian Donkey ;D :D