Cutting starts today

[sprucebunny]

A skidder pic. Still hoping for an awesome buncher action shot 



 

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 ???

[Magicman]

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)  :

[lopet]

Wow, all that equipment needs quite a landing and then the trucks wanna turn around too.

[g_man]

Really nice pictures. Keep them coming. Are they getting any fir/spruce saw logs ??

gg

[sprucebunny]

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.

[Rick Alger]

Looking good. Forrest Hicks?

[snowstorm]

as long as your happy with the job thats what counts. i am no fan of whole tree chipping

[sprucebunny]

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.

[snowstorm]

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.

[SwampDonkey]

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.

[snowstorm]

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

[sprucebunny]

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 

[SwampDonkey]

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. 



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.

[Ken]

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?

[sprucebunny]

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.

[sprucebunny]

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.



 

 

 

 

[sprucebunny]

More pics.
Birch looks a little crooked...


 


4 grapples in this shot.

 

 

[thecfarm]

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.

[Pclem]

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.

[Tarm]

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.

[SwampDonkey]

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

[sprucebunny]

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.

[SwampDonkey]

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.

[Skeans1]

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.

[mike_belben]

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.