Some rain expected, so I do my evening walk with shovel in hand to touch up any drainage issues. I wish I had not been at work today because they had a hand-cutting crew come for some of the Red Oak, Ash, and White Pine that were too big for the harvester. My thumb on the Ash butt log shows the growth since we bought the farm. Clearly from the tight growth rings in recent years this tree was lacking sunlight.
A nice wide kerf (.404, I assume). The harvester operator opened up some lanes for him to operate in, particularly in the steepest terrain, where he had to work straight up the slope. Then a hand cutting crew has been working with him, dropping trees along his lane way which he then grabs with the harvester and processes (delimbs and cuts to length). He can move the felled trees around enough to be able to drop the cut logs in a row, making for efficient loading by the forwarder operator. Here is one of the rows, looking down from the top, and then back up. Hard to tell, but this is pretty steep - not a place to send just anyone.
A load of Red Oak left today. So far 3 loads of firewood (12 cord loads), a load of White Pine, and now this load. I think a load of White Ash is next. The forwarder is unloading, independent of what the outbound truck is doing.
She is standing on the stump of the highest up the hill they will be cutting. There is blue- indigo staining on that stump, likely old barbed wire. There is a nice group of Red Oak just above here, but too hard to reach. Further up the hill from here are signs of quarrying.
They are getting close to finishing up. I walked the job today with my forester and the head of the logging crew. I think we were all pleased. The last to be cut is the patch of White Pine, behind the machines in this picture. It is largely worthless, but will come out to allow better trees to replace them. There are Sugar Maple and Red Oak saplings in the understory. The forester said they will be mostly wiped out by the operation but he expects the same to regrow here.
Looking good for sure! I disagree on the White Pine though. If not fit for lumber it makes excellent shoulder & campfire wood.
Eastern white pine has kept many a small milling operation in business around here. It just doesn't scale up to be competitive with the Weyerhaeusers of the todays market. It can be tough to give away and even tougher to sell. There is a samll market for it, even around here but you have to be in the right place at the right time to market it and if not it goes to the dump. 10 years ago there was a company with equipment to turn a few acres into truckloads of chips to feed some of biomass electricity generators in New Hampshire but since they were mothballed you don't see them around any more. Supposedly the mothballed plants have been bought by a Maine-based company that is trying to get them back online. If the price per ton goes too low then you can't afford to truck it very far, especially with rising fuel prices. EWP is $125/cord around here. $70/half cord. Given the cost(s) to process they can't be paying much for logs.
Uhhhhh...... yea, I see lol. Not really fit for firewood either unless you wanna make some ugly splits. Whole tree just needs to run thru a chipper.
They are largely done cutting. I do a quick tour tomorrow morning with the guy doing the cutting, and the machine leaves on Wednesday. From the landing in the field, I’m in the top left corner of the pine patch, looking back toward the landing and buildings. Nice Black Cherry logs that were in with the pine. The trees on the far side are mostly on the neighboring property.
Pine slash. These are only a fraction of the size campinspecter deals with, but the same general idea. Sizable pieces, but little commercial value.
I tried that - I would have to have built the chipping company a landing in a wet spot and then pay them $1,000 an acre to do it. I decided to settle for some slash piles.
Ouch! Yep, slash piles are good for wildlife anyway. Property sure looks good! It's nice to see a quality company doing good work.
Here’s the pile of firewood we are keeping - supposed to be 12 cords. We currently have about 20 cord cut and split. Some I skidded out a couple of years ago, plus a 12-cord load we had delivered last summer. I’ll let this sit during the heat of the summer, and then peck away at it this fall.
I showed this load when it left a few weeks ago. My wife is the Business Manager for the logging company, so I get a peek at all the paperwork from the mill. This trucker left a trip ticket at our landing, and a copy at the mill where the logs were delivered. The mill scales the logs to estimate the number of board feet of lumber, and deducts for defects. They report on each individual log; this load had 73 logs. The trip ticket from the trucker tells them where to send the report and the check. The trip ticket also allows the loggers office to determine which landowner the logs came from. Generally the landowner does not get to see what the mill pays, as the contract between the landowner and logger is often on a stumpage basis (prenegotiated price) per board foot and per cord of firewood.