[Rick Alger]

I agree Andy. I have a good friend who cuts 3000 cords a year with a mechanical outfit. He is an intense environmentalist, but he also believes that large scale stand interventions in our forest types mimic nature and enhance wildlife.

I also like the idea of framing this discussion in terms of silvicultural prescriptions as Carl has also suggested.

[Rick Alger]

I’ll cast a vote for Andy’s definitions. We will never restore my area of Coos County NH to pre-European settlement conditions. Wolves and Woodland Caribou will not be walking the Appalachian trail in my lifetime.

Another term that needs scrutiny is Draft Logging.

[Rick Alger]

I tend to side with Andy and Geoff on this issue. To me horselogging is more economic activity than art form.

If as a group we are trying to restore horselogging as a profession, we have got to get beyond the idiosyncratic. We should strive to measure the “economic value of the product.”

The way I try to “document what I can deliver” to private landowners is through informal bid specs. I tell them I will make four-foot wide trails, leave no bole scaring, and no rutting. The residual stocking level will remain high and undamaged, and species composition will shift in a positive direction.

These “specs” don’t go deeply into the ecological integrity issue, but they are a start. I believe they are measurable, invite comparison to other harvesting methods, and are capable of being measured economically.

[Rick Alger]

Softwood pulp markets are very tight here. The last softwood pulp I dealt with went to a collection yard for $24 a ton. That’s 51.60 percord.

Since then I have been turning down jobs with a high softwood pulp ratio because it is not cost effective for me to cut pulp at this price with horses.

[Rick Alger]

The bridle is on the back on my set of sleds. I thought that’s how they all were. Seems like you’d have a potential jackknife problem if the bridle was on the front bob.

[Rick Alger]

The main trick is to get out right after a storm and make at least a few passes. It doesn’t take many trips pulling logs to pack fresh snow.

If I’m not pulling logs but need to keep the trail open, I pull three 6 foot bolts crossways. I Baltimore hitch (braid) each side with a long chain and hook each chain to grab hooks on the outer edges of my forecart. Usually this contraption rides the snow like a chain harrow and it knocks the fluff down quickly.

If one side of the pack builds up unevenly from drifts or whatever, I lengthen one chain so the rig shears like a plow.

Good luck.

[Rick Alger]

Thanks, Charly. I really enjoyed this.

[Rick Alger]

With the International scale, if the taper is greater than 1/2″ per four feet, you’re probably better off bucking into smaller logs unless the mill expects a high percent of the load to be 16 footers.

Those are excellent prices. I would talk to the mill about log length.

[Rick Alger]

Yes, Yes, YES.

[Rick Alger]

Hi Carl,
Thanks for the reply. I guess we appear to be somewhat at odds regarding silvicultural philosophy, but I don’t think this is the case. I think our apparent differences are mainly owing to the pattern of land ownership in the Milan area that I have to work with. “Landowner” is a term that needs clarification. Most of the land here is held in corporate ownership by groups like Yankee Forest, Twitchell Heirs, White Mountain Lumber or TR Dillon. A good chunk of what is left is either national forest or town owned wood lots. This area was never fully parcelized into the patchwork quilt of farms and woodlots that you have in central VT. The few farmers that are here cut their own wood. There are very few highly educated, wealthy, environmentally committed landowners.

But there are many good loggers with skidders parked, waiting for an opportunity to work at what they do best.

To get good work in this situation I feel persuasive data is vital. Sales pitches will not be conducted at somebody’s kitchen table.
The only thing that will move corporate headquarters or the public at town meeting – or whatever- is something concrete and relatively short term.

Oh Yeah. Yankee Forest does the 30 % canopy removal via strip cuts. What a great data comparison it would provide with “surgical selective harvesting.”

Once in a while I do get work for individual landowners, but mostly my work has been for the larger landholding groups. As you have noted, the pay has never been for what the services are worth.

That differential is what prompts my interest in qualifying the value of animal powered logging.

[Rick Alger]

Great pictures, Simon. I can smell the pitch and the wet ground.

[Rick Alger]

Hi Carl,

A northeast animal loggers group sounds like great idea.

My interest in comparative research is on a simple level. I would like data to show a landowner that would indicate, for example, that horses can do his prescribed 30% overstory removal with less ecological disruption and greater long-term payback than machines.

Regarding system analysis of mechanical harvesting’s degradation of the ecosystem, isn’t your theory about mechanization’s advantage being the environmental cost an effort to quantify?

Anyway, good luck with the pine.

[Rick Alger]

Hi Andy,

Yeah, people connect to wildlife more readily than they do to the more complex issues of ecology.

In my area enhanced game populations would be a plus as would restored populations of deep woods species that thrive on retained canopy with intermittent openings such as pine martins, lynx, spruce grouse, various song birds and maybe even the woodland caribou.

But these are species adapted to a specific forest type and habitat in northeastern US and south east Canada. No easy extrapolation or application country wide.

Maybe some fungus or something in the ground could be studied as an indicator of system function or dysfunction.

[Rick Alger]

Hi Erica.

I agree that education is the key. You phrased your point well. I am very grateful to Carl, Jason and others who have taken it upon themselves to help the public see the value of animal power.

But in my neck of the woods the old culture lives on. As logger I am looked upon by a landowner as a buyer of their “valuable” wood not as a seller of a valuable service.

I think Andy’s idea of quantifying what animal power can do could result in powerful selling points for us folks who still log in the old dispensation.

[Rick Alger]

A willing seller needs a willing buyer.

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