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Rick Alger
ParticipantInteresting discussion. It seems to me the crux is how to get paid for providing public goods such as ecological integrity, clean water, sequestered carbon, landscape aesthetics etc. The current marketplace is not going to do it. Maybe BIG GUBMENT should.
ParticipantRight on Mitch. What good is forestry if the forest is going to be chipped every fifteen years for biomass?
ParticipantAround here (NH) the terms are interchangeable in everyday parlance.
ParticipantMoonshadow had some ideas along this line awhile back. I think it’s a good concept, but it does raise the quality control issue. One of the how to clips I saw on another forum about wood cutting was appallingly unsafe.
ParticipantBack to the opening question, I would love to sit in a room with other horse loggers and thrash out the finer points of a large cooperative logging project.
I would also like to talk with folks working horses about the possibility of seasonal lend/lease arrangements.
As far as size of the affair, I guess a large one is best for creating interest, and a small one is best for maintaining commitment.
ParticipantThis sounds like a great opportunity. I wish I lived closer. I’m way too old to be logging anyway, but if Carl or somebody else gets something rolling, I would be glad to talk things over.
ParticipantSorry, I haven’t been on for a while. I still have the New Ideal mower. Please note that this is not a New Idea mower. It is an open-gear mower, almost identical to the McCormick single-horse mower. Thanks.
ParticipantI have one you can borrow.
ParticipantI have seen them. They look good to me. If I were a younger man I would have bought the three year old gelding from him.
ParticipantCriss cross the hills back and forth somewhat like an old time skier, but using longer diagonals. Clear relatively flat spots at appropriate spots to make your turns. (switchbacks) Leave bumper trees and bumper logs at the bad spots as Carl mentioned.
ParticipantWelcome Stephanie,
I live in NH about an hour and a half from Sherbrooke. I don’t do much farming, but I share your interest in horses.
I do cut wood and would love to contact bucherons in your area who still use horses.
Rick
ParticipantStand in one spot and slowly turn in a circle counting fat trees as you go around. Don’t worry about distance from any one tree. Your focus is the stand.
ParticipantGeorge,
I hope someone who knows more than I do will jump in, but for now I can say that I have done this using my thumb instead of a nickel in a stand of Norway spruce. The goal in this case was to average about eight leave trees fatter than my thumb. It worked well on this site.
ParticipantI ran a 440 back in the seventies. Sometimes two-man crew sometimes alone. A ten-wheeler load a day was a respectable average for a two-man crew back then. Mostly 4-foot wood.
Sounds like you’ve got this job well in hand.
Hardwood does go much faster than softwood. And marked wood slows things way down as does cutting out the logs and shortening lengths to avoid boll scarring.
I agree that having more workers could complicate things. But it could also help move wood more efficiently over distance while retaining the advantages of cutting and skidding with horses. A two man horse crew with a very short twitch say 200ft can produce an optimal amount of wood, say 8 cords. ( It would be hard to bury a horse at this distance) But when the distance increases, the productivity drops. So in comes the forwarder. But to keep the forwarder operating efficiently, you need more than eight cords a day. Thus in my scenario there would be two crews producing what would be a tractor trailer load a day. That volume hopefully would produce enough return to cover everyone fairly. It lets the horseloggers do what they do best, and the forwarder do what it does best. Basically combining efficiencies.
On the other hand I can see your scenario working too. No personnel issues. The question is can you move enough low-value stuff this way to cover expenses, maintain the tractor and keep a trucker on your leash?
ParticipantHi Mitch,
Yeah, softwood is so undervalued it makes you want to scream.
I like your idea about feeding the skidder.
Last year I talked with a friend about cutting and bunching with a horse for his grapple. The wood was in a swamp, and he figured it wouldn’t freeze till late January, so I could be stockpiling for a couple months. It might have worked, but he had bid the job as whole-tree, and there was no way I could bunch and pile wood with the limbs and tops attached.
I’m starting a job right now that will soon have a skidder operation nearby on the same road. The skidder guy running the job visited one of my sites a few years ago and we talked about horses and how he could down-size. Be interesting to see if we could work something out. I haven’t seen how big his machines are, and that could be a challenge as I am thinning a plantation on 5.5 ft centers. If he’s got one of the bigger grapples I’d have to take out too many leave trees just to make roads. If he has a small cable machine it might work. It will come down to pennies probably. My take is going to be $50 a cord. Longest skid distance is probably 1800 ft. Avg stem dbh is a weak 7″. So I may not be able to offer enough to interest him.
It is definitely a starvation project, but it is right next door. No trailering. No hovel. No nights away from home.
I’ll report back if anything happens on the mixed power front.
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