Hauling

It was tough for the loggers to get the trees down without too much breakage. The steep terrain and old stumps made the process impossible for the trees to be felled by machine so they did it the old fashioned way, one tree at a time with power saws and many wedges to tip each tree the right direction. Once felled, each tree needed to be dragged off the hill in order to make a landing spot for the next one to fall safely. After the loggers worked like crazy to get all the tree length logs off the hill, the landing became the hub of activity.

The Barko machine (I got the picture off their website since it is so much clearer than the pics I had) is pretty amazing. When in the landing, one operator can select one tree at a time, take off all the limbs, measure and cut to proper length depending on which mill the finished logs will be going to. This machine is currently at the far side of hill from where the beginning of the harvest began, the job it is doing now is thinning a stand that is too thick to grow to the trees potential. This pre-commercial thinning is cleaning out damaged, slow growing, dead or “grousy” trees.

I looked up the word grousy, grousey, and grousie and could not find any information. Either it is a logger term or something Mike’s Uncle Ambrose (the guy that taught Mike how to log) came up with to describe a tree that has many, many large size limbs all the way to the ground. He always said the grousy trees take up a whole bunch of space in the woods while they continue to grow wider and wider without  making good timber.

With the trees that were harvested are off the hill and processed into their respective piles, the hauling begins. It is surprising to see how fast a load or two can change the look of the choked landing. We are now waiting for the pole truck to begin hauling the longer sticks out of the landing.

The spot on the hillside that was cleared because they were not doing well, appears mild when looking at it from about a half mile away. It is very deceiving  when you realize that there are spots that are too steep to stand on. We are grateful that the crew of loggers worked safely to get the harvest on this area down without any problems.