collateral damage . . . roads and trails

If only trees had wings and the dead ones could fly.

Unfortunately for the few strips of bush that will become roads and trails, we need a way to get at our dead pine and haul them back to the mill. We will try to do that without doing too much damage but some obstacles will have to be removed. Fortunately we have had a while to plan. The topography has it's own constraints which have a tendency to minimize discussions. We have a couple of levels to our property so attaining elevation without pointing the nose of our machinery too far skyward is pretty important, considering snow is often present for 6 months at a time.

Carefully clearing the right of way minimizes damage to the adjacent forest. The trees we have had to sacrifice for the cause are limbed and bucked and hauled to the mill yard to be utilized. Removing the stumps is the next process and is best done by a machine big enough to do the job. This one is . . .

but it is also heavy and is not suitable for anything but roads. It does an unacceptable amount of damage to the forest floor and so its moves are planned pretty carefully. It is also the largest piece of equipment we have and getting it stuck is not an option. We have plenty of places where this could happen what with springs and muskeg all over our property so we are very cautious.

We had a lot of things to consider when we bought our track loader. We needed a machine that would load our truck to haul gravel and something large enough to build roads. A larger piece of equipment like this is a money pit. Just when you think you have all the bugs out of it, something else happens, and parts are fairly expensive. To our good fortune, our lead hand is a heavy duty mechanic and he pretty much grew up on these machines. More importantly he is always willing to immediately fix whatever crisis appears, a quality that is unbeatable and unbuyable.

We bought a grapple for this machine for some of our larger timber and it required a considerable amount of modification to fulfill our needs. Again our lead hand is proficient with an air arc gouger and has his own welder which he donates to the cause along with his ability to run a fine bead. He also has a home machine shop with a metal lathe to machine the eight bosses he had to gouge off and reposition and cut down and machine larger in order to fit the grapple to our loader. So I'm not complaining about the costs because they could be soooooo much more!

The end result is fairly impressive!

how fast are ants anyway . . .

Well they're pretty damn quick when one looks at the overall picture. The thing about it is that their little chippers go all the time and there are millions of them! Look at the pile of chipper dust that dwarfs these ants!



When the pine beetle outbreak was in its early stages, the experts in the forest industry felt they had 8 years to harvest this standing dead wood. Where we live, the forces of nature (ants, woodpeckers, fungi, and wind) can have a large pine tree on the ground within two years of needle drop.

This huge tree . . . is still being supported (although tenuously)

by this ant-eaten and woodpecker ravaged trunk!

So how come some old trees can stand for many years and these are falling so quickly?

I think there are a number of reasons . . . all to do with the pine beetle. The beetles deplete all the sap and resins in the tree and then emerge leaving holes. The tree has entry and exit holes all over the bark that are oozing pitch (candy to the ants) and providing an easy way to the interior wood for both ants and fungi.

Once the ants get started in the interior wood, the woodpeckers join the fray and shred the bottom of the tree looking for ants which drives the ants deeper and so it goes. Pretty soon it doesn't take much of a breeze to blow the tree down.


Even if the woodpeckers don't help, the tree can still be hollowed out in short order by the growing colony and again the wind helps.


Once its on the ground, the race is on to salvage anything usable out of the tree. The first few feet will be damaged by ants and fungi but then the rest of the log might be just fine.


Some trees snag up on another tree on the way to the ground. They pose a specially deadly hazard as they can unexpectedly domino other trees or release in the wind.

This is a place where the ants are way ahead in the race. Most of the trees here are already fallen and the forest is in the process of reclaiming them. So . . . that is the natural way and why not just let them fall and add to the forest humus and improve the fertility of the soil? That was certainly my attitude before the global warming or climate change crisis. This realization changed my mind . . . The carbon that is temporarily locked in these trees will all be released without our help within the next ten years as they rot and return to the ground.

If we harvest and process them, we can extend the time that this carbon is captured, by the life of the product we produce. and the more valuable that product is, the longer it is likely to remain a carbon sink.

Our tiny piece of forest won't make much difference in the great scheme of things, but in the spirit of stewardship of what we have . . . we feel we must do our part.

housing the Logosol planer

Great satisfaction is derived from producing your own lumber to build your projects. Dimensional lumber is such a valuable commodity when you have to buy it from the lumberyard, and to be able to plan your building without that constraint is very liberating. No more building just strong enough to do the job by using 24 inch centers or buying plywood because T&G decking is too costly. Building stronger becomes more a matter of extra time than extra money.















Setting the band-mill in a convenient location in the mill-yard and in a spot that would not impede the flow of materials took some thought, but I think we got it right. This bandsaw was built several decades ago by the same man who operates it today. It is reliable and efficient, able to cut any size of log we are likely to encounter, and is cheap to run. Its first real task in its new mill yard is cutting the material for a planer enclosure on the back of this pole building.


We reasoned that 14 feet would be sufficient width and at that, the run of the roof would allow us to raise the deck about 20 inches and still allow enough headroom to accommodate lifts of rough lumber for processing. With the planer in the center and doors at both ends, we should be able to handle normal lengths with the doors closed and longer lengths with them open.

We re-roofed the pole building at the same time with salvaged industrial strength metal that a neighbour procured for us at a reasonable price. We plan to put a sliding door in the open portion and remove the wall in the original building, extending the deck throughout for finished lumber storage and processing.

So we are well underway. The planer is now installed in the building although is is not permanent as its first real job is to process the new decking for the floor. It takes a bit to wrap ones head around being able to produce such a rare commodity, so much so, that it hadn't occured to the builder till I mentioned it, that we should probably use something other than rough planks.

Good for a laugh for both of us . . .

In the beginning . . . there were ants

It's a busy time of year when spring finally emerges from the frosty nights and blustery days. Every project that winter inspired becomes more urgent as the short summer approaches and setting our priorities becomes paramount. Thank goodness our talented lead hand is also patient as we jump from one job to the next and he struggles to divide his time into our list of wants.

This is the year we have to deal with the considerable amount of bug killed pine that peppers our little forest. The trees are standing dead, but just barely standing, as root rot and ant colonies conspire to fall them before we do. We have to be very careful and keep our wits about us because they will sometimes fall without provocation . . . unnerving and dangerous . . . and the sound of wind is a warning to make your way to a clearing . . . heads up!

The Pine Beetles that eat the cambrian layer and kill the tree, cause a stain that penetrates the tree for several inches in some cases. This stained wood when sawn produces a spectacular show of blue grey wood mixed with the typical white pine. The stain does not appear to fade or run so the wood can be finished to enhance this natural beauty. We have been burning this wood in the home fires while lamenting the destruction of these beautiful trees and the huge waste of potential lumber and wood products that are falling all around us. This winter we decided to do something to at least deal with the trees on our own land, so we bought a four head Logosol planer to add some value to the rough sawn lumber that is commonplace here. . .

Planing our lumber is the final step in the production process . . . first we had to acquire all the support machinery that is needed to produce the rough lumber for the planer and to selectively log the trees and haul them to the mill, and clean up the branches and remove the stumps and build the roads etc etc. Also we had to provide shelter for the machinery and store the final product. This will be a record of how all that is coming together . . .