Full Circle………..

After I have thrown out a few posts I realized that I had not introduced myself to the forum. I first started cutting for serious money in 1990. Having a background in horses, both backcountry packing and driving a team, I utilized a Belgian gelding for skidding. Thoroughly enjoyed it for several years but became anxious to realize increased production as well as the capability to take on large government contracts. Long story short, I built a company that included 5 full time employees, multiple pieces of large equipment (525 CAT skidder, feller buncher, whole tree chipper, etc.), several hundred acres/year of government service contracts, and… a gut rotting from the inside out. The financial aspects, emotional stress, and inability to be home to watch my daughters grow up had reached its threshold. It had gotten to a point where I was standing on one of my landings one day and said to myself “I HATE trees!” Now that is quite a statement from someone who’s education, ambitions, and passion had always been forestry. I had lost all perspective of why I did what I did and became completely consumed by struggling to send payments to Caterpillar Financial, John Deere Credit, etc. and get the next contract bid and done. I was ready to shut my company down and take a huge financial hit.
When one of the agencies I did a lot of work for learned of my plans to shut down, they offered me a job. With the impending forest health issues the region was experiencing (bark beetles) and the fact they were getting ready to commission a biomass heating system, they thought I would be a good fit. With my private sector background and education being weighted towards forest health, silviculture, and utilization, it has worked well. Other than the County as a whole, they own ~30,000 acres of forested open space that is actively managed as a naturally functioning ecosystem.
Presently, with an agency job I now have the personal time available to pursue other interests. Other than my family, it is my revived horselogging business. Many of the NIPF landowners and neighbors that I could not afford to work for in the past due to small parcel size, are now a bountiful opportunity. Several are currently lined up waiting their turn in line knowing it could be up to a year before their turn comes around. I run 95% of what I do as service contracts on an hourly basis. I rarely buy stumpage unless it is a really good post patch. The reality here in the Rocky Mountain West is that we have significant forest fragmentation with a lot of homes and a basically nonexistent timber market. Almost all work in the past 5 years has been service oriented with an emphasis on forest health, fuels reduction and esthetics; which is nice as it precludes high grading and prioritizes forest management for the forest’s health sake and not solely for timber production. Our biggest challenge is utilization of the residual material produced that traditionally has been non-marketable. Biomass thermal energy, both in the form of chips and pellets, is currently growing in the region and shows great promise.
If I had it to do all over again I would have stuck to horse logging, not only from the overhead perspective, but also for the basic enjoyment of what I do and my passion for it. My company was sought out for our low impact harvesting even though we were a traditional mechanical operation. There is no denying, however, that extraction with draft animals, especially on small and/or sensitive parcels, is the lowest impact method available, as measured by many parameters. Locally, there is a dearth of horse loggers. Couple that with the typical forest landownership and landowner’s objectives, and there is successful business model in the making.
In the end, life is good. I have a great government job in these uncertain times (which really makes the wife happy) and the ability to do as much horselogging as I want at an hourly rate, both private and for the County. I do however miss the days of basecamp and the independence associated with it. The beauty of it lies within the simplicity; as Gregg Caudell said “a horse and a chainsaw” and as someone who has come full circle I cannot express to you how profound and true that statement is………