Water Bar Construction

Also, I find that using a cart or arch to skid logs really helps, particularly in the non-winter months. The wood is up off the ground and does not dig in nearly as much, and the logs stay much cleaner.
-Brad

Yes George sometimes the situation is not ideal, and we just have to work through the mess. I was having a hard time visualizing what you were up against. I was just thinking that getting the end of the log up was the bigger issue. I have used my bobsled in some instances one log at a time to stabilize, to reduce effort, and to minimize soil impact….. however it does require site considerations (which I can only suggest at as I haven’t seen yours).

I have said many times that horse-logging is not about skidding logs with horses, it is about working horses in the woods. It is very difficult generally for us to shift our focus away from moving logs as our primary objective when in the woods with horses, but I have found that the low relative cost of using them allows for other objectives to rise to the top of the priority list. Thinking about ways to move logs over challenging terrain can become complicated when we try to make our every move most efficient to maximize harvesting production. However, if we look at this ground condition and think about long-term costs of repairing damage, or the continual added difficulty, then using the diversity and maneuverability of horses to the advantage will have lasting effect.

It will take more time to cut, position, and load the sled, or it may take more time to extend the contour slue-log skid trail around a different access, but I see those as being costs that make the long-term application of horses more effective.

This doesn’t answer specific questions, but generally describes my approach.

I agree with Brads illustrations about loading. I will sometimes drive the sled alongside the log, park it, unhitch the team and roll the log on, then re-hitch and pull the sled away. I try to break down the enterprise into steps, silviculture, felling, bucking, and skidding. Each step has priorities pertaining to its own genre. Each tree has different criteria to add to the decision-making. This is why I feel it is most important to have responsive horses as part of the mix, so that the appropriate decision can be made on a situation by situation basis.

Good luck, Carl

Just a comment that I cannot avoid making…. This rant has nothing to do with the work you are doing George, just a treatise related to broad cultural assumptions about commercial logging, spurred by my reaction to your comment about trucking and paying stumpage.

Whether or not we are trucking or paying stumpage, paying attention to details like minimizing impact, and using techniques that may be complicated or time consuming to accomplish a specific end result, is in fact the point of draft animal powered forestry.

Just as on your land, or any work done on clients’ land, the stumpage value should reflect the cost/value of the work being done to deliver the residual stand in line with the long-term objectives.

Taking the time to use the appropriate techniques builds flexibility and functionality into any operation, and these will pay off many times, especially when these techniques can be used to augment the low ecological impact that is, at least in some part, one of our objectives for using horses to begin with.

Foresters and the forest industry have done a huge disservice to us by relying on economic incentive to convince people that forest management is good stewardship. There is no doubt value in forest resources, and anyone owning land should capitalize on that, but the convention that timber harvest is a source of income, rather than an investment in improving timber quality and protecting inherent natural value, has led to assumptions that the cost of harvesting workmanship is less valuable than the potential value of timber sold.

By using horses we have exceptional low-impact capability, but when we compromise that advantage to play the stumpage and production game, we have not advanced the practice of forest stewardship in the way animal power has the potential to do.

Rather than developing habits that overlook the subtle levels of restorative practices because the potential costs put us at competitive disadvantage, we should embrace them, and hold the resulting work in the high regard that it deserves. By showing how those added costs translate into better stewardship, stumpage values will become secondary to the results in the residual stand, and we can create harvesting fee structures that support the forestry practices.

Carl

George-
Over the past six years or so of working in other peoples woodlots, I have used various forms of payment – by the thousand, hourly, by the cord, and, stumpage. I think the key part is exactly as Carl describes – the most important part of the operation is what we leave behind in the woods. To some extent, the payment system does not matter as long as myself and the landowner (and forester if there is one involved) are all on the same page. Stumpage can be challenging, particularly when the landowner is deadset on getting the maximum value he or she can generate; when this is the case I usually pass on the job. I have been working off stumpage recently and it has worked really well. The landowner clearly recognizes that what we pay is less than what she could get from a mechanical operator, but the results on the ground are far superior. I think that a big part of my job is to help landowners see the difference!
-Brad