[Gabe Ayers]

I think it is also appropriate to see the low grade wood as a valuable feedstock for growing mushrooms on, either native wild volunteer gourmet mushrooms or some inoculated with species that are valuable and marketable without moving wood from where it is fell in the process of improvement harvesting or TSI.

Food from the forest with less input is a good approach to generate income with less work, investment, fossil fuel and environmental impact.

[Gabe Ayers]

I will try to attach a photo of the non fossil fuel using wood splitter demonstrated at SDAD. We have one here at Ridgewind Farm for demonstrating now too. I hope to find a better photo as some of the kind folks send CD’s to us from their cameras.
It is manufactured by Athens Enterprises in Liberty, Ky. 606-787-0266 The Weaver Family, who were a joy to watch work at this event.

[Gabe Ayers]

Ty R.,

http://www.healingharvestforestfoundation.org/docs/Log_Arch_Plans.pdf

This is a link to the page on our web site where the blueprints are for the little simple arch we use or the one demonstrated by the two Biological Woodsmen, Chad Miano and Blane Chaffin.

The one Chad Vogel was operating was a Jimmy Brown arch featuring the quick release slot bar and guard on the front. If you want one of those we brought that one back to Virginia on consignment for sale for Jimmy.

Thanks for you and your Dad coming out. I was impressed that you all put firewood bundles together and sold them, very enterprising youngster. Next year maybe y’all can bring your horses. Have you ever been to Virginia?

Keep working them when you can, stop them when every thing is perfect and keep your signals clear.

Sincerely,

[Gabe Ayers]

Our HHFF educational program through the mentor/apprentice network definitely compensates the mentor for lost of production while teaching an apprentice during a 8-12 week apprenticeship.

It isn’t exactly the mentor charging for knowledge as much as the public charity subsidizing the passing on of cultural knowledge without it being an economic cost to the mentor. They don’t really make any money on it, given that it is a replacement for money they would be making if they weren’t teaching a student, that is why we call it mentor compensation. We have awarded thousands to mentors under this program.

I agree with the sentiment of most traditional mentor’s don’t charge money for knowledge, but this is a way to support relationships in modern times that used to just naturally occur.

It has always been a swap labor for increased skills/knowledge deal though. I remember several days working in the hay field when my only pay, as a kid, was to get to drive the team on the hay wagon at some point – as my reward for working all day… Same with the tobacco, hand leaves for tying just to get to drive the slide back to the field, pick up wood to drive the sled back to the wood shed.

Joel is right – words have many meanings.

[Gabe Ayers]

Best of luck on that move Lance, sounds exciting. There is great wood in Mo. and some of the cheapest land in the nation. Things are real quiet there from some reports. We almost went there back in the 70’s but found a place in the Blue Ridge and have never left….yet.

My old friend Gary Anderson (I call him “The Foresteader”) sent an email yesterday asking about prices of wood around our area. Basically it is the same experience we are all having everywhere. I have asked him to post the message here since this is a good place to get information from all over the country. I hope he shares his insight and experience with this board, he has taught me more about special forest products, especially mushrooms than anyone. He is as much aware of peak oil and the thinking of how to live without fossil fuel as anyone.

[Gabe Ayers]

We have definitely used the Perkins USFS USDA Crop Tree Release research papers to justify the cost of our services for private landowners. This approach has often been questioned about if the investment by landowners would pay for itself from the shear timber value improvement compared to if you put that money in a bank for 30 years or several many age harvest rotations. We also have used the http://www.karldavies.com site for years to project increased income from enhanced cultural practices to grow the best trees to the highest value. Karl has been gone (deceased) for several years now, but the site is somehow still there when I last checked. It is not about animal power, but silviculture.

I would submit that if the value of the ecological services that the forest provides for the public good were computed into the equation it would more than out yield the interest collected by simply putting the money in the bank.
Those questions of investment into TSI – by the way – are always raised by conventional foresters that promote the even aged management cut it all down and come back in 75 years approach – including a bidding system that pits everyone against each other for who will do the work the cheapest, manifesting the classic divide and conquer approach…. We don’t bid on timber or contract services. We negotiate with private landowners that are open to our educational offerings.

That we woodsmen want to wander about and enjoy our office is an opportunity cost that we personally afford ourselves. Priceless in my opinion.
During the mushroom time of year we tend to come back from the occasional
wanderings with a hat full of food from the forest. It is a “new age” logger deal included in the definition of what a biological woodsman is. It is ginseng time here now and eyes are scanning the understory for those red berries and leaf patterns hiding among the Va. creeper. I’m not sure where the dumb native trout are, but there are some pretty wild ones in the small streams of the Appalachians that can be had for dinner with some real patience and skill using a mepps spinner and an earthworm. If there is better eating from game I have not discovered it.

Meanwhile the intensity of SDAD is mounting and we are about to launch a new cultural vessel into the waters of this community of interest. I am just very thankful for the current friends I have to help put it on and act as life preservers for my tired old self. I really look forward to making new friends at this event and growing the community of interest to include any new folks wanting a quality of life unequaled in modern times…. It is a matter of taking the best of the past – to make a better future. Ok, I admit it, I like much about the old ways too….

[Gabe Ayers]

So one lesson in doing all the studies of cost is that we have to establish a cost that we base the price of our services upon and find landowner’s that are willing and able to afford those costs of operation, and then we are in business.

It seems that the knowledge of our operating cost acquired by government or
academia is seldom used (or never in my experience) to build a foundation to support the economics of establishing a living wage for the ground level worker that provides a superior service. To the contrary – the evidence is used to justify dismissal of our practices as to expensive, to low production and therefore not practical. Hogwash, reductionism, marginalization….
perpetuation of the status quo…. little help for us there, except maybe from a few rare individuals of the study group.

So I gave up on giving that group much attention years ago, mostly because as mentioned earlier, there are no quantifying the values or costs of quality of the services. We would be wide open to participating in academic or government studies if they include the considerations we base the quality of our services upon.

I think the question Lance asks about – how do you educate the private landowner as to the benefits of practicing restorative forestry? – is one of the primary goals and objectives of HHFF.

Anecdotal Story – anthropological culture
Many years ago (while working in a private forest) a local big time conventional logger that had draft horses that he just used as a hobby and showed up and stopped by our job site. After admiring the horses and appreciating the arch he turned his attention to the silviculture we practice. At the end of the day he made a profound statement that has been a part of our practices ever since. He said something to the effect of, “the way you guys cut timber the landowner can afford to give you the wood and still would come out in the long term from the improved future timber value”.

We have taken that old loggers view and refined it to the point of calling it “restorative forestry”. We only want to work for landowners that have the vision to appreciate that economic as well as aesthetically pleasing forestry.
As mentioned before we pay for stumpage on a sliding scale keeping every thing below a certain average that we need as an operating cost similar in money to what Carl does. Anything more valuable than the operating cost is split with the landowner on a percentage basis. The key is having landowners that desire the conditions that result from a worst first single tree selective harvest, as their primary value, not the money that comes from “cutting their timber”….

Yes, it takes years to establish a reputation for doing this kind of forestry, but there is no way of doing it without getting started – now. As also mentioned earlier the demographics of land ownership and forest type vary across the country. This is a method that has been developed specifically as practiced in the Appalachian forest type in a mature state or with an average age of 75 years and up.

There are many ways to educate the public about this work. Free media coverage helps. Use the local papers by inviting a reporter out to do a story on the work and try to avoid them focusing on it being the “old way”, by presenting it as a new “green” approach that uses less fossil fuel and keeps more of the money in the community and requires less capitalization to start up. Be sure to ask your landowners if they are willing to respond to request for references and if they are willing to allow public access for and organized event to occur in their woods. Hold “open woods days” where the public is invited to come see the work in action. Define it as “Restorative Forestry” as being the best of sustainable forestry available anywhere. Contact your public TV station and invite them to come see your work.

These are some of the ways we have developed a long list of landowners waiting for our services and maybe some variation of the same will work for others. I know that this is repeated information as I have written about this in detail previously on the DAP site. I hope some find it of use.

One thing is for sure. People will use you to death if they can get away with it. It is up to you to protect yourself.

If you stick to your principles and do what you say, your services will be very valuable. It just may take some innovation in how you sell the services to the growing number of small landowners that may be open to this approach.

[Gabe Ayers]

I agree with Charlie, this defining our efforts as anachronistic is another unintended form of reduction and marginalizing of the culture as a modern choice. In this case I suspect it is completely innocent as proposed by the young folks associated with the historical farm.

Having ran a living history farm in the 70’s I am very aware of the dismissive
nostalgia that this cultural activity evokes. Our experience was that when we presented the culture as a valuable skill set that may have a role in the future, it was really dismissed and our views often defined as crazy…..

So, if anyone becomes involved in this type of media, be sure to include your perspective that your involvement and inspiration is about the present and the future. That would not be crazy – but visionary, real and a manifestation of true hopefulness for the future of mankind.

On the other hand the presence of such historical farms is a valid and powerful example for young people that are so uncultured in a real world or real life activities sense. This may be the only exposure to an alternative choice of providing for human needs that many people will ever have. So I applaud their efforts and encourage them to move forward while being inclusive of the potential and validity of historical preservation as a way to inform and guide the future.

Yep, Charlie and I don’t want to farm the old way.

I want to farm and log with horses, mules and oxen within the context of a planetary awareness that does see further than the end of our driveways, county lines, state lines or national borders.

I wish these folks good luck and invite them to film modern animal powered restorative forestry as we (HHFF) practice it anytime. There are many others that could provide inspiring images of such practices throughout the country.

Sincerely,

[Gabe Ayers]

This is a great “loaded” question, pun intended on the loads one may extract
per skid.

Just as with every question and situation everyone has their own take on it.

What does it cost to operate means different things to different folks. The
deep analysis used by Scott is appropriate and will surely be a part of the future of developing this work to be a wider chosen method.

For some the question is about how much hay, grain, saw gas, maintenance cost, and all the details that come out of the value of the products with the balance being the profit. That is a good model.

However, I must submit that these models are lacking a “quality of services” evaluation. The common way of buying standing timber through a bidded process lacks the same “quality of services” aspect. Given that we all know we will never compete with machines and hopefully we are all accepting that reality and customizing our approach and prices for quality services to reflect the difference our style of harvesting or forest management offers landowners.

It is this “Quality of Services” factor that makes our services superior to many landowners and how we refine/define that aspect will play a greater role in our future “business” than is commonly understood or practiced.

That is the position we (HHFF) have held, promoted and practiced for a long time and continue to refine.

For instance – I suspect it is difficult to include reduced erosion in a spread sheet, or enhanced residual aesthetics, fire risk reduction, reduced fossil fuel usage, increased productivity of the residual stand, education of the landowners about the value of the ecological services the forests provides and the many commonly not quantified values of the theater of our operations or the community forests. How do we account for the opportunity cost of this lifestyle choice? How much is personal independence worth?
What is the price for human dignity?

These values may be the greatest of our services and aren’t easily accounted for in a conventional approach.

This response is in no way intended to reduce the value of the accounting of costs of operations and details precisely lain out in Scott’s spreadsheet program – we will definitely download and employ that program. It is just a suggested addition to the way we may describe and define our work as being potentially greater than the numbers available from a sharp pencil analysis.

On the contrary this response is to keep the sharp pencil approach from reducing the values of our services to a spread sheet precision only. The point is that there is more to this work than is commonly accounted for and those values could be the tipping point information to access the best quality sites for those practitioners that provide the most superior services.

The demographics are so dramatically different in different parts of this country and the world, so adjustment of our definition of services will be more important in the future.

Thanks for asking the question Taylor and for all of those invested in sharing this thinking with anyone interested enough to find themselves reading these pages.

[Gabe Ayers]

Whatever you can do to put some car pools together sir, Chairman of CP.

I am not sure if that is possible, but maybe even an attempt to put a rental van and driver together among some Amish. Of course they can do that themselves if they want to and I am not sure how to connect with many of them at this late date. Some phone work for sure.

It is a hard time of year for farm folks, lots of second, third cutting hay, harvest of some crops, the up swing in the forest products markets…lots to do, so I know it will be hard to get away.

Any ideas are appreciated from any readers out there. Thanks Don, you must really want to see allot of big stout broke mules…and maybe some Suffolk logging horses at work.

I have posted the car pooling message on the RH front porch too.

We now have a lady looking to buy to new buggy wheels brought down by an Amish manufacturer. Don’t have all the details on that but am researching who might make those or have a stock of them.

[Gabe Ayers]

Great Idea.

This could be something appropriate for winter time when the outside work is less time demanding, yet most of us work then too.

This also could be a great opportunity for the forum to collect and publish these stories (with the permission of the writers of course) as another form of
support for the site itself.

On that note I am sure Carl is backing up this site to preserve the many exchanges that occur here.

Looking forward to hearing the stories from all over the world…

[Gabe Ayers]

Y’all come on down now, enjoy some time on the banks of the Nolichucky river, right were it comes out of some of the highest mountains in the eastern U.S.

Jimmy “Farmer” Brown from NY State is coming, maybe someone can hitch a ride with him.

[Gabe Ayers]

Taylor,

Well we have markets which is better than some points in the late spring when mills went through a shut down period that reflected complete lack of demand for all species of Appalachian hardwoods and softwoods. We generally sell saw logs and some pulp wood to one family owned system that at one point had five major rough saw mill operations spread out over a 100 mile radius. Today only three are still operating. The two that shut down are still buying logs delivered to the yards but are not processing at those sites, but shipping the logs to the mills that are running and therefore paying less for the logs to offset transportation costs.

This situation lead to the loss of several small private producers that stopped cutting timber in response to the shut down periods and now the overall volume of logs delivered as “gatewood” is far less than previously, so the mills have continued to harvest with their own crews, and poor harvesting practices. I suspect these saw mills are just hanging own and trying to break even to keep their crews employed and waiting for better times.

Our HHFF group has three practitioners that are selling some logs to this group. They are all still working and selling some wood to them, but have adapted somewhat to the weak markets. The wood sold is what we can’t do anything better (economically) with. To be definitive about those markets the prices paid are about what they were over ten years ago, particularly for eastern white pine and red oak. We have been able to sell lower value hardwood species into the railroad tie market in raw log form as well as sawed ties, again with ten year old prices….

How some of the practitioners have adapted is to sell their services as “restorative forestry” or to “clean up” forest for private landowners that often give the low quality wood that results or is produced from a “Worst First” single tree selection harvest to pay for the cost of the services. This can work on certain sites where the inventory is overstocked and the value of what is to be removed is great enough to pay a reasonable wage for the practitioner and the result is aesthetically pleasing to the landowner. Often the landowner will want some firewood from the harvesting and that ends up being a benefit from the management services. The balance of firewood is a product sold by the practitioners.

Other HHFF practitioner adaptations have been to do more “value adding” on site by harvesting these worst first individuals and processing them for various local uses and specialty markets that are not part of the commodity defined conventional forest products industry. The other markets include, timbers for timber framers, fencing boards, rare species specialty products, such as black locust decking, walnut and cherry lumber, curly maple (soft) cabinet and instrument woods, flooring, firewood, fence posts, landscaping timbers, mower and wagon tongues, sawdust and planer shavings for animal bedding and just out right services for hire practicing restorative forestry for private landowners on an hourly rate, working with the landowner’s own objectives of forest quality improvement.

Keeping as much of the value from the forest products as close to the source is a principle we have officially promoted and supported, as a public charity, for over a decade.

So markets are weak, when existent, but there is work out there for superior services and this may be the basis for a diversified animal powered forestry operation. There are several practitioners on this board that have similar experiences and our collective experiences continue to grow.

Another small aspect of income generation is the wild crafting of specialty forest products such as edible gourmet mushrooms. Our long term relationships with landowners provides access to the previously harvested
woodland to harvest mushrooms on a seasonal basis to be sold locally to organic food distributors and directly to restaurants. There is some education needed for the harvesters to identify these special forest products and their value.

We look forward to hearing the experiences of others.

Taylor, I recall we spoke once about you traveling to Kentucky to work with a fellow that had contacted us before. What ever happened with that? We have heard that this fellow is no longer in business, so you may have made a good choice. Where are you working now?

[Gabe Ayers]

Geoff, You are right – Directv did screw up the listings here too. That was actually on the second segment in the series. The third one ran on August the 8th and we had the DVR set to record all the RH shows, so we caught it and of course people call on the phone and say hey man we saw you on TV… well, I missed the live showing, but do have it recorded.

But that is not the half of it, Joe Mischka, the executive producer – can’t even find our from RFD what and when it is going to show sometimes, the entire system if full of flaws way beyond what you would expect for Television… one would think that the schedule would be pretty easy to announce and what they say is going to air is actually going to air. This is being written by a guy that doesn’t have the program for the laid back Southern Draft Animal Days event yet. Some times are set and all three types (tillage, haying, logging) of work with be happening both days, but the details are still coming into form as the presenters confirm. There will be something for everyone….and southern cooking…. and everyone will get a program at the gate…

The saving grace is that Joe will have this entire series on DVD for sale at http://www.ruralheritage.com eventually.

We are now working on segment four and hope to have some of Chad Miano doing some real steep ground logging which includes some cabling off the mountain downhill and up the mountain skidding adverse or uphill.
We still have lots of unused or yet to be aired tape from the event we held last September. I hope to get a local fellow to edit it for us, we don’t have the technology to do that stuff, wish we did. Believe me the editors are not easy to work with either… nor is any of this cheap and Joe Mischka is called the executive director for a reason, he has helped us all along the way. The only way HHFF will get any return from this is if folks buy the DVD’s.

We do pull our hang ups out with the team and arch usually. The lift provided by the arch keeps the butt from plowing so bad while moving the top out of the residual tree. We often build a skid path with saplings like the wedge Carl calls a ski, this keep the big ones from digging in when the come off the stump.

If one happens to get double crotch locked…(sounds funky), but when one crotch in the falling tree falls behind a crotch of a standing tree you are in trouble. We have used the cable and sheaves and actually pulled trees over trying to get the hang up down. The good thing about the cable is that you can arrange to have you team moving away as a right angle from where the whole mess will fall if it doesn’t come out. It is dangerous under any circumstances and in every instance, so don’t take it on casually. It takes a really stout team, but not out of control and they need to know whoa even when trying as hard as they can. This is also when a fellow can use a special command so the horses know that it is going to be a hard pull. We only squeak or kiss to our horses in those situations, so don’t make a kissing noise around the logging horses if you came to the logging demo at Southern Draft Animal Days. Save it for the pulling contest that we will have both evenings…

We actually have a scene of pulling a hang up down in every segment….it is equally as exciting as dangerous. But of course it wasn’t exciting enough for Extreme Logging on Discovery and that is when we filmed this series, when we had scheduled to shoot for them and they waited until the week before and went with the Tn. mule loggers from the Dirty Jobs show instead. Still pisses me off… but happy to have it airing on RH and RFD and in DVD through RH.

We will film some of the activities at SDAD too.

I think there are lots of remedies for the small wood felling problems offered in this thread. Great job folks.

[Gabe Ayers]

We have tried a big crow bar before, but it just seems to be another piece of equipment to drag around through the woods and loose. The plastic wedge are relatively cheap, some are even made of recycled plastic, We use medium (10″)and long ones (12″) double taper, and carry four in the pouch. When a tree requires more lift we use the double up technique with one wedge on top or the other placed at right angles to each other. Hitting one then another. They don’t tend to jump out as bad that way.

Maybe a short fat wedge would help with the smaller softwoods, say an eight inch double taper. I know it doesn’t make sense but the smaller trees are harder to deal with than the larger ones. They are hard to get to fall, there is less room to wedge them without hitting the hinge and then the logs are a pain on the landing too, plus of course they aren’t worth as much. But when one is practicing an improvement style harvest that always have to be dealt with. Really cold weather takes a tole on plastic wedges though and they can fly off in any direction when hit slightly out of true center. We use the five pound Collins felling ax and also have an eight pound sledge on a short handle like Carl. Some of our guys use a homemade skip hammer to drive wedges and grabs. They are usually made out of a 6-8 pound splitting maul with the point ground down to a cone for skipping grabs. They have the shorter handles so they will fit in a loop off the hames and not have to carried by the feller all the time, since they are used in the skidding work.

There is definitely a big difference in felling softwoods and hardwoods. There is also no question that felling in a single tree selection silvicultural prescription that the work is harder, slower and requires more skill and time.

http://www.baileysonline.com

If you can get them or any of your supplies locally it is probably better. We have made wedges with the chainsaw out of dogwood when we need a lot of lift quick and use it in the back opposite of the hinge withe the plastic ones on the sides. Of course this is usually a bigger stem that needs serious life to keep it off residual trees or say a neighbors fence or a skid trail.

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