[Ethan Tapper]

There are a couple good books about logging history from the mast-pine days on up that talk about ridiculous hitches: Holy old mackinaw by Stewart Holbrook and Tall Trees Tough Men by Richard Pike are my favorites. They talk about hitches of up to 200 oxen for the old growth stuff, tree-length, even of stationing “spare” oxen all along the skid road to replace teams that got trampled. Might be the tradition of loggers embellishing the truth, but it sounded credible to me, if you can imagine that.

I’m not sure if those pictures up above are from the west coast, but by the time loggers got out there in earnest (late 1800s-1900) they had some other stuff going on, like steam donkeys (a steam powered winch that would pull a hitch along a cable running on pulleys hung high up in trees). It looks like that fourth picture could be something like that going on. If you guys like logging history and lore, check out those books. They are full of amazing little tidbits like that.

[Ethan Tapper]

I got to put my plug in for the Labonville logger boots. They have insulated and non insulated versions and are on the cheap side and made in the USA (PA I think).

[Ethan Tapper]

Another option would be to do a conference call of skype (skype.com). Everyone would have to download skype, which is free, and we could have a video conference call for free as long as everyone has skype (if some people call in from phones it would cost money). I don’t know what the level of computer literacy is in this group, and what kind of computers everyone has (I know my old computer was too old to use skype) but if people want to try that it might work. The only problem is that if one person can’t do it we all can’t do it.

[Ethan Tapper]

I like the way you broke this down, Kenneth. I couldn’t agree more. Weaving all of these priorities together will create a richer experience for everybody.

In the past I have seen the role of our events as primarily networking and education (exposing people to working with draft animals, what they can do, how they fit into the “modern world” and connecting them to resources in our community), but these other elements are integral to who we are, and to using the community we are trying to build to enact real, positive change in the world and get real things done.

As far as our priorities, I think that events that chiefly cultivate publicity are also important, because they give us the chance to expose people to the merits of draft animals and the supportive community and resources we provide. Ideally, we would integrate this aspect with events that incorporate more priorities (as defined by Kenneth’s post), but that’s something we need to weigh on an event by event basis.

I’ll be there in Charleston with my saw, if this happens.

[Ethan Tapper]

I’ve got to piggy back on this one and ask more about something Scott said… I know that cutting trees off their root balls can be really dangerous. I’ve heard stories of lots of crazy things happening, including topped trees flying back up into an upright position. I’ll be working with my boys doing salvage of this nature (tipped-over trees with rootballs) this winter, and am wondering if there is anything that we can do to minimize our exposure to these risks.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Ethan Tapper]

I realize that this must be really confusing for those of us who haven’t spent a lot of time in a forestry classroom… Here is a good article that explains it better (with a lot of stuff about cruise design that you may or may not be interested in):

https://docs.google.com/open?id=1cFbziHEhTr-THRj75RzUUWi3YPUDpIRhsuHzPMNGlg0IJQ2BV1OtKExPZGPA

To answer Geoff’s question:
DBH is still used, but basal area is a way of measuring DBH across the stand. To find the (Quadratic) Average DBH in the stand, you can take the Basal area number and work backwards:
-Take the square root of (Basal Area/ .005454). In this way, Basal Area kind of represents DBH.

A prism (or angle gauge, thumb, or nickel) just takes away the need to measure DBH in order to find Basal area by assuming that each “in” tree (judged by your prism, or each tree smaller than your thumb or nickel) equals a certain area per acre (10 ft2 for a 10-factor prism, the typical thumb or nickel, 5 ft2 for a 5 factor prism, 20 ft2 for a 20 factors prism, etc. (“factor” and BAF are the same, by the way). If you were doing a fixed radius plot (which, by the way, might be a better idea if the trees in the stand are really small), you would need the DBH data in order to calculate Basal Area, but the prism kind of leapfrogs that.

Confusingly, foresters still do measure the DBH of trees “in” their plots, and they use these numbers to extrapolate trees per acre (I think Carl touched on this). If you look around you can find a chart specifically designed to tell you how many trees per acre the tree in your plot, with a certain DBH, represents. The smaller the tree, the more trees/acre it is assumed to represent. Here is the calculation:
43560/ ((3.14(DBHx2.75)^2) = number of trees per acre represented by each tree of that DBH in your plot (at least using a 10-factor prism or equivalent.

I told you, it’s confusing.

As far as hemlocks (a tree with a special place in my heart), the forest service published a hemlock stocking guide. The USFS is not the best about everything, but this should provide some ideas about stocking and management and guide the semi-scientific, semi-intuitive decisions most of us make in the woods.

http://na.fs.fed.us/pubs/fhp/hemlocks/managing_eastern_hemlock_screen.pdf

[Ethan Tapper]

That time works for me.

[Ethan Tapper]

Hi all,
Sorry I wasn’t at that meeting. I don’t really have a good excuse, I just plumb forgot about it and didn’t realize until about 9 last night. Did we talk about agenda item #8?

-Ethan

[Ethan Tapper]

Agenda:

1. Insurance
2. Pursuing 501 c-3 status
3. Bringing in other draft animal organizations
4. Creation of an events calendar
5. Creation of an executive committee mission (like the other committees have)
6. Agenda for general board meeting on Dec. 18

Anything else?

[Ethan Tapper]

From the forestry classroom…

A board foot is a board 1 ft x 1 ft x 1in. There are 12 board ft in a cubic ft. Most people that sell logs that I’ve talked to account for about 2 cords in 1 mbf (to be exact a cord is 128 cubic ft and a thousand is about 85 cubic ft, so it’s more like 2.5). If you’re interested there’s between 2.1 – 2.6 tons per cord, too.

As far as log lengths, I’ll let the guys who know more about scaling logs talk about that.

[Ethan Tapper]

Looks good to me, too!

[Ethan Tapper]

If you can’t get to it you can send anyone who has access to it (including me) your email address and we should be able to allow you directly by clicking the “collaborate” button and entering your email in there.

Another thing to try would be to sign in (top right on map) with whatever email service you have and then try it.

[Ethan Tapper]

I think the 18th might be the best option.

[Ethan Tapper]

There were 5-6 12 and 13-year-olds that came to work the cattle on Saturday. Seemed like they had a good time.

[Ethan Tapper]

I think it should also be a bit smaller… When I open the page I just see the picture and no text — and we want people to see that text that’s on there.

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