[Jim Ostergard]

Well a almost two weeks off from this nice job in good pine in Lincolnville, Maine. We shipped a load of logs after 4 days (5270 bf) and should do better next time around as we have moved the yard into the woods almost a thousand feet. Loading the scoot and going to the landing took a lot of time. We have a good woods road that the tri-axle will have to problem going along and room for him to turn about. Does work well with two folks especially if their style is compatible. I chopped most of the first week as since my horses are home but that will change and we will trade off. We haul the horses over at the start of the week and home at the end. Experimenting on this video stuff and wanted to try the upload here.

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[Jim Ostergard]

Brad, thanks for sharing on your current job. I started a job three weeks ago and there are two of us and a pair of horses. Flat nicely drained pine woods so the going is great. No more than 200′ to the woods road. Nice pine with most logs measuring in the 150-200 mbf and almost no pulp. As much as I like working alone it is very nice to have the second person for all the reasons you mentioned. Alone I would not produce nearly as much wood as with the two of us. We don’t have any mechanical help here, hot yarding to a really good woods road and using the scoot to get it to the landing. The scoot time is not so good as its about 1000′ to the landing but we will move the landing up into the woods for the next truck load which will really save time.
If there one piece of equipment it would be a loader although on my next job we have a 4wd tractor with a Fransgaad winch and grapple bucket, it would be I think a small excavator with a roto-grapple. I used one a lot this winter with Erik Carlson and it really made the yard work go well. In that case I would just process the tree length wood the grapple skidder delivered to the yard and we did 4 tractor trailer loads in 5 days with just the two of us. I think also the ability of the excavator the back drag roads and keep the yard small is great. And lastly, how many jobs do we get on where the 20 year ruts could use a little attention? Good to hear from you Brad.

[Jim Ostergard]

Eli,

See if you can find William Miller at Miller’s Harness Shop.  He is on 3293 Yoder Dr. which is pretty easy to find.  You can ask at Byler’s store as he is only a few farms away.  A very nice gentleman.  When I was there last fall they were putting up silage using to rigs and 6 horses.  They sure could move through the corn.  Have fun.

Jim

[Jim Ostergard]

Some good discussion above. I like Andy’s thinking about being flexible. Now I have driven all the motorized equipment discussed here and all of it has its place. Like Andy one needs to think about how you work, alone, with partners or some sort of other arrangement as you probably won’t want equipment you pay some good money for standing idle. I am currently back on a skidder crew and two of up produce about 3 plus tractor trailer loads of pulp/saw logs in a 30 hour week. On guy in the woods with a shear and grapple and me on the landing doing all the bucking and piling with the little excavator with a grapple bucket. The machines are always being used so its pretty cost effective that way. With my horses I have a wagon I used back a ways with 4′ wood and am now going to put the walking beams from my arch on it and when the money comes build a wire crane. Simon has contributed pictures here on various wire crane designs. For me when I work alone I think this would be the least costly. The woods trailer fits on a small beaver tail trailer and tows behind my half ton. Hope this helps

[Jim Ostergard]

George,
I use a skip chain a good bit especially on my longer bars. I like it in the yard saw as there are fewer teeth to sharpen when I hit rocks as one is prone to do in the yard. I was told long ago that it cleared chips faster and maybe it does. I think John Plowden uses them also.

[Jim Ostergard]

Carl, I like the idea of the Valby loader or one like it, Anderson, Payuer or Hardy like. I have noticed with the excavator I run as a yard machine that you cannot stack your piles as high as a log loader can. The excavator is not designed for that. I can work up to about 8′ off the ground and with the Hardy could go way above that. Since you have the machine on the ground good idea to make ti do something additional. The older I get the less I want to stack wood. Also if there is only a small landing it sure is nice to have the ability to get wood up high.

[Jim Ostergard]

Nice looking pony. Wish I had enough work for her and she would look good with my Fjord. My haflinger cross after two years of brining him along is out (maybe real long term) with a stifle injury. Happened on his first logging job away from the homestead. If i can come up with some steady work I will be in contact.

[Jim Ostergard]

Ben,
Yes it was a 5500 series. Must have been an early one and worked well although it was a bit of a beast coming down a mountain side. Slow and a lot of rock and roll. Still all in all a good investment for the jobs we used it for. I think I would go the dedicated forwarder if I did it again since I don’t have a tractor I use for farm work to partner with a trailer rig. Have been using an excavator with a grapple bucked for yard loading and actually it is much faster and easier on the neck that either of the forwarders. Might be neat to build a woods trailer to move along a trail with in and use it like a forwarder. It would be pretty slow though and probably wear out the drives with all that travel. Just an idea. Keep us posted as I think you are on the right path.

[Jim Ostergard]

Good move Ben. I ran an Iron Mule two winters ago on a very steep hillside job where it would have been near impossible to skid down it. It was small and cranky but did the job. I think it is about the size of a C4D. We picked up for 14K and put a couple of K into it to make it right. The engine was a Ford which made parts easy if expensive. I also had an older version Hardy trailer with a 17/ extenda boom. They build the trailer a bit heavier a decade ago. I ran it behind my skidder and used the hydraulics from the skidder. Worked pretty good but it was a bit of an ark to navigate through the woods. And in ice or snow and a full load ( 9,000Lbs?) on it would jackknife the skidder in less than a heart beat! We self powered it later on which made it great in the yard to sort and pile wood. I think it sold new for around $20,000 in 1999 we had about 13 into it with the conversion. I think you are on the right track with the C5D and looking for jobs where you can build and use an infrastructure as Carl describes and open up more cooperative jobs. Good luck and keep us posted.

[Jim Ostergard]

Well said Tim. I have used the stick method for years and have missed power lines and been able to figure a spot where the top will fall extremely closely. It takes some practice for sure but an easy and useful tool the old stick and it ain’t too comples. Tim Ard of Forest Applications makes a handy pocket tool also.

[Jim Ostergard]

Cannot imagine going anywhere today here on the Maine coastal plane. We have about 2.5′ here on the ridge but the wind has been gusting to around 50 so some places its bare ground some places 5-6 drifts. Hanging in around 10. Horses in the barn, content and we are just hungering down. We twitched the last of the wood from a job yesterday so at least for a few days not need to carry the shovel to the stump. Seems to me its mostly the city/urban types that got to make big news of it.

[Jim Ostergard]

Really nice Ed! How do you attach it to the cart? Some pictures on that part would be great. Nice that you can carry all your stuff in and out of the woods. Thanks for sharing this.

[Jim Ostergard]

This may be preaching to the choir but I have found that having a mill on site really works well. I have had several logging jobs where that has really pleased the land owner. They get the wood out and end up having timbers and dimension lumber stacked and sticke for future use. I did a job for a timber frame house project for a sawyer a few years ago. Brought out about thirty thousand bf of pine. It would have made a lot of cheap pulp but if I remember correctly he maybe ended up with about two cords. Great utilization of the wood.
Maybe we could get Jason Glick to describe a project he did a few years ago. Folks wanted more pasture and Jason set his mill up, brought in his pair, I chopped and two fellows worked the mill. The folks wanted the wood. I thin he produced somewhere around 12mbf and I think it averaged around $ .90/bf. Really not sure of the numbers. All of us on the job made a living wage.

[Jim Ostergard]

Mark, You are right on. I think anyway we can send the message that the effort to keep all this going does have a cost. Sure there are times when none of us are pulling in much money but geez even when close to tapped out seems one can find twenty bucks. And of course something more generous is contributing to a community that is giving back how many fold?

[Jim Ostergard]

Great news about the retreat! You all are to be praised for putting in the time to keep this going. I thank you all. In regards to Eli’s concern I wonder if there is a way to time tag a membership so somebody could view forums, then photos for a short period of time and then have to chip in? Sort of like a free app that lets you do a few things for a while then if you like it you can get the full monty. It was never an issue to me to join when-ever I did and seems I donated before that. But that was in the old days when it was such a find to have a place to go where other serious horse loggers lurked.
Great work all.

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