Hybridized Timber Harvest – Horses and Fowarder

[Carl Russell]

@Countymouse 28863 wrote:

…. This is really alot of musing from someone with almost no logging experience…

All good stuff Andy. You sound about like me in my own mind every day we work at this. We basically work through all those scenarios in various manners.

Carl

[Anonymous]

Very good thread. My wife and I ran similmar crew when we started. Two teamters, two cutters and one and some times two horse drawn forwarders then bought a 3 cord forwarder. It can be tricky at times and I did alot of floating around from job to job keeping things flowing smoothly. I think what you are doing Carl is very worth wile. If there is ever any thing I can do to help drop me a line.

[Andy Carson]

What about a simple wagon with brakes and a set of ramps to load? Perhaps a small electric winch, battery, small generator could be added to simplify loading and would add minimal expense, and the electrical power could run some other gizmos. Maybe a gas powered winch? One could use the horses to pull the logs up the ramp too, but that would require unhitching and such. The logs could just be dumped off the side to unload, but could still make a nice pile if they were dumped into a frame of some sort. Not as high as on the video though… I’m sure it’s a big step down from a hydraulic loading arm, but it might be cheap enough to sit around a good bit.

[Carl Russell]

Yes Andy, that is a good alternative.

In this case however we are traveling 1/2-3/4 mile uphill the whole way back into the woods. It is a deal breaker for the horses. Also, as I have been to alluding to, this is not so much about creating the most efficient, cost effective forwarding method, but trying to deal with growing demand from all sides to apply more horse-powered forestry on a landscape scale.

I still believe that 1 person with a team with cart and a few different sleds can take on most timber harvesting in the most cost effective way. Low investment, no supervision, etc. However there are a lot of woodlots that have access issues, with substantial volumes, where it could be advantageous to bring more operators in. To accomplish this we feel we need to concentrate the advantage of the horse where it is best suited…. getting off the trail and skidding wood. There is no doubt that horses pulling a forwarding device has benefits of low cost, small carbon foot print, etc., but in terms of the forestry product, they have their greatest import in the ground work from stump to haul road.

There is no doubt that the current rig we are working with is expensive, but Ben feels he has made good investments in equipment, and this is what we have to work with, so we are trying to work out those aspects of the best applications in the situations we are working with.

Part of what we are doing is using this harvest as a way for us to get all of our heads around some of the basics of the horses/forestry process. Over the years I have found specific differences between the way I apply forestry for machinery vs. horses. Because the production mentality of mechanical logging is so prevalent, it takes some practice for people to stop trying to replicate mechanical production using horses, and get down to applying the horse to the task at hand, improving the forest.

The first thing that comes to the mind is that this adds extra cost, and Tom has alluded to this, but the truth of the matter is that we do bring a production mentality to this too, trying to figure out the most cost effective way to apply the different moving parts.

AND one of the keys is that in my own operation I am the supervising forester, so there is virtually no administrative expense. We are trying to get enough of us in one place for long enough that we can share this perspective, so that when these other horse-loggers go out and work on smaller lots, I can supervise them in a similar way….. ie, very little.

As I said to Tom, I think this cultural change has to start with the foresters. A part of this is training/educating operators to be able to see/read the forest in a way that requires very little administrative oversight. The forester as timber sale administrator model is breaking the back of the North American forest. I know, supply and demand…. but as animal-powered practioners we need much fewer clients and can choose to work with the ones who want to improve their woodlands. The professional horse-powered forestry practitioner model can work without adding the extra cost that is regularly attributed to it.

And not to get too divergent here, but when we get into the financial crunch of trying to satisfy LO interests, the forestry product gets squeezed between the mill price and the cost of the operation. With machinery so much land is, and has been, worked under this model that it has become a convention. When loggers are expected to pay a certain stumpage value for each species because that is what the going rate is within a given region, then there is more emphasis on minimizing harvesting costs to accommodate the market…. and unfortunately when the forestry product delivered through harvest, it is tied directly to the cost of operation. If the logger and forester are constantly trying to work within a fixed window between mill price and stumpage price, then there is only so much that can be done in terms of providing an improved residual stand…..and this becomes the conventionally accepted standard for the forestry product.

So not only are we trying to find cost effective ways to log more terrain with horse-power, we are trying to train new and experienced horse-loggers, and we are trying to break down well-established cultural conventions………

Carl

[Andy Carson]

Ahhh… Thanks for the explaination, Carl. Perhaps there isn’t as much of a need for new lost cost technology here. As far as the cultural change you allude to, perhaps the fact that you can get this many operators together on one job is a testimate to how much cultural change there has been. Congratulations to you and everyone else who is a part of this cultural change. Perhaps with continued high fuel prices we will start seeing a shift in the economics of machine versus animal powered operations as well. I know fuel prices are a major complaint of my tractor-farmer neighbors, and is often a topic of conversation. With both positive environmental impacts and economics on the animal powered side, perhaps the cultural change will be exponential. I am doubtful fuel prices will change the overall economic equation for very large operations in the near future, and would probably have a greater impact on smaller operations, but who knows? I am excited to see what the future holds.

[Carl Russell]

@Countymouse 28884 wrote:

…. As far as the cultural change you allude to, perhaps the fact that you can get this many operators together on one job is a testimate to how much cultural change there has been. Congratulations to you and everyone else who is a part of this cultural change. …

A few notes of importance here.

I know he is busy with his Draft Animal Days, so has been absent from this discussion, but Jason Rutledge has been a leader on this front for years, and I don’t intend to portray that I have completely new and different ideas.

Also I know that folks such as Scott, Tristan, Taylor, and others have also been working hard at similar efforts.

I’m feeling inspired right now to push the envelope, to take advantage of this network. In fact this whole thing that has happened here over the last few years was started because of this objective of mine (that I share with many of you).

In 2005 Lisa and I held a Horse-logging weekend here at Earthwise Farm & Forest. The intention was to bring together folks with skills, and those looking for the skills, with an emphasis of the land management strategies I espouse.

For many reasons beyond my own personal initiative it blossomed into NEAPFD, DAP.com, and now DAPNet. Now that we have successfully stepped back from our organizational roles, Lisa and I are taking up some of the work we already had on our plates. For me it is back to the forest, trying to share my perspective, and trying to engage more folks in the development of some strategies to enact some of this cultural change (which, by the way, began for me back in the late 70’s at UVM forestry school…… right from the beginning, I just couldn’t stomach the industrial impregnation of the entire curriculum).

As you (Andy) hint at, the change may be exponential. Part of that is because we have knit together a community over miles of territory that would otherwise prevent us from interacting. Through this network I know of so many folks who would love to work their animal in the woods, but don’t know where/how to start, or don’t have foresters or LO’s in their area who will give them a chance, and I am getting contacted all of the time by forestry students who want to understand how draft animals can be used to enable a more holistic approach to forestry. I know lumber wholesalers and specialty builders who want lumber with a back-story. I know landowners who want more out of their land than skidder scars and a large pay check.

It seems to me this network is a tool waiting to be used. Thanks to everyone for contributing, reading, questioning, and commenting.

Carl

[Anonymous]

Its a rainy day here. Started shoing and ran out of #9 nails then stared welding and ran out of mig wire. So it is a good afternoon to add soome pictures of a operation I’v been part of the past three winters. Some day I’ll get a scanner and post older pics 🙂 I did my best to add a short note to each explaining who,what and why. Didn’t post them on the tread not knowing how and to save space. I think they should be in my profile.Enjoy

Tristan

[Anonymous]

I googled “soil disturbances from horse/mule logging operation coupled from machines in southern united states” it`s kind of long but there are a number of studys started to read some of them I also tried to read the study done by Art Shannon but it`s a secret here in Canada even though we probably paid for it. Should e-mail Art and ask him if it`s availible

[near horse]

@Dobbin Forestry 28889 wrote:

Its a rainy day here. Started shoing and ran out of #9 nails then stared welding and ran out of mig wire. So it is a good afternoon to add soome pictures of a operation I’v been part of the past three winters. Some day I’ll get a scanner and post older pics 🙂 I did my best to add a short note to each explaining who,what and why. Didn’t post them on the tread not knowing how and to save space. I think they should be in my profile.Enjoy

Tristan

Tristan,

You mention in the picture gallery that your sled is built to allow felling right onto the sled – is that right? Can you describe the construction of the sled/materials? Do you build them yourself? The look pretty nice.

[simon lenihan]

There is a wire crane horse forwarder on the market that is very slick and very simple to build. It has a 13hp honda engine which runs the winch system. It carries approx 50 meters of cable which also helps when you meet a very soft area where the horses can not travel. It is less than half the weight of the horse drawn grapple loader and has a capacity of approx 6000lb. I have seen a team of small north swedish horses take this up a moderatly steep banking fully loaded. There is also a smaller model for a single horse with a capacity of approx 3000lb. The power assisted horse drawn grapple forwarder is a great piece of kit but the drive motors are small and only assist and not drive like a mechanical forwarder. We might move 4000lb with the horse drawn grapple loader on a 30 degree incline [ purpose built track ] a purpose built forwarder can move 34000lb. With most forest owners and forestry agents [ middle man ] driven by pounds / shillings / and pence, it simply means we have to park our horse drawn forwarder. The smaller tractor forwarder that carl uses is also a very efficent piece of equipment but it brings us closer in being able to compete. I think the difficulty arises [ it does for us any way ] when you have to hire in a tractor driver and have to keep him moving constant. There is the problem of room at track side, bottleneck of timber, extraction distance might be relativly short but has a very steep incline so you are forced to use a mechanical forwarder but can not possibly keep it going unless you take on extra hands. I am hoping that in the future that foresters and forestry owners will decide that the best forest practice is to put in less roads and encouage selection thinning thus creating a niche market for horses and horse drawn equipment.
simon lenihan, http://www.celtichorselogging.com

[Anonymous]

Yes the sleds we call them Go Devils are built to have large trees felled on them. There are a few of them kicking around that get shared by a few horse loggers in the area. I built the one in the pictures out of 2×4 box iron, old truck srpings for shoes on the runners. They stand up to hard use one sled is around 15 years old the only thing done to it has been new shoes on the runners. I’ll put a album of the sleds in use when I get home tonight.

Tristan

[Does’ Leap]

Hi Carl:

Have any of your clients signed up for EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentive Program) through NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service)? They have several forest-based programs that may help take the economic stress off the LO and focus on forest quality. With that shift in focus, I imagine horse loggers would be increasingly attractive.

I’d have to look up the numbers, but I think I was paid around $9,000 to implement TSI on a 90 acre parcel of land. I completed about half of it with my horses and hired a forester and cable skidder to manage the balance (my most inaccessible land – 1/3 mile+ from the landing). The only criteria I had for the forester was a quality residual stand which met the goals of my forest management plan and that the work would happen when the ground was frozen. Overall, the logger and forester did a nice job. I would have liked to have done it with horses but the accessibility and time constraints on the contract led me to hiring a skidder.

My main point here is that there is money to be had (I am not sure of its future in this economy) and it might help provide a niche for horse logging. Thoughts?

George

[Carl Russell]

@Does’ Leap 28898 wrote:

Hi Carl:

Have any of your clients signed up for EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentive Program) through NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service)? They have several forest-based programs that may help take the economic stress off the LO and focus on forest quality. With that shift in focus, I imagine horse loggers would be increasingly attractive.
—-George

In this particular case the LO applied for WHIP funds to establish 2 two acre patch-cuts at $895/acre…… It certainly has been an extra bit of cash to help out with forest improvement work.

Carl

[Jim Ostergard]

This is a great thread with loads of information. Carl, you all are to be commended for the work you are doing and I look forward to seeing some of the numbers. It is really hard to get the LO’s that are interested in this kind of work out here on the coast. I’ve got a job that I am going to start when I will need a forwarder to get across a large blueberry field with the wood. Not sure yet whether it will be a short lease on a trailer wagon (Hardy) or an Iron Mule. Whichever I can get first I guess. I will hot yard the wood with the horse and then forward with the machine. I would really like to build a wire crane and have the wagon. Simon, are there any available plans for one? I have loads of pictures but am somewhat mystified about the swinging mechanism for the crane. Tristan your photos are great thanks for sharing.
Jim

[PhilG]

Why is there government intervention into the free market of forest management ? I would rather my tax dollars go to paying for education, dept or any number of things other than a small percent of a rich land owners management bill. I went and looked at a 50 acre thinning this week spread over 7 lots , the 7 owners have been doing much of the work them selves costing the tax payers nothing until the state forest service got involved ofering to pay a high percentage of their cost, and they are just going to hydro ax every thing !!
Any way , my point is that what Carl and Jason and … Are doing can and is self sustaing on it’s own , like stated above the overhead is low the clients are thrilled with the low impact on their land, wood is and always will be worth something as saw logs or firewood, and at least here in Colorado I think it would be worth a lot more if the government was not pay 800-2000 dollars an acre to fill up the diesel tanks of skidders and harvesters.

[Author]

Posts