Moving forward

[Carl Russell]

Changed it Taylor.

I think we should make sure to vote officers into office. I only accepted the nomination, and don’t mind performing some secretarial duties, but I think we need to stick to protocol.

Carl

Snow here too. Possibly 8″, followed by rain, then wicked cold, but even though the ground is stiffening up, it is still very very wet. Worked the horses yesterday, and they are 1/3 covered with mud, feet to bellies, frozen on. I love this weather….not. Maybe some frozen snow will help.

[Rick Alger]

I will volunteer to work on the Worker’s Comp Insurance issue.

[Jim Ostergard]

Jason, Very nice job on the release. I think it was good to include the original list of names, gives a real sense of how spread out the group is and that we could come together. Brings to mind a (perhaps) minor issue and that is how to we determine a horse logger? Is that important or do we want anybody who twitches one stick of wood a year? Might be a good discussion.
Good work all for keeping the various balls rolling. Lots of work to do for sure and I will be happy to noodle over the hardcopy stuff and with collaboration, see if I can get something presentable together. Like Mr Plowden we are getting hammered here on the coast with snow and nearly storm force winds. Glad my days fishing for cod on George’s bank are over! The ground is very wet under the couple of inches we had before this hope the cold of the next few days will stiffen it up as I need to get the new in harness and on the scoot to get him ready to work.
jim O

[simon lenihan]

jim,
How do we determine a horselogger?, i have real issues with this and it is something that needs to be addressed. There are folk who advertise themselves as professional horseloggers who are not. I am not against anyone who works part time, even a couple of weeks a year but when they are selling their services they need to inform the people they are working for and tell them what they can expect from their services. There are forest managers over here that will not use horses under any circumstances due to bad experiences, i have tried in vain to get them to re consider but to no avail. A mechanised system can destroy a forest and cost thousands reinstating, yet the following week they are working 2 miles down the road and no one seems to care, yet a bad horse job and that seems to be it, disgrunteled foresters spreading the bad news, this is why we have to be cautious, just my 2 cents worth.
simon lenihan

[Scott G]

Great energy everyone! Now once again let’s focus.

First, Thanks Jason for the release. I think that it will be very telling based on what type of response we have.

Second, I agree that creating formal overhead should probably be done sooner than later. More to the point, My intention for structure is what is it going to look like? Officers, sub-committe chairs, etc.. I think it might be better to see what type of response and reaction we get from the general population that is directed to the DAPFI site and see which stars rise to the top. We are, in essence, a formative and steering committee to get the architecture of this effort layed out. I welcome additional folks that may wish to take a more active role in the future. I am going to follow up with an additional request for contacts on the “Big 3” forums to hopefully generate more of a response. I’ll then take what I have, put together an e-mail list, and post an invite to this effort. On the point of electing officers, I personally would like to wait to see what type of response we get but I’ll leave it to you folks. I am fine riding herd on our steering committee but am not at a point right now where I want to automatically accept a nomination. But please, do not take that as an indicator of my involvement and drive to make this thing work. I would just like to see how many other committed folks are out there that might rise to the occassion. “Remember the Alamo!” is a quote that comes to mind when describing my level of committment to this effort..

Third, The last couple of posts are somewhat troubling to me. I fully understand that we want to monitor, improve, and enhance our culture and profession. Remember, however, the genesis of this effort a few months back. It was decided to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Looking at the situation Jim & Simon mention, how about half-full rather than half-empty. Let’s describe an opportunity to bring people along in their skills and practices rather than categorize them outright. All trade groups have a quality control mechanism for their membership. That, however, is prefaced by training programs and standards of practice. As a small fraction of 1% of currently active harvesting systems we can’t necessarily afford to be exclusive. There is power in numbers and quality assurance can be achieved at the same time. Look at all of the certification programs, it is a target for ‘up & comers’ to aspire to.

Fourth, Those of you that stepped up to the plate for the focus groups, first off, thank you. Now taking it to the next step please start a working thread regarding your particular focus area to generate some input. I’ll throw it out to the group at large whether we want to keep it on the core groups forum or put it out on the public site. I could see pluses and minuses for both options.

We’re getting momentum now my friends, lets keep it goin’…

[cedarriverhorselogging]

I think Scotts point is valid and needs balance. We have in the past made membership open but only practitioner were voting members.

[Jim Ostergard]

Scott,
Thanks for all again. As to the logger, not the logger issue I didn’t intend to lead us in a direction of exclusion intentionally. I was more concerned with getting so many posting to the group that it would suck up too much energy reading and weeding them out. I’ve been involved with groups that called themselves loggers and they really were not. Energy just seemed to drift off somewhere else. Not necessarily a bad thing but not about the life and times we share as loggers.
I guess the real challenge is how to keep the logging focus and keep it open to folks who are really serious about learning all the valuable stuff we have to offer. Love more discussion on this point.

Carl,
I would like to invite Mitchmaine on to this forum. Here is a man who has cut a lot of wood and is some good with horses. I seen him do both. Lots of experience we could use. That man has humped a lot of 4′ spruce in his time. He teaches well and is one of the trainers at the annual LIF in Unity Maine. His barn was featured in SFJ some time ago and he has a horse drawn sugar operation.
Again thanks to all who are thinking how we move on this whole thing.
jimbojim

[Scott G]

The input has definitely tapered off…

I didn’t mean for my last post to be a buzz kill, I was just hoping that as we went “public” on RH that we would generate some interest & participation. Not so much…

I have received the bulk of the contact lists that I think I am going to get for the present. I’ll marry the data and get a “working” contact list put together in the next week or so.

Once that is done I’ll send out a bulk e-mail to all listed to see if we can drum up more involvement. I will attach that list as a file. We will need to decide at what stage we want to send notifications out normal post and how we want to fund that.

Meanwhile, we should continue working on our focus threads. Rick has stepped up to the plate on Work Comp issues. Jason volunteered for value adding, Carl for networking, and Tim was volunteered for marketing. Tim are you up for that?

Two steps forward, one step back, but we are moving forward…

[lancek]

Thats fine by me Scott !!

[lancek]

Hey wait a minute I think I just stuck my foot in my mouth! Did you mean me lancek or Tim Carrol if its the latter sorry Tim

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