A half finished job

[Hedge Monkey]

2 hours ago, Grassyass said:

The way to work it would be to take out the dead or damaged first to give the healthy trees a chance I would think the wood is going to be processed into firewood, after nine years lying in a field they will be good for just the Bugs ,

My employer has a saw mill, tractors, trailers, a Unimog. I'm just not sure if there's a working plan in place in terms of management. If there is no plan whatsoever then I'd like to devise one. It might be possible to get someone else with a small logging buisness to do some of the snedding and not use any of the farms resources or equipment, I'd be loading and making brash piles. Just trying to come up with a sensible proposition at the moment. 

 

 

[Jackalope]

10 minutes ago, Hedge Monkey said:

My employer has a saw mill, tractors, trailers, a Unimog. I'm just not sure if there's a working plan in place in terms of management. If there is no plan whatsoever then I'd like to devise one. It might be possible to get someone else with a small logging buisness to do some of the snedding and not use any of the farms resources or equipment, I'd be loading and making brash piles. Just trying to come up with a sensible proposition at the moment. 

 

 

 

General rule of thumb for thinning is take 30%, obviously try to leave those trees with decent shape whilst removing the weedy/ squirrel damaged etc. If there's Ash in the plantation I'd be inclined to hit that hard as dieback will inevitably take its toll. 

You're aiming for even spacing of what's left, if rack thinning post '87 planting I will take every 5th row and thin the cants as necessary.

 

You'll need to decide on a spec for timber, 3m or 8' are fairly standard firewood sizes so should be marketable. If it's only 20yo you might find the firewood lads aren't interested in processing gear that small. Selling it as biomass is a good backup.  

 

Oh, and I wouldn't bother "making brash piles" just leave it where it lands if at all possible. 

Good luck!

[Hedge Monkey]

39 minutes ago, Jackalope said:

 

General rule of thumb for thinning is take 30%, obviously try to leave those trees with decent shape whilst removing the weedy/ squirrel damaged etc. If there's Ash in the plantation I'd be inclined to hit that hard as dieback will inevitably take its toll. 

You're aiming for even spacing of what's left, if rack thinning post '87 planting I will take every 5th row and thin the cants as necessary.

 

You'll need to decide on a spec for timber, 3m or 8' are fairly standard firewood sizes so should be marketable. If it's only 20yo you might find the firewood lads aren't interested in processing gear that small. Selling it as biomass is a good backup.  

 

Oh, and I wouldn't bother "making brash piles" just leave it where it lands if at all possible. 

Good luck!

Hey thanks, that's all really useful advice. I found out that this plantation was planted in the 80s, so, not one of the plantations I planted and this wasn't a thinning operation.

 

Still, there's hundreds of tonnes of ash wood down and lots of decent sized limbs. I need to know what I'm talking about before I'm to come up with a suggestion. To my mind what's happened so far amounts to a desecration but it's probably better to come up with a mutually beneficial plan than say as much. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Hedge Monkey

[spuddog0507]

38 minutes ago, Hedge Monkey said:

Still, there's hundreds of tonnes of ash wood down and lots of decent sized limbs. I need to know what I'm talking about before I'm to come up with a suggestion.

You say hundreds of tonnes ? if you could give us some dimensions of the timber, ie diameter at breast height and a rough length of the main poles along with a rough estimate of the plantation size, some of us could give you a good idea of what amount of timber there is in there, at i guess i would say the bulk of the timber is 10-12" dbh and some a bit bigger depending on spieces,, 10-12" dbh hardwood is very saleable at present,,some photos would be nice as well,,

[Jackalope]

6 hours ago, Hedge Monkey said:

To my mind what's happened so far amounts to a desecration but it's probably better to come up with a mutually beneficial plan than say as much. 

Yea don't bother passing too much comment on what's gone before. Let your saw work do the talking.

 

If it wasn't a thinning operation, what was it? Tidying windblow?

 

As Spuddog says, some measurements and photos would definitely be useful. Sounds an interesting project.

[Hedge Monkey]

8 hours ago, spuddog0507 said:

You say hundreds of tonnes ? if you could give us some dimensions of the timber, ie diameter at breast height and a rough length of the main poles along with a rough estimate of the plantation size, some of us could give you a good idea of what amount of timber there is in there, at i guess i would say the bulk of the timber is 10-12" dbh and some a bit bigger depending on spieces,, 10-12" dbh hardwood is very saleable at present,,some photos would be nice as well,,

These are medium sized trees, diameter at breast hight would be about 16", the trees themselves must be around 12m. I was only up there for a short while so can't say the exact size of the plantation, but it's 4 to 5 acres minimum, with 50 to 100 trees down, at a guess.

 

Reading up on Ash dieback, apparently it renders the timber useless for anything but firewood. There's at least 40 acres of woodland planted 20 years ago that need managing. It's not really my place to worry about any of it but I'd like to be proactive and help reduce waste and help restore some order to the beautiful woods. 

 

I think constant chainsaw use and traffic is out of the question, due to the location. 

[doobin]

It's forestry. Have as much chainsaw use and traffic as is required for the forestry operation, fk the neighbours.

[Hedge Monkey]

2 hours ago, Jackalope said:

Yea don't bother passing too much comment on what's gone before. Let your saw work do the talking.

Exactly this, I won't be helping my cause one bit by stepping on toes.

 

Looks like the operation was to take out infected ash. There will be some kind of plan in place for sure but lots of other woodland to manage and very few hands on deck. 

[Hedge Monkey]

1 minute ago, doobin said:

It's forestry. Have as much chainsaw use and traffic as is required for the forestry operation, fk the neighbours.

The owner and the neighbours are all family and my friends. Having said that, there's enough free firewood to go around and as far as I'm aware that's all it's good for. 

[Jackalope]

1 hour ago, Hedge Monkey said:

There's at least 40 acres of woodland planted 20 years ago that need managing

If it's only 20yo then there shouldn't be much needing done yet, unless of course it has come up a mass of natural regen which is smothering the planted stock. 

 

From what I've gleaned the other woods are mature ash with dieback, some already laid over/hung up and you are, by your own admission, a novice to forestry. Ash is tricky enough to fell safely when it's healthy, add in the delight of deadwood dropping out of it and that's the recipe for an accident report.

 

Be extremely careful going into that.