Tom D

You have a point there Rupe, which supports my theory that the reason the Scots have an insular and chippy outlook and always vote labour is that all the go getter adventurous types left in the 17 and 1800's and made sucesses of themselves in places like Canada and New Zealand, leaving all the stay at home, I'm allright jack, wingy types here to breed the population we have today. I could be shot for saying that of course but it is one explanation for the difference in attitudes between the Scots and the English. What do you reckon Stevie? BTW I know that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys, however I still reckon my ideal employee would be me 20 years ago when I cycled a 20 mile round trip to work and worked my nuts off for £12 a day.

Not bad, although you do have to sell and deliver them. Thats why I don't feel too bad sitting here pottering on the pc whilst on my paternity leave if I can call it that, My employee can split about £250-500 worth of logs in a day. While I fanny about on here:thumbup:

I know that there are guys wanting work on here, who have tickets and experience, I have used a couple of them recently and will be doing again, but what I'd really like is an unskilled youngster who would cost me half as much and could come to the yard each morning. Do a days graft and learn the job, on the tools as it were, No offence to the guys who I do employ but with minimum wage for a 16-18yo at £3.53 I could have two of them for what a guy with tickets costs. Why pay a climber to drag brash?

Its a sad fact but I have to agree with whats being said, a good local lad who will graft is a rare thing indeed. Its the fault of our education system which was ruined by liberal hippy types in the 70's, they couldn't bare the idea that a middle class child might accidently fail the 11+ and end up with a working class education. So they decided that all children should have a middle class academic education, 30 years ago boys were taught useful skills that prepared them for work, carpentry, metal work, bricklaying and horticulture, they left school knowing what a days work was. Now they are taught purely academic classroom based stuff which is fine for those who are adapted to that sort of thing but for those who aren't they become dis-illusioned and basically drop out of school, learning little because they aren't interested. By the time they leave at 16 technical colledge is just seen as more school to them and so they can't be bothered with it, anyway we will also pay them a decent wage to sit at home all day, so thats what they do. The problem is as we use more and more foreigners to do our manual jobs the local kids are still here spending our taxes and having more useless kids which means the country needs to generate more wealth to raise sufficient taxes to pay increased welfare, which means more migrant workers... Plus we have to find nearly a trillion dollars to pay back our debt. Isn't britain great.

After a recent accident I was very unimpressed with my local landrover dealer, they won't be seeing mine again. Those rear disc braked landys do eat pads though, especially if you're towing.

why? you got an LDV?

TBH I think it was lucky that the YP jobs were big ones, my average job is probably £750 three of them makes it seem even worse. The way I see it if you want to spend a set amount on advertising each year, there are other ways which give far more bang for your buck. I do find that internet generated leads are often from people getting more than one quote, I convert virtually 100% of the referrals into jobs so these are the best.

This thread has just inspired me to check my quotes for the last 10 months, out of about 150 jobs 3 came from yellow pages, and about 20 from leaflets, the rest were split about 50/50 between the internet and referals from other clients, I also count prople who stop us while we are working as referals. The three yellow pages jobs made a total of £3150, thanks to two of the jobs being £1k plus, even so at a 20% profit margin thats £630, that doesn't buy much in the YP, I spent around £400 so I "made" about £200 form YP. I spent about £500 on my website and it will easily have brought in £30K over 10 months. It pays to do the maths.

Here's a couple of pics of her in bloom, pretty impressive. the fruit is fairly small and sour MD its a crab type apple. Although I made some crab apple vodka this year from some wild trees down the road, its not bad.

Nice buy Stevie, handy toy, I bet you wish you had it a few weeks ago. I wish mine was as high up as that, it'll be a good machine in the woods.

Some good responses on here, I dont mind too much if they ask politely, in fact I have won a few jobs from people who came over for a moan, but its the ones who come over on the attack and speak to you like you're an idiot that really wind me up. I told one particularly nasty old trout that "all the trees were coming down" "What do you mean all of them?" she said I just said "all of them" and gestured up the street which is tree lined. She stormed off practically foaming at the mouth, I was only crown lifting a beech which had she asked nicely I'd have happily told her.

My stuff is all in the 20-25% range and I always light with a firelighter, no kindling, no paper. I just light a firelighter or use embers from the other fire and fill it up with logs, works 95% of the time, the 5% when it fails is when the logs get "hung up" and dont drop down. I reckon with decent wood on a stove you don't need kindling.

I love mine, but TBH buying a harness is like buying clothes, what suits one person may not suit another. The TF is a light harness with relatively narrow leg loops and so is perhaps not the best for the larger climber, however for a tree whippet like me its great.

My new site is already back on page 1 and bizarrely the old url (which redirects to the new one) is still top. Its important to have relevant information on your site in english, not just a big list; tree surgeon, pruning, dismantling, etc. I have a few lines at the bottom of each page but it needs to make sense. The google spiders/bots can distinguish between this and a big list spamming key words. Make sure your meta information is relevant. And most importantly submit your site to google. HERE Add your URL to Google My site TD Tree & Land Services | Tree Surgeons Edinburgh | Arboricultural Contracting and Consultancy

There is some debate, but Beech is still considered a native in most books. I do love the new foliage on a beech, when it first comes out it looks like it would be great in a salad. I'm sure its rank however.

Thats a crackinig oak Tommy, was that Arkleston I saw Rod? I quoted for that one:001_smile: Nice pics BTW, you've got some good kit.

I had seen this before and assumed it to be genuine, clearly its not. To be fair, it is possible to do yourself a serious injury if your leg loops are too loose. I know someone who "circumsised" himself after falling a short distance, his rope pulled tight and the end of the "old chap" was in a leg loop. Thats got to sting a bit.

Could you work later this week? My wife is due to give birth any day now so things are a bit up in the air, however I do have some jobs that we need to get through. Give us a ring:001_smile:

Although its better to turn the set that will be under the most weight, which on my tractor would be the front set (when reversing up a hill) or using the loader. In the days before telehandlers you used to see a lot of tractors with front loaders and with the back tyres on backwards for reversing out of muck heaps. TBH I like the 400% forwards at the mo as I want maximum grip when digging the bucket into the logpile, however when towing off road the tractor is noticably worse going backwards so if I get a timber trailer I will turn the front tyres.

The video, POV is bust so just a few mobile phone snippets. The first fell is from fridays job. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3I2lIw-GqQ]YouTube - winching, the brunt.wmv[/ame]

I normally use a 3m comet wirecore, its soft and really nice, I do have a 7m one in hivee, but tbh unless the tree is huge I find it a pain. Its very rare I feel the need for a second anchor further away than 1.5m. Try a longer one... but I'll bet you don't like it.

Its 4.2 ton mate, you can always double it up if necessary:001_smile:

Pleurotus cornucopiae I think:001_smile:

To be fair it took a few goes to get it back out of the river, you can see how churned up the bank is in the last pic, one of the problems of having a really short wheelbase, although its a lot steeper than it looks in the picture. Still it saved us loads of work.