Highland Forestry

Try Trees Plus in Almondbank.

You gotta be joking!!? More water than london aquarium about here just recently! Dried off a bit now but only two weeks ago we had flooding and the rivers were full to bursting!

Nothing like that but the other evening we had a really hard downpour of rain.. I was on my way home from the local town and noticed literally hundreds of frogs crossing the road.. never seen anything like it before, it was like some weird migration!

Well that was predictable.... he should have wedged it in the back whilst his mates pulled on the rope... or climed it and done a propper job! lol very good.... wish I could understand german..

Just to add to that last thread, the extraction length is very variable, some will be aslittle as 50m and others will be more like 400m - 500m or more. It makes sense to me to take on the extraction as I only get paid for the poles themselfs when they go off-site on the lorry and all must be inspected individually before being loaded so the quicker I get them to roadside the quicker I get paid.

I am aiming to fell, make and peel and extract to roadside 200 poles a week minimum. Currently we do approximatley 150 poles a week but will be increasing the squad, possibly doubling it when we start in-house extraction as we havealot of work to get through. Some of them are in very tight spots and others you could get a machine right up to them, they are normally marked in the wood and are 'here and there' rather than normal thinnings, this is because they are looking for specific tolerences and sizes of timber and not every wood is ideal for poles. As a % of the business as a whole I would estimate this contract is around 25-30% at the moment but would obviousley be more if we do our own extraction. I am being offered the extraction and marking contracts so I can do the whole lot, which will be worth a fair bit more money as the marking and extraction are hourly rate.

here's another one.. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NzIH185cqM]YouTube - Woody[/ame] I really like this, and would go so far as to say I'll be trying to get more information about them and costs etc.

arrghhh way too many skidder choices!!!

Give them a good hard crown reduction and mulch around the base of each tree to a radius of around 1.5m..... It wont be a guaranteed way of bringing them back but it may help. Failing that there is not much you can do but fell and replant i'm afraid. I'm sure Martyn would be able to do reductions and sort some decent mulch... when mulching around trees we use bags of garden compost around the base first and then plenty of woodchip over the top but you can buy big bags of pre-prepared mulch.

Just goes to show you.... the boys who are supposed to be at the top of thier game, protecting civilians are the ones who let us down. Complacency is a very dangerous friend. If this was a civilian incident and it was you or me who pulled the trigger we would be doing some serious time at her majestey's pleasure. As a firearms license holder myself I can say for FACT that if anything like this happened or even hinted at happening during an inspection, all guns and licenses would be revoked instantly. They even prefer firearms license holders to store ammunition in a seporate safe to the firearms and the bolts of the rifles in a seporate safe also...

Who's a pretty boy then!!

I'll come down with my .270 and start popping them off for you.. Failing that lets have an arbtalk driven shoot... 8-shot benellis at the ready boys.. I'll bring some 3 shot 46gm buffalos with me!

I'll go and fell them if that helps?? As it happens I have just spent a week turning a scrub birch and rowan woodland site into a smart amenity belt and have come across literally thousands of dead, dying or generally crappy rowans... deffinatley something up with them this year. They say that when the rowans are loaded with berries it's a sign of a hard winter to come.. some of the ones i've seen aound here are literally bursting with berries.

lol!! Grapple skidder is deffinatley the kiddey for the job... I want something that can do more than one job though so it's deffinatley a tractor forwarder/skidder I need. The grapple skidder would be great but I could only use it for skidding. Tried looking into what everyone else uses for extracting poles, and seemingly most of them are extracted by forwarder, but the forwarder only takes 5 or 6 polesd at a time due to the weight on the overhang and it is a slow process due to the size of machine.. This takes it back to a skidder scenario and from what everyone has said on this discussion it'll either have to be a county or a MB trac etc. Unimog is a great idea but I can't see it working well on the sites we are on, it would get trashed and cost a bomb to fix Perhaps I should buy the whole lot... a grapple skidder, forwarder, county, mb trac, crawler, unimog, suzuki jimney, skyline, debarking machine etc

is the teleporter for sale??

A load like that is selling for somewhere in the region of £130 around us just now gibby.. thats assuming its about 2m3

Personally, I would say that the trees have done thier time.. I see loads of dead and dying rowans every week up here. They seem to get to a certain maturity and then die off.. Fell and replant I would suggest.

Some impressive kit there Mr. Ed - our friends over the water use the big grapple skidders alot don't they? Think that would be a bit overkill here but would certainly work alright. The thought behind the county is that we can use it for hardwood thinning, birch etc as well as skidding out the telegraph poles. I cant use a forwarder because I cant afford one, and not all our polling sites are in woodland that has been racked so need a small machine like a county that can dodge about a bit.

I want to see the risk assessment!!!!

Kinda how I felt too Matt

Recieved this in the emails thisevening - thought I'd share it with you lot.. 1. Teaching Maths In 1970 A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit? 2. Teaching Maths In 1980 A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100. His cost of production is 80% of the price. What is his profit? 3. Teaching Maths In 1990 A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100. His cost of production is £80. How much was his profit? 4. Teaching Maths In 2000 A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100. His cost of production is £80 and his profit is £20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20. 5. Teaching Maths In 2005 A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habit of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. Your assignment: Discuss how the birds and squirrels might feel as the logger cut down their homes just for a measly profit of £20. 6. Teaching Maths In 2009 A logger is arrested for trying to cut down a tree in case it may be offensive to Muslims or other religious groups not consulted in the felling licence. He is also fined a £100 as his chainsaw is in breach of Health and Safety legislation as it deemed too dangerous and could cut something. He has used the chainsaw for over 20 years without incident however he does not have the correct certificate of competence and is therefore considered to be a recidivist and habitual criminal. His DNA is sampled and his details circulated throughout all government agencies. He protests and is taken to court and fined another £100 because he is such an easy target. When he is released he returns to find Gypsies have cut down half his wood to build a camp on his land. He tries to throw them off but is arrested, prosecuted for harassing an ethnic minority, imprisoned and fined a further £1 00. While he is in jail the Gypsies cut down the rest of his wood and sell it on the black market for £100 cash. They also have a leaving BBQ of squirrel and pheasant and depart leaving behind several tonnes of rubbish and asbestos sheeting. The forester on release is warned that failure to clear the fly tipped rubbish immediately at his own cost is an offence. He complains and is arrested for environmental pollution, breach of the peace and invoiced £12,000 plus VAT for safe disposal costs by a regulated government contractor. Your assignment: How many times is the logger going to have to be arrested and fined before he realises that he is never going to make £20 profit by hard work, give up, sign onto the dole and live off the state for the rest of his life? 7. Teaching Maths In 2010 A logger doesn’t sell a lorry load of timber because he can’t get a loan to buy a new lorry because his bank has spent all his and their money on a derivative of securitised debt related to sub- prime mortgages in Alabama and lost the lot with only some government money left to pay a few million pound bonuses to their senior directors and the traders who made the biggest losses. The logger struggles to pay the £1,200 road tax on his old lorry however, as it was built in the 1970s it no longer meets the emissions regulations and he is forced to scrap it. Some Bulgarian loggers buy the lorry from the scrap merchant and put it back on the road. They undercut everyone on price for haulage and send their cash back home, while claiming unemployment for themselves and their relatives. If questioned they speak no English and it is easier to deport them at the governments expense. Following their holiday back home they return to the UK with different names and fresh girls and start again. The logger protests, is accused of being a bigoted racist and as his name is on the side of his old lorry he is forced to pay £1,500 registration fees as a gang master. The Government borrows more money to pay more to the bankers as bonus's are not cheap. The parliamentarians feel they are missing out and claim the difference on expenses and allowances. You do the maths. 8. Teaching Maths 2017 أ المسجل تبيع حموله شاحنة من الخشب من اجل 100 دولار. صاحب تكلفة الانتاج من الثمن. ما هو الربح له؟

Totally agree with you Stevie... the mog could do all the jobs we need machinery for.. I have reservations about it on a harvesting site though, mainly because i've never seen one on a clear fell or in thinnings which is what we'll be in, and never heard of anyone using a mog as a skidder.. Having said that.. nothing is impossible!

Thats the problem.. we'll be on different sites regularly so I need to find something that can cope with most terrains. The other thread about the MB Trac is interesting.... they look a good machine also. Cheers charlieh - i'll try and pick a copy up tomorrow.

You do like mogs dont you??!! hehe Would a mog be any good over stumps in boggy ground, on brash, mud etc? If I can get a county, I rekon i'll have to get a set of chains for it due to the ground.

I really need to go and jar him for some advice.. was asked today to pull my finger out and get a skidder so we can take on a long term extraction contract... as i'm doing the felling and prep anyway it would make sense we do it for them. Have you ever heard of alistair young, the valmnet guy near Forres?? Is he worth trying?