Big J

It's been pretty wet here lately. We had a good dump of snow a week ago, but it's been raining and 3-6c for much of the time since. Not in the British "raining stair rods" kind of way, but the Swedish forestry machine operators I've spoken to have said they can't remember it being so wet. It's odd though - there is loads of surface water and the rivers are quite full, but there isn't really any mud. The rivers are running clear too. A very different geology to Devon, where the red clay ruled. I've concluded that I actually don't mind rain so much if it doesn't turn everything into a muddy shit-pit. It's the mud and all the difficulties it brought for work/walking the dog/staying sane that was the problem.

It's OK Wallis - you are forgiven! 😁 I would say that neither douglas fir or larch aren't especially invasive. And larch came before the Victorians. Point taken though. Native hardwoods, as nice as they are, don't produce commercially useful timber. Even in an ideal world, devoid of grey squirrels, their slow growth, high maintenance input requirements and harvesting difficulty (ie, not by harvester) means that they aren't commercially viable (well certainly not as a replacement for conifer). But then add grey squirrels, invasive weed growth (requiring extensive spraying) and other invasive species and I cannot see the economic case. You make a valid point about climate change too. As you know, I'm responsible for quite a lot of eucalyptus woodland, and it's something I think the UK will see more and more of. With 40c summers, it's unavoidable. There are odd blocks of douglas and sitka, though I've yet to see any personally. Larch is reasonably common, though at least 90% of conifer is pine or spruce. Birch tends to make it into the matrix and is often maintained throughout the cycle to give some product diversity. There are a lot of different products, even from harvesting sites. The site I did in August had: Timber - both pine and spruce, separated out and marked with a red dot on the end by the harvester 3.1-5.5m, mixed length in stacks Klentimber (not sure of translation) - smaller timber 12-18cm, both pine and spruce, separated out, blue dotted. 3.1-5.5m mixed. Massaved - chip/pulpwood. 3-4.9m. Pine and spruce separated out. Massaved - birch Energived - dead standing spruce/pine. Marked with both a red and blue dot. That's 8 different stacks from one thinnings site. It was still surprisingly productive though. The generally longer product length helps. Production cycle here is around 70 years I believe. Less when you're further south and west and more further north. Right in the north of Sweden, it's 125-150 years.

I don't think that Oak is needed now - certainly not in any great quantity. As a milling timber, if can produce building boards, but structurally, you're better off with larch and douglas fir. More consistent, easier to grade, easier to dry and the production cycle is 1/4 of the length. There will still be a place for it for niche furniture and building, but beyond that, I can't see the point. There are plenty of hardwoods that are (in my opinion) more attractive and nearly all of them are easier to get to the stage of mature sawlog then oak. And there is the drying of oak, which is also a pain from the point of view of a sawmiller.

No. Just reds here. I don't recall ever having seen greys in France or Germany either. No bark stripping here either. Where mature oak grow, sapling oaks dominate like weeds. They don't even seem to get browsed much by deer. It's interesting coming to a country where the forest biome is fairly close to what it would have been. It really highlights just how much our Victorian forebears have to answer for in the UK, filling our country with non-native plants and animals. All the UK grant schemes that have been and are in place to control all sorts of invasive species (greys, rhododendron, Himalayan balsam, Japanese knotweed etc) - with the benefit of hindsight, all avoidable.

There is a lot of replanting here, with quite a regimented and strict process for restocking. As best I can tell (and I haven't looked into it in depth, as it doesn't come into my work) the clearfell is completed, a few months pass and the brash is fully extracted. Then the ground is prepped (ripped, mounded, that sort of thing), sometimes enriched and then replanted. 95% of planting here is pine or spruce. They inevitably have issues with invasive birch growth, which is repeatedly cleared using clearing saws. Usually at least twice before the first thinning, and then again just ahead of the first thinning. Sometimes a birch crop is preferred, but not often. There are probably (by area) more mixed deciduous hardwood blocks here than in the UK, but as a percentage of the overall forest makeup, it's only very small.

That as the case may be, such tight planting was also done when labour and materials were cheap. At £3.50 a tree, supplied, planted and tubed, tight spacing is economically unviable. It's good news that the greys are being managed with you. I still wouldn't risk planting oak! It only takes one game keeper to retire and you're back to square one!

So sorry Doug. That's awful to hear. 16 is a bloody good innings, especially after his rough start.

Yeah, fair point. I've seen so many young oak stands over the years and I honestly can't remember a single one that wasn't destroyed by grey squirrels. It's all fine and well being for biodiversity, but most people that plant oak don't seem to realise that what they plant will never make the beautiful oak woodlands they're expecting. Or at least not without 30 odd years of consistent squirrel murdering.

Yep. Just can't see the point of planting oak myself.

It's not 3ft. 2.5m x 2.5m is normal. Or 2.0m x 2.5m. Sometimes it's 3x3m but it tends not to produce very good quality trees.

0c, snowing lightly outside. Heavy snow forecast for the next three days.

We've had all our snow melt and it was even up to 8c yesterday. There is still a couple of inches of ice on the lake though. It's starting to turn colder again now, with today's drizzle turning into sleety snow. Minus 11 forecast before the end of the week. If it's of interest to anyone, here is a temperature comparison for 2022 (with December's figure coming from 2021, as the 2022 data isn't available yet) between our old home in Cullompton, Devon and our new home in SE Sweden. It's a fair bit warmer here in summer (about 2.5-3c, but with cooler nights) and a lot colder in winter. Edit: I put the figures for record low and high the wrong way around for Målilla for Dec 21.

We've been looking after a friends Jack Russell for the last couple of months whilst they're in India. Yogi (the name of the dog) is actually originally from Goa, and he's 6 years old. We've got him until March. He's generally OK. Understands a fair few commands, but whether he actually obeys them is another matter. Monumentally stubborn. He can be a right laugh sometimes (like playing ball with him on the frozen lake) but it makes my blood boil when he doesn't come back immediately when called. He has no problem with hearing. Being originally from India, he has to wear a coat when out in colder weather, and his ground clearance is somewhat limited. A bit of an issue in the forest! Whilst he can't help his stature, or his (lack of) training, it's just serving to reinforce how much I miss our dog, Katie. It's also demonstrated that I'm not ready for another dog yet either. I won't be sad to give him back in March.

Haha! Not quite. Our village lake is 24m deep in the middle. The corner we're skating on the moment is only a metre deep though, which I'm happy to take the kids on. It's been cold here, but not sustained for so long. I'm given more confidence though as I saw a few groups out ice fishing this morning on my bike ride.

Minus 8 overnight here. Just under 0 now with a thaw in prospect. We went ice skating on the lake yesterday and will do the same again this afternoon. I've only been skating 10 days, but am really enjoying it.

If it's any consolation, our forecast is pretty mild after this weekend. Long range is for proper winter is to come back mid January. I quite like that winter comes and goes here. I think if we were further north and it was 5-6 months of snow, I'd get bored of it.

We had 4 days of plus degrees (up to about 5c) but it wasn't enough to thaw the ground. I'm standing on the lake as I type, with 10cm ice thickness, so will be cracking out the ice skates this afternoon too 😎

A dusting of snow and minus 12c here this morning. Ski slope fully prepped now ahead of Boxing Day opening

Shared venture 😎

We very much do. It's done 700 trouble free km for us up to now, but the full load seemed to be a little too much.

Collecting our forwarder in Gothenburg didn't go so well today. No issues on the drive over, but shortly after loading and pulling out of the port, rolled over a rough bump and snapped a leaf spring on the front right. 26 year old, fatigued metal I guess combined with its first full load in a while (I presume). We definitely weren't overweight as everything was weighed. We had to limp to the customs inspection centre before midday, offloaded the forwarder, found a garage to repair the truck and now getting the train across central southern Sweden. Not a day to be repeated, especially not when you've been up since 01:00.

Hmmmmm. Is society f*cked? Yes, probably. Is this something new? Probably not. Cheap credit is something that I think is underpinning so much of what has gone wrong recently, and what continues to deteriorate. Not only does it allow people to extend themselves way beyond their personal means, but I feel it also undermines the very notion of value, and what something is worth. Many things in life are much cheaper than they once were, but most of the big ticket items aren't. Houses and cars for instance. As an example, the start price for a Ford Focus in 1998 when first launched was just under £9900. RRP for the base model now is over £26k, whereas £9900 adjusted for inflation is only £20500. This debasing of the value of things has been allowed to happen slowly over a period of time, and has been largely hidden by rock bottom interest rates. Now that rates are rising, it's become rapidly apparent that no one can afford it. It feels like a large adjustment is coming. As someone very rightly pointed out earlier in the thread, it should not take two people working full time just to pay rent on a home. Our crappy mini-farmhouse in Devon was relisted after a fairly superficial decoration (excepting a bathroom replacement that was long overdue) at £1750/PCM by our greedy, multi millionaire former landlord. For 103 square metres and 3 bedrooms. He's already had to drop it to £1500, but who the hell can afford that for a 3 bed house that's largely unheatable? I digress. We need as a society to go back to a time where credit isn't the first choice but the last resort. If we live life on credit, we're beholden to banks and are in effect in indentured servitude. All this wonderful modern technology that's available to us should be used to improve our quality of life, not used to find new ways to repress us.

I think our slope is small enough not to require winching! At least I hope it is!

It was an interesting evening, looking at the mechanics of it! There are two types of snow maker on the hill. The tall poles are driven by compressed air and the turbine type ones use what looks like a jet engine to propel a fine mist out. Both require the air temperature to be 4 or 5c below freezing, and due to the warming temperatures last night (minus 11 at 18:00 and minus 4 at 22:00), we shut down the snow production for the time being. The water is drawn from the lake and is driven up the hill by the largest water pump I've personally ever seen (110kw). Whilst the snow is being made, someone is always on site to supervise (24hrs a day). I don't think anyone is paid to do it. It's all volunteers. This was my first shift, and I'll certainly be back. I've never been skiing, but intend to learn. They are also eying me up to drive the piste grooming machine with my machine driving experience. That'll be something for the CV! This isn't the exact machine they have, but it's almost identical.

Warming fairly quickly now. Up to minus 6c. We had a great afternoon skating on the lake (only my second time on skates) and then I've been helping at the ski slope with that snow production. First time driving a snow mobile too!