Big J

Extremely windy today on Dartmoor. Torrential hail showers mixed with bright sunshine. Very cold too. The pictures show the contrast!

I know it's completely the wrong time of year, but I only saw this today and it made me chuckle 😄

I've found that since the advent of covid, that customers (which in my case are landowners) are very likely to change their minds about just about everything and extremely unreliable. I've had several large jobs disappear at the last minute for ridiculous reasons. I think that the general uncertainty of things at present is causing many to question their own decisions, and the motives of those working for them. I've heard from other forestry agents that there is a distinct twitchiness amongst woodland owners at the moment. It's very hard to plan when you can't rely on a job starting when it's supposed to, if at all.

That is very much the case. As others have said, looking into yield class is most important. An open grown tree will thicken (at chest height) far quicker than a plantation tree, but the density of the stems in a plantation will mean that it's a more effective and efficient carbon sequestration model. There are all sorts of factors that will seriously affect growth rate of a plantation. So for example, you might have a site at 100m above sea level, south facing, gently sloping. It might have shallow soil (reduce crop yield by 20%), it might be waterlogged (reduce crop yield by 20%), it might be subject to prevailing winds (reduce crop yield by 20% along windward edge), the saplings may be from poor genetic stock (reduce crop yield by 20%), soil pH and macro nutrients may be incorrect for the species planted (reduce crop yield by 20%). The list goes on. On that last point, a local example is a primarily spruce woodland we worked in two years ago. It was planted 20 years ago, has grown terribly and is running along at about yield class 9. The ground was found to be seriously acidic (as well as too dry for sitka) and on the adjacent arable land has required 5t/acre of lime to balance it. All species planted on this ground have grown awfully. Larch, oak, ash, maple - the lot. My point is that you can only ever give a spectrum of growth rates for any given species, and it's basely on yield class, not DBH.

Speak to Stephen Craig at Pontralis Sawmills. 16cm TDUB at 3.7 or 4.9m long. You arrange the haulage to send it into them. It's a fairly easy gig and they aren't particularly fussy on quality.

Agreed. The difficulty that is going to arise is that much of the new planting in the UK at the moment is part of the Woodland Carbon Code, which has not yet been resolved for productive woodland. The only way that the present iteration of it works is if the landowner never fells any timber, ie, the carbon has to remain standing. Then (potentially) the ownership of the carbon is transferred at the final crop stage to whomever it is that buys it, but the model doesn't really make any sense and has the potential to create a situation where the UK has vast swathes of dark, completely unthinned sitka plantation that landowners would find economically unviable to fell as it would mean giving up their carbon store, and the associated financial benefits. I had a long, and slightly circular conversation with the author of the WCC, and it is only functional for the planting of 'never to be managed/thinned/clearfelled' broadleaf woodland. They are working on a model for productive woodland at the moment, but it doesn't exist yet. It'll be interesting to see what the long term ramifications of this are. Thankfully, eucalyptus plantations are very profitable irrespective of carbon income.

I have an Echo 281 WES as a coppicing saw, though I keep it on the forwarder now to cut bits and bobs that get in my way, or sned off missed branches. It's a really lovely little saw and has cross cut 12 inch oak when required (though obviously a larger saw would be better). It was ideal for the job I bought it for, which was copparding (coppicing at 4ft) willow. I didn't cut anything much over 5-6 inches, and it ripped through. I don't think I'd have been faster with a larger saw - it took me 6 hours to coppard a couple hundred stools, 6 hours to forward them out with the Logbullet forwarder in tree length (about 25ft) and we filled 43 builders bags with branch loggings.

It's indicative of how shockingly low the new planting numbers are in England when I'm personally responsible for planting 1.29% of all new tree planting 😄 We planted 30 hectares of eucalyptus plantation last year on arable land. I take the point that planting on deep peat is a bad idea, but the upland grasslands are a largely manmade creation. They are economically useless, have fairly limited biodiversity and would be much better off as plantation. The 70% one species rule from the Commission is not quite true, as it's rather easy to circumvent. Regardless, the UK has a chronic shortage of timber. We keep installing huge CHP plants, as well as the lower level domestic and smaller scale commercial biomass plants. We have no where near enough construction grade timber to meet demand, and as such import 80% of our timber. Timber plantations are simply farming. Long rotation, relatively low impact (on account of the infrequent harvesting intervals) farming. I do agree that current policy from the government allows for wealthy landowners to exploit the system, but that's more of an issue with the system than the landowners. You'd do the same if you were in that position. And I'd personally much rather walk through an upland forest than a moorland.

To update, the Vimek is going very well. I'm just over 100 machine hours into it now, and it's a capable and powerful little machine. The crane is strong, and will chuck around logs weighing 800kg easily. I had a douglas log at 1.1 cubic metres (pictured below) that challenged it, but that I think was mainly due to it's 3.7m (ie, rather short) length. Load capacity is rated at 5000kg, but you'd struggle to get that on unless you had a full load of 4.9m sawlogs. More realistic is 3.5-4t. It climbs fairly well, but much better going backwards than forwards on account of the Robson drive (the cage between the wheels) on the back. Empty and going backwards, it is like a mountain goat going up hills. Productivity wise, it's probably close to double what the Logbullet is, but then you'd expect that given that new, the Vimek is more than 4 times the price. The 68hp CAT diesel is incredibly economical, so even on the site I'm presently extracting, where I'm climbing up to the loading bay, I'm struggling to use 25 litres of diesel on an 8hr shift. It has a crane mounted hydraulic winch, which has been a godsend. It's a strong winch, and will pull an 8-900kg sawlog up a 1 in 4 hill easily. It saves a lot of driving and putting yourself in a situation you might not be able to drive out of. So, overall, very good. It feels like a big forwarder scaled down rather than a small forwarder scaled up.

I assume you mean it's not going to open pubs etc? I'm not bothered about that (personally, though I appreciate that that is just my personal opinion). I'm not even bothered about who I see as I'm pretty antisocial. I just see the damage that social isolation is doing to my kids (and others too) and would dearly like them to see their friends and family again. It's like a speed limit on a road. If you have a straight, open road and set the limit at 20mph, you might get compliance from a few at the start, but it'll quickly be ignored by the majority, even if a concerted effort is made to explain why it's so low. But if it's set at 50mph, and reasons given as to why it's 50mph and not a 60 or a 70, you might find that the majority obey the law. I'm grateful that they are prioritising getting children back to school, but it's important not to undervalue the significance of close family and friends in the upbringing of healthy, well adjusted children.

So the government is taking the opposite approach to it's previous relaxations from lockdown. It's planning to do so incredibly slowly. This won't have the intended consequence though as millions of people are likely refuse to comply with restrictions on their ability to socialise with their friends and family when infection rates are into the hundreds and deaths into the tens. I'm not waiting until the middle of sodding May to spend time with my mum or my wife's parents. They'll have all had two jabs long before then and my wife and I will have had my our first one as a minimum. My children are desperate to see their grandparents and vice versa. The government just don't seem to be able to make policy decision regarding covid that comes anywhere close to judging the science or the public mood correctly.

Larch is uncommon now. I work close to you and have only had only large larch job in recent years. As Andy says, would other species be considered? I have Hemlock available in Chard in April. Very nice quality indeed.

I had two Relays when we were in Scotland. A 14 plate ex demonstrator and then a 66 plate one I ordered new. Really nice vans, but it's worth ordering new. To carry a heavy load you need the uprated suspension. First Relay I had didn't have it, the second did. You could put two tonnes in the back of the second one and it sat completely level. Also, the 160bhp engine is worth the extra money. I once did 696 miles in it in one day. Towing and loaded for the entire journey, and very comfortable indeed.

Last year I was at Minor Injuries on account of having dropped something on my foot, and the number of enormous orderly type women in their 50s pushing trolleys around was incredible. The trolleys were full of medical supplies, but I couldn't help but feel that they were as much to help the staff members actually move around.

A mate of mine writes songs about sewing machines. He's a Singer songwriter, or sew it seams

Utterly miserable weather here today. 6-7 degrees, persistent rain and strong wind. By way of contrast, my brother in law in Sweden went for a walk yesterday on the largest lake in Western Europe (Vänern). Minus 18 and ice as far as the eye can see.

I agree. It's a monumental task, and I don't envy anyone for trying to take it on. However, it's possible to work for a unified outcome and still hold wrongdoers accountable for their actions. History will take a very dim view of Trump, and I do not think that he will run again in 2024. I believe this to be the case as I believe that he will be convicted in at least a few of the 30 odd cases that he has pending against him. As soon as the Republican base fall out of love with him, the Republican elite will disavow themselves of him and seek to bury him in the annals of history as a mistake. Regardless, whichever way you look at it, the American democracy is a seriously flawed and corrupt system. It's an exercise in money creating political influence, and more transparently so than in any developed nation. If politicians were prohibited from accepting funding from any lobby groups, the political landscape would look a lot different. Can we just agree that we'd all be happier if Bernie and his mittens were running the country? 🤣

America is divided on a level that I don't think that we can comprehend in the UK. The two sides are almost completely irreconcilable and the middle ground of swing voters is tiny. Trump has been roundly condemned by a large number of Republicans. Even the ones who support him now were largely scathing of him before 2016. Yes, the impeachment was doomed to failure before it was even presented in the Senate, but it was still justified. Just because an just action is futile doesn't make it any less just. The threshold of 67 senators is artificially high, and a majority of them voted to convict. I still (for the life of me) cannot understand why the average evangelical white voter supports him. He doesn't live by the beliefs that he espouses. He's three times married, clearly a million miles away from being a Christian and he has a long standing history of screwing over the little guy (as in people that work for him). He's quite successfully managed to cultivate a cult of personality around himself, which is all the more remarkable considering he's possibly the most obnoxious person ever to elected to high office. I use the term 'elected' loosely, given that he lost the popular vote on both the occasions the public were asked to vote for him. The Republicans have only won one popular vote of the last 8. An interesting factoid is that the 50 Republican senators represent 40 million fewer people than the 50 Democrat senators do. It is amusing that those that claim to have been disenfranchised are actually those that have proportionally the most power, from a democratic perspective.

I strongly disagree. Holding an amoral narcissist accountable for deplorable actions that lead to the storming of Congress and the death of a police officer (not to mention the serious injuries to dozens more) is not a waste of time. A significant number of Republicans put country before their own political survival and voted to impeach. Even McConnell held Trump to be accountable and only acquitted him based on the technicality that he's not currently in office. The state of mind of the more extreme elements of the GOP is frightening. They are a long, long way from the relatively moderate politics of the likes McCain, Bush, Romney etc. Marjorie Taylor Green is genuinely certifiable.

I take your point, but given that the risk of severe illness and death is highest amongst those who are oldest and most unwell, is it really justifiable to lock away the rest of us too? Is there not an ethical dilemma there also? Also, could it be argued that the ethical implications of targeted lockdowns are not as serious as the ethical implications of crippling our economy, bankrupting our government and knackering the educational and social development of our children? The argument of fairness goes both ways. Is it fair to seriously restrict the liberty of a person who is at very low risk of complications relating to covid? How is this better than a targeted approach?

I did say 'get back to some sort of normal'. I don't believe that we'll the highstreets recover at all. Lingering paranoia from months of lockdown combined with the ease of shopping online will see to that. Hospitality may recover to an extent, but it'll take years and years. I reckon that no country has gone down the route of targeted lockdowns partly due to the point you raise about the psychological and moral issues with locking down parts of the population. It creates a situation that is doubtlessly tricky to manage, from a government perspective, but one which if managed properly results in decent health outcomes and a much better economic future. I do fundamentally believe that you cannot treat the population as a homologous entity without incurring serious long term issues. And I'm not sure that many in the more vulnerable groups would want the young and healthy to be locked down for their benefit if indeed there was another way of doing things. Perhaps what is regarded as being fair and equitable isn't necessarily the best course of action. Politically popular perhaps, but economically and ultimately socially destuctive.

I'd make the argument that society as we knew it has been largely destroyed anyway. We've killed off physical shops, the hospitality sector, our children's social lives and by extension, their development. We've entrenched an attitude of government dependency, ruined what little work ethic we had before and left ourselves and our children indebted for decades to come. I really do think that our public health outcome would not have been any worse had we simply isolated and shielded our old and vulnerable. Yes it would have been crap for them, and it would have seemed unfair, but apart from the fact that others in society would have freedoms that they didn't have, how would a targeted lockdown be any different for them to what they have now? Lumping everyone in the same risk group doesn't make sense from a public health perspective, and from an economic standpoint, it's a disaster. I agree that the cost of covid is tragic (in terms of lives lost) but you have to ask the question - how many of those that died were already in declining health? How much longer would they have lived? I'm really trying not to appear callous about it, but I do fully expect to see a lower than average death rate for the next few years as the (slightly) premature deaths from covid balance out against the long term death rate. The ever spiralling limits on our personal liberties and the continued insistence from the government of using executive decree (rather than laws scrutinised by parliament) is deeply concerning. Once we're all vaccinated, we really do need to get back to some sort of normal.