Mullany

Hello. Hope everyone one is well and hanging in there. Has anyone done or been involved with the Veteran tree certification? If so, did you find it worthwhile from a personal and professional perspective? Its something Im thinking of doing partly out of interest but also to maintain my ISA cert and get enough CEUs to do the Master Arborist exam. Its also something to study towards if work drops off given whats going on. Any thoughts on it welcome. Regards Paul

Large areas of woodland are ran by big companies but a significant amount is owned by private individuals or families from a farming background. Most of it is monocultures of spruce or pine although this diversifys the further south you go. Quite a few people also grow birch commercially for firewood There are a few gems around where I live which are remnants of an old oak forest which used to extend north from Stockholm. Much of these are now nature reserves and are either left to their own devices or are managed to ensure the oak is dominant, usually accompanied by hazel and ash. Some of the oak forest is effectively lost in the vast conifer plantations and is only found when an area is surveyed or harvested. You also get fair bit of wet ground dominated by potentially and often quite large alders. I need to keep my eye out and see if any tenders come up for looking after or restoring some of the more interesting bits of woodland but quite often they are bunched in with much larger maintenance contract which tend to go to the big national companies. Its always a struggle with the silliness but life would be boring without it. Cheers Paul

Just caught up with the thread again. Its great thanks for putting it up. Id almost give up climbing to do this kind of work. Makes me want to get some woodland. Your writing is very succinct and accessible, have you thought of condensing this into an article or series of articles for a magazine or paper? You may even get paid! Cheers Paul

Interesting stuff. What cool project to be involved in. Paul

The two anchor points part is obviously going to be problematic given that many trees wont give that as an option (unless you count a nominal point further down the stem as a second anchor) but I think a solution could be engineered so that operating two ropes was as convenient as operating 1. Perhaps something like a double zigzag or ropewalker. Potentially this would allow us to use thinner ropes. It would be a similar scenario to running two ropes when you go rock climbing.

I fear that this shit will run down hill on to the individual contract climber from a liability point of view. As is the case now from many companies it will be implicit to a climber that they must not fully comply to best practice in the interests of productivity. However those same companies in the event of an accident will happily blame the climber for non compliance as will the insurance companies. The burden of responsibility, personal and public liability will fall on the shoulders of those least able to defend themselves. If I still worked in the UK I doubt very much my calender would remain full if I insisted to all the companies I contract for that I followed these new regulations. Carlos, most other countries I have worked in or met climbers from dont have an arb industry as developed as in the UK and the standards are either non existent or not enforced. The UK and Ireland are particularly strict about health and safety which is very apparent when you work somewhere else. The new regulations reflect this culture and two life lines being enforced as best practice was probably inevitable. It is however very disappointing that they have not applied this with any nuance. Perhaps this will come as it inevitably gets tested in court.

Im hoping the Mrs keeps getting promoted and I can become a kept man. Ill fill my days messing around in a barn full of motorcycles and old tractors drinking tea and Guinness.

Great read Steve. I can vouch for your website building. I get much more traffic and queries through it than my old one. Works great on tablets and phones as well. Money well spent! Cheers Paul treeco.se

Treeation Ill have a look but Im pretty useless at taking photos so Im not sure Ill find any.

Hi Steve. Ive been involved in a few staged reductions at 1st, 2nd and 3rd prunes. The aim was to mimic retrenchment and leave quite a stout but green tree. The ancient tree forum used have information about doing this so could be worth contacting or looking on their website. This pruning was spread over many years, with a pair done over 15 years (once every 5 years). Of the trees where I did the first prune many of them had obvious inner crowns to prune back to or had already started to retrench. The aim of the first prune was subordinate the leaders and encourage the growth of the inner crown. Over a period of time hopefully this inner crown will have matured enough and show enough vigour to then reduce back to. This would be repeated until the tree is at its final smaller crown structure. The interval of each prune was based on the trees response to the previous work. I suppose this could be 1 to any number of seasons depending on tree. It is worth noting that this retrenchment pruning will leave much larger wounds than your British Standard pruning but is arguably a preferable option to a fell depending on the context of the tree. Of the trees I have done, many of them were structurally compromised but still vigorous. The trees were not in a position where it would be safe or practical to let them fall to bits in their own time but their retention was still desirable. I cant comment on the success of this sort of work over an oaks timescale but the final prunes I did looked great and the trees are still doing well over 5 years later. I know some oaks that had this work done, finishing at least 10 years ago and I would be surprised if they did not have many more decades in them.

That place looks stunning, where abouts is it ? It's in Sweden mate. About an hour and half north of Stockholm. It is very pretty.

All good fun though, well at least if you have a defender to play with.?

Show us your winter working pics. I love this time of year.

That is a shame. Ive often thought that in the arb industry the balance of value between experience and having tickets is tipped toward the latter. Tickets are at best a starting point and by themselves a poor guarantee of competence, by which I mean knowledge/safety/ speed/knowing your limits. You cant teach expierience but you can structure it and combine it with tickets where necessary. In other industries with inherent risk such as mountain leadership or sailing you are expected to keep a log of your experience. This experience is complimented by mentorship and formal training/examination. I would love to see somthing like this applied to arb and seems to be similar to what the AA tried to develop. It could move the emphasis back to experience but be structured enough to maintain an industry standard and train out poor or unsafe practice. Of course any progress in safety will only come if companies and individuals are willing to accept that working in safe manner is somewhat more time consuming than how many currently operate. To elaborate on what I mean there, experienced climbers mentoring newer climbers takes time but of course is nesacary if the industry is to develop competent workers. Another example would be step cutting and snapping pieces off takes more time and skill than cutting and holding but is far safer. Job time and therefore prices would have to increase to reflect this safer manner. Cheers Another Paul

Just to follow up on this. An old colleague suggested I check out the genus Exochorda https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Exochorda_racemosa_fruits_02.jpg. I think its the best fit so far.