Hedge Monkey

Yup, good advice, I'm not going to get overly involved at this point. Whatever the outcome, researching this has been interesting, finding out more about forwarding and looking at various tools and options. I've been looking at log arches and atvs on YouTube but won't dive in with all my savings just yet 😅

I reckon its whatever I want to make of it. Could be a worthy side project, will have find out!

The owner is a friend and my main employer. The option is there for me to get a few loads of firewood out.... if I want to. I'd be paid an hourly rate, as per usual. It's taken a while to dawn on me that the whole problem stems back to the fact that the original owner fell behind with the thinnings. The ash is on a hillside, needed to come down and there's no space to fell cleanly. I think the best thing to do given the situation is log up anything that's safe and easy to pick out and not get over involved. There's 50 more acres of woodland to worry about, with good access and good timber to extract.

We're all on good terms and see each other regularly, so no worries there. If there's a way to bring in some revenue and discreetly tidy up the site at the same time then everyone's a winner. Might end up being something of a labour of love though.

There hadn't been any fall out, we're all locals, family or friends. I think the guy they got in may have just smashed through the work so as to get on with other jobs that bring in more revenue, as we're short on hands. I'll have better idea of the situation soon enough. (I'll try to get some pics posted in the next week or two)

I do all sorts of work on the owner's farm. Next week we're doing some demolition and I'll use the opportunity to make some enquiries. He's already said I can take his Land Cruiser and trailer up there to get logs (for him). Other family members have been given the go ahead to take firewood and I'll be involved in that too. There's plenty of other work to do around the farm and I don't need to get involved any further than that but if I want to take this on as a personal project, or get a third party in to help, I imagine he'd have my back. I'll have to see how things pan out, there might be more pressing jobs to get on with like extracting timber from other sites. As far as winching, there are a few trees that are still sitting on their stumps that I'd like to have a little go at, just for the experience. At the end of the day I might be needed elsewhere on the farm.

Thanks, I will take care. From what I can see 80% of the ash is already down. I've been felling since 2011 and felled bigger ash trees, but I've only recently received any formal training. As a precaution I've purchased a 2000kg winch and 4000kg strops. I'll endeavour to take someone along while working and I'll post some pics if I get the go ahead to start there.

The owner and the neighbours are all family and my friends. Having said that, there's enough free firewood to go around and as far as I'm aware that's all it's good for.

Exactly this, I won't be helping my cause one bit by stepping on toes. Looks like the operation was to take out infected ash. There will be some kind of plan in place for sure but lots of other woodland to manage and very few hands on deck.

These are medium sized trees, diameter at breast hight would be about 16", the trees themselves must be around 12m. I was only up there for a short while so can't say the exact size of the plantation, but it's 4 to 5 acres minimum, with 50 to 100 trees down, at a guess. Reading up on Ash dieback, apparently it renders the timber useless for anything but firewood. There's at least 40 acres of woodland planted 20 years ago that need managing. It's not really my place to worry about any of it but I'd like to be proactive and help reduce waste and help restore some order to the beautiful woods. I think constant chainsaw use and traffic is out of the question, due to the location.

Hey thanks, that's all really useful advice. I found out that this plantation was planted in the 80s, so, not one of the plantations I planted and this wasn't a thinning operation. Still, there's hundreds of tonnes of ash wood down and lots of decent sized limbs. I need to know what I'm talking about before I'm to come up with a suggestion. To my mind what's happened so far amounts to a desecration but it's probably better to come up with a mutually beneficial plan than say as much.

My employer has a saw mill, tractors, trailers, a Unimog. I'm just not sure if there's a working plan in place in terms of management. If there is no plan whatsoever then I'd like to devise one. It might be possible to get someone else with a small logging buisness to do some of the snedding and not use any of the farms resources or equipment, I'd be loading and making brash piles. Just trying to come up with a sensible proposition at the moment.

lol, thought it was the American name for Ash, good to know 🙂

As far as I know the Douglas Firs are coming out over a ni e year period. Not sure what the plan is for the other species.

Fist thinnings. I don't know how much experience in forestry the guy has, he's a trained tree surgeon and know locally as a bit of a nutter. He might have plans to bring some big machinery in at some point but that hardly seems necessary in a 4 acre patch, which is up a back road and right next to a farm house. The trees are all felled downhill towards the gateway, I have no idea how they plan to extract the timber, or what he hoped to achieve.