Here is an in-depth detailed description of How thinning timber works from a Faller's perspective and where the government, Timber companies, and Foresters and log buyers fail at the job.
My dad's a forrester so I grew up with a paint can strapped to my back cruising and marking timber all over southern Mississippi and Louisiana. I hated is back then (especially in the summer) but I'm grateful for it now. Taught me how to work hard..
Taught you I bet to love the forest and to use it as a retreat I bet as well. From my upbringing in logging camps in California, I've definitely been doomed since birth to end up in the woods for a living.
nearly 30 years I the timber industry out here in Northern Appalachia. Appreciate the info. Good stuff. All the new(er) mapping on earth can't beat a good Ole topo map.
I came here from your short and I gotta say I love your passion for your work and I love your perspective on people needing to look out for each other so everyonr gets what they want and nobody gets screwed. Please do more educational videos loke this, I would love to put this on while I work! You definitely have a new subscriber from me :)
Thank you very much for taking the time to say something. My passion really is for activism more than posting silly videos, but obviously silly videos get much more attention than long boring explanations about guns or decency or forest management.
Thanks for explaining this process. My dad was a forester for a couple large timber companies in Oregon and Washington starting in the late 60's until the mid 80's. Brings back good memories of him for me. 😁
@@timberfallingcouple you didn't sound uneducated and your presentation sounded well thought out. He passed away in 2007 but if he watched this video he probably would've agreed with most everything you said.
Excellent and educational. I wish everyone involved in the process sees this. The government employees won't understand or care but at least you got your ideas and concerns out there.
Timber thinning from a 'working practice' point of view (what a worker has to do to maintain output, whilst managing the risks with smaller timber snagging, doing strange stuff, lots of storm affected growth etc), it's another type of falling situation, which it different. It requires a very intentional mindset and approach. Mitch Zenobi working in a dense timber thinning job did a good demonstration of laying out that smaller timber on to sloping ground. It's a different situation than working in hundred year old timber etc, the smaller timber where it ends up tangled and dense a lot 'up top', and one starts to run out of space 'on the floor' as one starts to drop timber piece by piece. It's the sort of work that experienced fallers like Buck'in really do well too (there's no rushing it, and with small timber like Mitch had to deal with, there's not a lot of rushing that). Bjarne spends a lot of his time paying his attention to housekeeping on his dangerous steep hill tops and slopes, however Mitch's explanation underlined to me why housekeeping and tree swinging matters in smaller timber too. So as to me able to keep one's work area disciplined and organized as one progresses. Mitch had intended to explain his approach to swinging tree timber along a slope, but what he really underlined was a challenge to keep a place tidy, when working on thinning work detail.
i care about yall! and i appreciate the work on this video. the boots on the ground perspective is almost always the more informed one. i hope many uniformed folks are able to view this 🤞🏿
The way you describe your profession and a very specific process of it gets my D hard. I love talking shop with my peers and unfortunately not many know how to do it properly, this is a shining example of how to do it properly. I feel like the more people that lack this ability further deteriorates every profession, if you can’t abstract what you do and the best way to do it, how the F can you do better or make your chosen field any better? I don’t work in your field or even near it, but I do live in the Montana backcountry and they are always thinning and logging around my house and further up where I trap wolves. This is super interesting to me as I have always wondered what the rhyme and reason was when I’m rolling around my forests. SUBSCRIBED.
Please make a video explaining the map and some common things found on the legend. I shovel log and get maps for a job all the time it'd be nice to have a better understanding of what I'm looking at when I get one
Thanks for coming out and thanks for making a comment. These videos, and the videos about shooting and activism are really my passion. So I doubly appreciate the support for the things I care about.
@@timberfallingcouplePhil N Sadie, your thoughts and passions parallel MANY of the fine folks watching INTENTLY what you folks do on your channel, including ME! Thank you! 🙏👍🫡
Cause the fallers is the only one with skin in the game, literally. No one else is going to bleed for their job and nobody else is going without a paycheck either.
Can you make a video explaining who pays who. Now it seems like a forester is buying a project from the government and then hires you and he sells the logs ie. Pays for the project. But that sounds odd. Good video, I learned alot
I got a question for you as spi aka sierra Pacific growing to Oregon is the tree length seems harder i cutting in north cal for 30 years and they own the land and know they'll own the west 3;2 million acres its
I don't know man. The idea of a 18 dollar an hour guy doing a job instead of having the 50 dollar an hour guy do it does sound promising. But there's got to be supervision and accountability
They are a great company to work for. They've paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of my belongings. They pay square, their foresters are no bs, and their clear cut and salvage programs are absolutely perfect for maximum use. They got it together. I've also worked in one of their mills as a millwright and they were great to work for on that end too. I ended up getting tramped because I was too young and will, but that was no fault of theirs.
There are many reasons why CCing is no longer done broadly on federal lands out west anymore (it's still done on private and perhaps state land, though). Clearcutting is less forgiving ecologically out west than it is in the east. Western forests have longer lived species (doug-fir up to 800 years, while white oak in the east for example only lives to 350 yrs) and larger size potential...which means....old growth conditions take far more longer to develop out West they do in the east,...and there's all sorts of ecological things going on in old growth conditions (that aren't going on in early successional conditions) which is why clearcuting green stands on Fed lands out west is not done anymore. Of course, when it burns at high severity they'll cut it all....but the whole point of NOT clearcutting in the Western fire regimes is to make them fire resilient by thinning from below so that they'll have structure that resists crown fire. The large scale, frequent, low severity fire regimes natural present out west means that when you clearcut the original virgin forest out there, you either need to keep growing it and clearcutting it every 80 years, or thin it like the USFS does to develop the old growth, naturally fire resilient structure. Since plenty of private and state lands clearcut out West, the USFS serves as the land base out there that resembles the historical conditions. In the East, the relatively consistent and high amount of rainfall throughout the year prevents large catastrophic/stand replacing fire to be an issue.....plus most hardwoods sprout back, so there is a sense of forgiveness for clearcutting in the east. With that said, regenerating oak species on the wetter sites in the east requires more than just clearcutting...it requires the full range of silvicultural treatments many times (including Rx fire). Managing a forest for timber production on a regulated basis via clearcutting is easy and sustainable from a wood volume perspective, but there are many times ecological/species composition impacts from doing ONLY clearcutting even in the east.....which is why white oak is declining in the east, due to lack of enough fire and frequent disturbances.
@@shelteredshaman5992 Great information, thank you! That makes good sense. I mainly just see it with southern yellow pines down in Georgia, but they grow about like weeds and I'm almost certain it's all private.
@@767drag Yep, the pines grow like weeds there....merchantible size by 25 years. As youve probably heard tho, longleaf pine forest type restoration is a big thing on the coastal plain. Similar to out west, the USFS lands serve as a land base there for that restoration.
We do also many many clearcuts in the northwest, this video is specifically about thinning because those are where I have the most problems with federal agencies. The clearcuts are usually so cut and dry they require little explanation. Cut them down, stay in the property lines. Done.
About government employees. I wouldn't confuse agenda for just plain old fashioned unadulterated incompetence. Also you know few own up to their own mistakes. People do suck sometimes. Life. Would it still be interesting if they didn't? 😂😮
True enough. But I've been through this enough times it isn't cute anymore. Incompetence is not cute or fun or funny or interesting. It is a failure. And if the failure goes unanswered, then someone else foots the bill. Me.
Humans in general don't own up to their mistakes, not just govt workers. With that said tho, yes, the USFS is not immune from the accountability issues that all govt agencies have...but, I would rather the federal lands stay in public hands then handed over to private where short-term, narrow objectives can easily dominate. I am biased, being a forester with the USFS myself, of course, but nevertheless I will take this opportunity to say that there ARE many foresters in the govt that do care and give it 100% everyday. I myself am one. Everyday I am aware that public money is funding my work, and everyday I strive to make the timber program on my district more functional. The bureaucratic blob that is the USDA of course has its downsides as with all govt, but fundamentally, what other option do we have? I'm open to hearing and discussing other options. This youtube channel is awesome, because it's young blood picking up the reigns in the industry and doing a phenomenal job in communicating the industry out the world. Now, if only we can get the USFS to communicate so well!
@@timberfallingcouple As a forester with the USFS, I admit there needs to be more actual listening and paying attention to the facts on the ground. It is easy for a govt worker to put in minimal effort for a paycheck when their supervisors don't even know wtf how timber sales work (many district rangers are recreation majors these days!). It's young blood like you willing to do the vital work you do, and speaking out about it, that will bring it in to more attention with the feds. The pendulum swings, and it's my belief that we have reached the furthest swing to the enviro side and that now with a new generation we will swing back more toward production (having as an agency structurally internalized the environmental lessons of the 20th century). Economic times are hard, and i believe the younger leaders higher up the food chain in the USFS know this, and that they understand the industry can't afford to operate as it has been with the Feds. Thanks for the awesome work y'all do here and in the field!!
The biggest gripe I have about the current attitude is that the entire forest of recreation and ecological management can pay for itself if people along the process are not lazy and do not let personal ideology violate contracts in secrecy. That is, I think, where the greater part of the issue lies. Thanks for speaking to this subj3ct and thanks for trying to make a difference for the better. I hope it sees you in a place where you can affect better policy outcomes in the future.
My dad's a forrester so I grew up with a paint can strapped to my back cruising and marking timber all over southern Mississippi and Louisiana. I hated is back then (especially in the summer) but I'm grateful for it now. Taught me how to work hard..
Taught you I bet to love the forest and to use it as a retreat I bet as well. From my upbringing in logging camps in California, I've definitely been doomed since birth to end up in the woods for a living.
@@timberfallingcouple Yea, except I became a geologist so the rocks in the desert became my retreat.
Loading block, calipers, deburring tool...I like your style and philosophy. Good info on thinning.
nearly 30 years I the timber industry out here in Northern Appalachia. Appreciate the info. Good stuff. All the new(er) mapping on earth can't beat a good Ole topo map.
This is one of the realest talks I've heard in a loooooong time...
Hey thanks for coming out and thanks for saying that. I try very hard at this and fail more than not.
I came here from your short and I gotta say I love your passion for your work and I love your perspective on people needing to look out for each other so everyonr gets what they want and nobody gets screwed.
Please do more educational videos loke this, I would love to put this on while I work!
You definitely have a new subscriber from me :)
Thank you very much for taking the time to say something. My passion really is for activism more than posting silly videos, but obviously silly videos get much more attention than long boring explanations about guns or decency or forest management.
Thanks for explaining this process. My dad was a forester for a couple large timber companies in Oregon and Washington starting in the late 60's until the mid 80's. Brings back good memories of him for me. 😁
That's really cool. I hope he isn't cussing my name for being such an uneducated lout on the matter
@@timberfallingcouple you didn't sound uneducated and your presentation sounded well thought out. He passed away in 2007 but if he watched this video he probably would've agreed with most everything you said.
Excellent and educational. I wish everyone involved in the process sees this. The government employees won't understand or care but at least you got your ideas and concerns out there.
I hope some people along the line get to see it and can rethink their process. That's for darn sure!!
Timber thinning from a 'working practice' point of view (what a worker has to do to maintain output, whilst managing the risks with smaller timber snagging, doing strange stuff, lots of storm affected growth etc), it's another type of falling situation, which it different. It requires a very intentional mindset and approach.
Mitch Zenobi working in a dense timber thinning job did a good demonstration of laying out that smaller timber on to sloping ground. It's a different situation than working in hundred year old timber etc, the smaller timber where it ends up tangled and dense a lot 'up top', and one starts to run out of space 'on the floor' as one starts to drop timber piece by piece. It's the sort of work that experienced fallers like Buck'in really do well too (there's no rushing it, and with small timber like Mitch had to deal with, there's not a lot of rushing that). Bjarne spends a lot of his time paying his attention to housekeeping on his dangerous steep hill tops and slopes, however Mitch's explanation underlined to me why housekeeping and tree swinging matters in smaller timber too. So as to me able to keep one's work area disciplined and organized as one progresses.
Mitch had intended to explain his approach to swinging tree timber along a slope, but what he really underlined was a challenge to keep a place tidy, when working on thinning work detail.
Wow, this was super educational. I hope things improve for you and other workers
i care about yall! and i appreciate the work on this video. the boots on the ground perspective is almost always the more informed one.
i hope many uniformed folks are able to view this 🤞🏿
Dude. Never a sour note from you. I really appreciate the support.
I had no idea about any of this before the video but you did an amazing job explaining this video was very informative great work!
The way you describe your profession and a very specific process of it gets my D hard. I love talking shop with my peers and unfortunately not many know how to do it properly, this is a shining example of how to do it properly. I feel like the more people that lack this ability further deteriorates every profession, if you can’t abstract what you do and the best way to do it, how the F can you do better or make your chosen field any better?
I don’t work in your field or even near it, but I do live in the Montana backcountry and they are always thinning and logging around my house and further up where I trap wolves. This is super interesting to me as I have always wondered what the rhyme and reason was when I’m rolling around my forests.
SUBSCRIBED.
Jesus christ, you hit the nail square on the head with your last point. I guess a lack of genuine give-a-shit is just ubiquitous across industries.
Please make a video explaining the map and some common things found on the legend. I shovel log and get maps for a job all the time it'd be nice to have a better understanding of what I'm looking at when I get one
Will do!! I'll try to see if I can do it with screen record. Might turn out kinda okay. If not I'll use an old printed map and a pencil
Thank you
Thanks for coming out and thanks for making a comment.
These videos, and the videos about shooting and activism are really my passion. So I doubly appreciate the support for the things I care about.
@@timberfallingcouplePhil N Sadie, your thoughts and passions parallel MANY of the fine folks watching INTENTLY what you folks do on your channel, including ME! Thank you! 🙏👍🫡
My ol lady is a Forester and allot of ger family are logger's. Thanksgiving is fun
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Cause the fallers is the only one with skin in the game, literally. No one else is going to bleed for their job and nobody else is going without a paycheck either.
That is so true. Seems like the faller is always the one who gets his stick in a vise.
Can you make a video explaining who pays who. Now it seems like a forester is buying a project from the government and then hires you and he sells the logs ie. Pays for the project. But that sounds odd. Good video, I learned alot
I can do that, because it is complicated, and it varies. I'll get on that. Expect to see it in the next couple of weeks
I got a question for you as spi aka sierra Pacific growing to Oregon is the tree length seems harder i cutting in north cal for 30 years and they own the land and know they'll own the west 3;2 million acres its
Rephrase this question for me please.
Why pay a painter if you’re having to do the painters work, or check the painters work?
I don't know man. The idea of a 18 dollar an hour guy doing a job instead of having the 50 dollar an hour guy do it does sound promising. But there's got to be supervision and accountability
My property borders 100,000s of acres of Sierra Pacific land. What is your opinion of them?
They are a great company to work for. They've paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of my belongings.
They pay square, their foresters are no bs, and their clear cut and salvage programs are absolutely perfect for maximum use. They got it together.
I've also worked in one of their mills as a millwright and they were great to work for on that end too. I ended up getting tramped because I was too young and will, but that was no fault of theirs.
No clear cutting or is that just a southern thing?
There are many reasons why CCing is no longer done broadly on federal lands out west anymore (it's still done on private and perhaps state land, though). Clearcutting is less forgiving ecologically out west than it is in the east. Western forests have longer lived species (doug-fir up to 800 years, while white oak in the east for example only lives to 350 yrs) and larger size potential...which means....old growth conditions take far more longer to develop out West they do in the east,...and there's all sorts of ecological things going on in old growth conditions (that aren't going on in early successional conditions) which is why clearcuting green stands on Fed lands out west is not done anymore. Of course, when it burns at high severity they'll cut it all....but the whole point of NOT clearcutting in the Western fire regimes is to make them fire resilient by thinning from below so that they'll have structure that resists crown fire. The large scale, frequent, low severity fire regimes natural present out west means that when you clearcut the original virgin forest out there, you either need to keep growing it and clearcutting it every 80 years, or thin it like the USFS does to develop the old growth, naturally fire resilient structure. Since plenty of private and state lands clearcut out West, the USFS serves as the land base out there that resembles the historical conditions. In the East, the relatively consistent and high amount of rainfall throughout the year prevents large catastrophic/stand replacing fire to be an issue.....plus most hardwoods sprout back, so there is a sense of forgiveness for clearcutting in the east. With that said, regenerating oak species on the wetter sites in the east requires more than just clearcutting...it requires the full range of silvicultural treatments many times (including Rx fire). Managing a forest for timber production on a regulated basis via clearcutting is easy and sustainable from a wood volume perspective, but there are many times ecological/species composition impacts from doing ONLY clearcutting even in the east.....which is why white oak is declining in the east, due to lack of enough fire and frequent disturbances.
@@shelteredshaman5992 Great information, thank you! That makes good sense. I mainly just see it with southern yellow pines down in Georgia, but they grow about like weeds and I'm almost certain it's all private.
@@767drag Yep, the pines grow like weeds there....merchantible size by 25 years. As youve probably heard tho, longleaf pine forest type restoration is a big thing on the coastal plain. Similar to out west, the USFS lands serve as a land base there for that restoration.
We do also many many clearcuts in the northwest, this video is specifically about thinning because those are where I have the most problems with federal agencies. The clearcuts are usually so cut and dry they require little explanation. Cut them down, stay in the property lines. Done.
About government employees. I wouldn't confuse agenda for just plain old fashioned unadulterated incompetence. Also you know few own up to their own mistakes. People do suck sometimes. Life. Would it still be interesting if they didn't? 😂😮
True enough. But I've been through this enough times it isn't cute anymore. Incompetence is not cute or fun or funny or interesting. It is a failure. And if the failure goes unanswered, then someone else foots the bill. Me.
Humans in general don't own up to their mistakes, not just govt workers. With that said tho, yes, the USFS is not immune from the accountability issues that all govt agencies have...but, I would rather the federal lands stay in public hands then handed over to private where short-term, narrow objectives can easily dominate. I am biased, being a forester with the USFS myself, of course, but nevertheless I will take this opportunity to say that there ARE many foresters in the govt that do care and give it 100% everyday. I myself am one. Everyday I am aware that public money is funding my work, and everyday I strive to make the timber program on my district more functional. The bureaucratic blob that is the USDA of course has its downsides as with all govt, but fundamentally, what other option do we have? I'm open to hearing and discussing other options. This youtube channel is awesome, because it's young blood picking up the reigns in the industry and doing a phenomenal job in communicating the industry out the world. Now, if only we can get the USFS to communicate so well!
@@timberfallingcouple As a forester with the USFS, I admit there needs to be more actual listening and paying attention to the facts on the ground. It is easy for a govt worker to put in minimal effort for a paycheck when their supervisors don't even know wtf how timber sales work (many district rangers are recreation majors these days!). It's young blood like you willing to do the vital work you do, and speaking out about it, that will bring it in to more attention with the feds. The pendulum swings, and it's my belief that we have reached the furthest swing to the enviro side and that now with a new generation we will swing back more toward production (having as an agency structurally internalized the environmental lessons of the 20th century). Economic times are hard, and i believe the younger leaders higher up the food chain in the USFS know this, and that they understand the industry can't afford to operate as it has been with the Feds. Thanks for the awesome work y'all do here and in the field!!
The biggest gripe I have about the current attitude is that the entire forest of recreation and ecological management can pay for itself if people along the process are not lazy and do not let personal ideology violate contracts in secrecy. That is, I think, where the greater part of the issue lies.
Thanks for speaking to this subj3ct and thanks for trying to make a difference for the better. I hope it sees you in a place where you can affect better policy outcomes in the future.