Unfortunately I didn’t snap any pics of skidding logs like I said I would. Got too busy and didn’t want the camera to get knocked around while setting chokers.
I have some pics from the past couple winters logging on our own timberland. First so you don’t get lost here is a pic of the fields and the woods on the home place seen on the left.

Shot this in the afternoon yesterday still a bit of snow in the shade not much though

This is the same spot seen above except the date taken was April 3, 2009 so you see it’s a pretty mild winter this year.

Most of the trees in our woods are Douglas (red) fir also some Ponderosa (yellow or bull) pine, and a few white fir, tamarack, cedar, and white pine. The red fir trees have been dying from bark beatles which infect the trees in the spring and kill the tree by fall, the bugs then overwinter in the dead tree. In order to reduce the number of trees we lose we try to get all the dead trees hauled out and to the lumber mill by spring. This is done when it is frozen up so the muddy ground (mud underneath snow most years) isn’t torn up.

Going to be hauling this year’s logs out the next couple days with a small trailer instead of a truck so we left the logs in multiple smaller log decks instead skidding them all out to one spot.

The trailer that will be used.

First the trees are cut down, can be rather tricky in thick growth to get it down in the right spot, no problem here though.

Then you throw a cable choker around it and get to work with a cat.

Once a few logs come in they get pushed around with the blade to make room for more. I have seen the pro loggers just come into the landing at full speed and drive sideways onto the pile and drop them right into place.
When the logs are a bit on the big side, it is all the 2T D4 can do to pull them.

For the really big logs you get a bigger cat.

However just using one of the bigger cats you don’t get as neat of a log deck.

Here is a load of logs coming out a few summers ago on our neighbors self loading truck.

Now if you are logging big scale there is a whole arsenal of logging equipment to look at. Just east of here there is a lot of logging done, declining the past 30 years but still the top industry in this county.

Next few pics will be from a mountain about 30 miles to the east marked with a green arrow.

Fire lookout on top, still in use every summer.

Typical view of north Idaho.

You can see how some of the land is logged in a pattern of clearcut and regrowth.

On some of the steep stuff instead of skidding logs with a cat or wheeled skidder they set up a line machine on top of a hill. It uses a cable and high powered winch setup to run a mechanism with chokers on it (cant think of the name right now) down the hill along the cable at high speeds, a couple guys (known as hookers) are down there and set the chokers around the logs, give the line machine operator a beep and he pulls the logs 500-1000ft elevation up the hill and gets them to the top in about a minute. Trucks then come in and are usually loaded with 33ft logs.

They usually keep going all winter until the ground gets sloppy in the spring and then have a go at in the summer again.

This spot actually wasnt that high of elevation, only about 4,000ft but there was a ton of snow there in 07-08.

There just a little education about logging, way more dangerous than farming... easy to get injured or killed so just a couple days a year is enough for me. Just about everyone who worked in the woods full time had some major injury at some time or another. One neighbor who farmed and then logged during the off season was killed while falling a tree that pulled a small one down with it onto him from behind. A friends dad cut his arm off when a chansaw slipped, my uncle was hit by a rolling log, hookers get hit by snags, cat operators thrown off, logging truck drivers killed when log loaders slipped and let log falls off. Also while pushing the logs up into a pile there is alot of tension on them and they can spring up over the blade and wipe the operator off, not as big of deal with modern equipment.

All that hassle so that the nearby potlatch mill in Lewiston can make more toilet paper than any other place in the country

"98j" wrote:

Better get some Green Paint in here; NIF should be back in soon from playing
Paul Bunyon & we wouldn't want him to go into defib because of too much
Red Paint.

Thats right, just make sure you keep a couple green and yellow pics in there to counteract the red ones .....your neighbors 2388 sure looked good though

Tad Wicks- nice videos, not many of the old allis chalmers crawlers farming around here anymore I only know of two - both HD6s I think A few still run as dozer cats though.

Bleedinred- we use the tordon on a small scale to really clobber a few patches, usually have a couple acres that legumes wont grow on because of it but it is easier to get the weeds under conrol in less years than with only curtail, banvel, or roundup.

That is rather unfortunate that you cant burn the grass fields in the fall there.

Cant remember if you said already but are you doing a two year or three year rotation there? Most here are winter wheat/spring crop but we do a strict winter wheat/spring cereal/legume rotation which helps reduce weeds and disease but doesnt make quite as much $ some years. What are you doing for fall tillage, chisel or plow?

Non-existant user wrote:

CR,is that one of Hoffmans Price Turnapulls?They had Price and we had CB Hay.

No this is the cat 3208 powered unit, Hoffman has 330 V8 Ford powered units here is a picture of Buzz in action.

The CB hays are better in the blackeyes and kidneys the Prices are much faster and more robust in the large and small limas. Now they are basically ran through the same company Mello Mfg in Patterson

Thanks CR.Its been years since I've seen Buzz or Marv.Been to their shop in Tracy a few times but now cant remember how to get to it.I went to high school with them when they lived in Denair.If you see them tell em I said hi.

[QUOTE=I would say right now that thistle control in the grass fields is a big ???

Don't know if it would work in your situation but I'm going to try milestone on thistles this year--- supposed to be death on them?

---

we will see---- have used a mix of banvel-24D LV ester & atrizene- which works so -so in corn but probably wouldn't help in your crops

[QUOTE=

white pine. The red fir trees have been dying from bark beatles which infect the trees in the spring and kill the tree by fall, the bugs then overwinter in the dead tree.


I have started to have this problem in my white pine- is there any chem you use to help??- I have used a mix of pounce & malithon- sprayed around & on bottom part of trees & it looked like it worked --but lost another this year- looks like better get it cut pretty soon- however when I cut them on saw mill- I don't find any bugs - just tunnels where they have been:confused:

Non-existant user wrote:

Thanks CR.Its been years since I've seen Buzz or Marv.Been to their shop in Tracy a few times but now cant remember how to get to it.I went to high school with them when they lived in Denair.If you see them tell em I said hi.

I have not seen Marv in quite a while he is now living in Arizona. I see Ron and Buzz every few years. I don't run the day to day business on the ranch, but if I happen to see them I will tell them you said hi.


Here is a cat disking up some morning glory that invaded the ground cover in an orchard that we started from seed.

NIF, they have a JD 1710 disk riper and pull it as deep as the Challenger will pull it in third gear, around four mph. Moldboard plow mostly collects dust in the shed, except last fall they rolled over some grass ground. In general the grass rotation is three years, rip it out, spring or winter wheat, peas, winter wheat, spring wheat then grass. Yes, nine cent peas don't make much but the winter wheat sure does well after them, if it rains, plus some free nitrogen. Your logging pictures are great. Is that the Snow Peak lookout you pictured?

Tanker, don't know of much that will kill them in bluegrass without taking it out, except a lot of foot work with backpack sprayers. Dad used to use atrazine and crop oil back in the midwest. That really worked well but that was thirty years ago.

Here's some bluegrass straw waiting to get hauled over to a ranch in Montanna. They were blending it with alfalfa to winter cows. Took me a few days to stack those up.

"tanker" wrote:

I have started to have this problem in my white pine- is there any chem you use to help??- I have used a mix of pounce & malithon- sprayed around & on bottom part of trees & it looked like it worked --but lost another this year- looks like better get it cut pretty soon- however when I cut them on saw mill- I don't find any bugs - just tunnels where they have been:confused:

Hmm, wasnt aware of there being as nasty of bugs for white pine, most around here get hit by blister rust. As far as I know there is not much you can do to kill them. With the bark beatles they will burrow into the whole tree so spraying the bottom wouldnt do much. What time of year were you sawing them? If the tree was infected one spring/summer and it wasnt until the following summer that you cut it then I would see why there wasnt any bugs but usally I can see them if the bark is peeled off in late fall or winter as the tree is dying.