Here we are going into the month of February and we're still doing clean-up from our harvest.  It's amazing how much has to be done after just 6 weeks of harvest.  During the latter part of December, we were cleaning and returning rented equipment.  We had 13 various size forklifts rented as well as 8 rented trucks.  In January we began to cut the cull trees from the fields which had been harvested for the last time this past year.  Up until this year, we have always piled and burned these trees in the field.  In an effort to be more environmentally conscious, we are working on equipment that will chip these trees in the field and blow those chips into a large dump wagon, which will in turn put the chips into a highway trailer for transport to the bio-mass boiler at Lyons, Oregon (about 20 miles away.)  If the equipment and this delivery system work out, we plan to continue this environmental program.

 

During the first part of each year we have teams of ladies that go into the fields that have been harvested and count the remaining trees.  The trees are counted by rows and that information is entered into the computer so we have an accurate count on the trees for estimating our upcoming harvest, as well as paying some of the work that is done by piece rate.  This tree inventory is very important and is used in a number of management decisions.  As the ladies go through the fields, they also collect slings that have been left behind by the slinging crew in their rush to keep ahead of the helicopters.  Once all the slings are in the yard we proceed to wash them and coil them for storage.  This past year we washed 8,383 sling ropes.  The washer we have is simply a round cylinder made of screen, into which the ropes are placed and are tumbled gently while our irrigation pump supplies large amounts of water sprayed into the sling ropes.  The washing process takes a total of 3-4 days.

 

Currently we are "tipping back" the Noble fir  which were not tagged for sale this past year, and we are topping some of the smaller trees in preparation for new growth which will occur in May and June.  "Tipping back" is a process where new growth is taken off the ends of the branches to maintain the desired shape of the tree, and so that it will "fill in" nicely.  Our crews have been busy hand planting trees back into field originally planted in 2008 and 2009, replacing those trees which died during the summer.  We normally plant back for two years in order to ensure that we have the maximum population in each of the new fields.  We are about half-completed with that task at this point.

We hope that your February is bringing with it much success for you and your family.  If your travels take you to the Pacific Northwest anytime soon, please contact us.  We would enjoy being your host on a tour of our family farming operation.