Tough Choices as a Logger | Harvesting Low-Grade Wood in Nova Scotia
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- In my previous video, I discussed some of my frustrations with the local markets for forest products and the current state of Nova Scotia's forests. In this video I go a little deeper into explaining why logging a block of woodland is not always as straightforward as it seems - and the specific challenges we face here in NS in doing so!
*The Lanky Logger does not receive any form of sponsorship. Products listed are for informational purposes only.*
|Processor|
2001 FABTEK 153
KETO 150 head
|Feller Buncher|
c2004 TIMBERJACK 608s
|Log Dogs|
CKC MINIATURE AMERICAN SHEPHERDS (MAS)
Milly (BBF) & Porter (RTF)
--- Best dogs ever!
#logdogs
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Fellow Nova Scotian here: I support forestry, glad someone is showing the forestry industry!
Glad to share!
Im a mechanic at one of the largest sawmills in Nova Scotia. A lot of contractors in my area are downsizing their harvesting operations to a smaller scale like yourself. The forestry sector is on thin ice right now but I truly belive people like yourself are better off in the end rather than the large companies with millions in equipment debt. Thanks for sharing I’m looking forward to your new videos.
Thank you! It’s a sign of the times. But now we are seeing some smaller gear coming back. I think this will continue!
Hey. Happy to see that you have found a buyer for pulp but if it’s so difficult to sell the pulp your dealing with how about talking with others like yourself to try to set up your own pulp export. I’m sure there’s others like yourself in nova Scotia in the same boat maybe together you could all help yourselves possibly. I’m doing basically the same thing as you in Ontario have my own processor just bought myself a forwarder. The struggles are real here too, but it’s usually weather elements. There’s no problem with getting rid of pulp or material. All of my pulp goes to Quebec I know truck not cheap, but even shipping to Quebec from Nova Scotia gotta be cheaper than overseas
Keep up the good work hopefully you’re able to continue finding markets to move your material
Thanks. There is a study going on now for potentially opening another mill. But if it goes through it will be 4 years before it’s done. Fingers crossed.
Hey Troy. Im glad you found a buyer.
Thank you.
I ended up here after searching for Keto 150. Watched the whole thing - good video hits on market reality. Timber (pulp aka chip here in the UK) like that is in very high demand here in the UK - firewood market is very strong. Clean straight 4"-18" diameter processor roundwood - can't get enough of it. New Subscriber!
They have a vert accurate measurement system. They would be perfect for that kind of wood.
We lost our pulp mill in Liverpool a number of years ago. Burning wood to make electricity isn't that efficient; sadly. We do it in the old burners at the old Bowater site-but- Making heat...that's another story. We lobbied and finally got 1 small wood energy boiler set up in Bridgewater to heat the Community College and court house. They burn super efficiently- pretty much smokeless(mostly steam coming out the pipe), and the weekly delivery(it only holds 30-50 cubic meters of chips) displaces oil from god knows where keeps the money here in NS. And the icing on the cake is that the fuel is %100 from forestry improvement operations(thinning's, irregular shelter woods). ANYTHING that displaces coal and oil has got to be given an fair chance. Biomass is a bad word and it makes most people cringe. The folks doing whole tree harvests turning forests into muddy disasters creating fodder for bad press did the whole forestry industry a massive disservice and operations can/should never happen. We can't do things shit like that. We need a stable market for low quality wood to grow high value wood. We need to heat buildings all winter. We used to heat all our homes/business with wood before cheap easy oil/coal got us in that mess and maybe we can at lease continue to heat some in the future. Europe found out the hard way what happens when you rely on getting energy from mainly1 source(i.e. Russia) recently. Wood heating can contribute to a sustainable future here in NS while helping keep rural areas alive-even in a small way. Wind and solar will take us a long way but there will always be gaps. K from western NS.
Well said. I remember when Bowater closed its doors. And when I refer to biomass I don’t mean whole tree harvesting. I don’t ever want to see that come back in NS. It’s a term we use up here for or pellet mill. Low grade wood for biomass for the pellet mill. It’s a great avenue for our wood, just is a to small of a market. We need more like this.
Hopefully we can move closer to all this in the future. Because high grading in our forests is going on as we speak. Leaving the low grade stand because we have no markets and cutting the best. This is why our mills were brought here in the sixty’s. Because the old fellas took the best and left the rest.
Thanks for your input! I’m glad this video is opening up discussion like this. We need to educate the public.
@@thelankylogger spot on.
Much of the beetle kill here in Alberta and BC is turned into pellets along with thinning's etc im all for the, so much usable wood in the slash heaps its not funny. use it here its clean its green its totally renewable and makes a good market for poor quality wood.
@davebloggs Exactly! Why waste a good resource.
Thanks
@@thelankylogger A good friend of mine in the Uk saw this coming many years ago. the pulp wood dried up people just cleared the money wood and walked away leaving quite the mess.trees take a long time to grow so it needs long term planning not just get rich quick.
I have to say I greatly agree with some of the other comments about people down sizing there equipment here in Weymouth Nova Scotia there is so many people with harvesters that go in where people like my self work with chainsaw and try an steal your work because they can do it faster . Bigger isn’t always better NOVA SCOTIA NEEDS SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY!!
Yes. It was hard for me to hire a contractor. I wanted to do it all myself. But it was a case of losing what was down from Feona and not enough time to get it done myself. First time ever for me to hire a contractor. I be been talking about small scale forestry for a long time now. More people employed and less impact. Whether it be small machines or people on the ground doing it with saws. There has to be some changes in the way we are paid for our wood to do so. The mills are paying land owners and contractors on a production rate. The more you cut the more you make kind of thing. I would love to get up every morning and go to the woods and run a saw and be able to make a decent living.
It's a tough time for everyone minnesota logger you have to keep fixing old equiment and work 7days a week to maybe make it
Glad you found a market for your pulp. The really tough part is once they get you hooked on eating they have you for life. I'm not trying to be glib, just truthful. Good luck.
Hey! Do you not have a market for energy wood? Where you turn all the slash and the pulp(if its cheap enoigh in the area) into pellets. In Finland we have a growing market for energy wood and I think your woods would be quite good for such a market. Although ofc I dont know your wood quality in terms of energy per cubic meter of wood but im sure its not nothing. I suppose pellets are not too common there?
We do have a market for biomass, we have a pellet mill about half hour from here. But it is so full that there won’t be taking any wood for a few more months. We had a pulp mill here that was running taking all of our diet of low grade wood but was shut down by our government. Now every one has to send it to this pellet mill we have left running and they cannot handle the amounts of wood or saw mill chips that is being produced. So we had to look for other avenues for our wood. Pellet mills have been starting up all across here in Canada in the last 20 years or so. But we only have one in our province.
Thanks
@@thelankylogger shut down by the government?... What's that all about?
I seen some pct and thought that was great. Sucks about the windmills buying port and gonna ruin everything
Saw the rant, I have 50 acres of fir that is a bit immature but the site is prone to end throw, ants and red but…can’t get a contractor.
It’s tough. If the industry was in better shape we would have more contractors around. But they are slowly dropping off.
And now if there is a high percentage of pulp no one will cut it because when they do they are on a quota and getting nothing for it. There for the land owner is getting very little. It’s a mess.
I hunted by Codroy and found the forestry management very interesting. Lots of bad roads. Very small trees but some sites were doing super good. The tucks need burned lol there awful
Forestry is on life support all over NS, the end is in sight.
There will always some sort of forestry in NS. I’m am a firm believer, I can see small scale forestry come back and be profitable for everyone. It is already heading in this direction. We need people that can do smaller treatments with smaller gear that is easier to transport. I think this is coming.
@@thelankyloggerit’s going to come pretty quick I think. I only work on small private and there is a huge appetite for the smaller gear. I have guys working for me with small gear and more that have financing lined up and are just waiting on the NSCC equipment rebate to get up and running. There are a lot of folks with small volumes to be cut that just don’t support the larger gear who are just watching it all fall down.
@RyanDickie03 yes!! That’s what we need. Think of all the new stands coming. 25 to 30 year range. Some need attention especially if there is a high percentage of fir.
@@thelankylogger That's the type of stands we are looking at with these machines. The markets suck anyways so were focused on stand improvement and restoration work.
The work that interests me the most is figuring out how to harvest in stands that were cut and then not managed. My woodlot on the cloverdale is like that, cut in the early 80's and now at 40 years old is essentially worthless from a timber perspective.
I can do the work there to start getting it back to something better but there are a lot more landowners with similar stands that can't. We need to find a way to get that work done because these represent a huge area in the province that is essentially out of production and mostly worthless from a wildlife/biodiversity perspective too.
@@thelankylogger Exactly the same here (UK). I have smaller machines (TJ 1070 and 810), tractor winch etc. Massive machines trash the ground and bend the tress in down the racks (rows / drifts) with the weight. So much so that the Forestry Commission are bringing harvester and forwarder weight limits in. Suits me who's always run small.
I have no idea why here in canada we ship wood pellets all the way to the Daxx site in the UK for power generation, the energy it takes to get it there in rail and shipping is crazy, why dont we have pellet fired power plants and use it here, it creates a market for the worst graded of wood, and saves crazy amounts on shipping etc. BC and here in Alberta ship millions of tones of pellets to the UK , we can uses it here its basically carbon neutral. but here is the kicker. the Canadian government and the UK government have large financial interests in doing it the current way through carbon offsets for massive companies to make millions for their billionaire owners, and there is the problem. if we use it here they dont make their millions. so now tell me what the problem is.
It is the same way here. Pellets trucked from the mill, stored in silos, then loaded on ships in bulk to the UK. Yes very frustrating. I guess I will never understand the political side of things, and that’s the way they want it.
Thanks for commenting!
@@thelankylogger sadly it has everything to do with a hand full of people making a vast amount of money at the expense of everyone else.
It's called Government Intervention when govt is involved it all goes to hell
@@BrianSchroeder-pr9pt You are right there, they always do what gains votes and for the remaining 4 years do nothing at all. if it is considered environmentally green to use bio mass to generate power on the other side of the world. why cant we do that here. can you imagine how much diesel it takes to transport the pellets across Canada and the train ride the other end and all the bunker fuel it uses to cross the Atlantic. we could reduce the fuel costs and create a great market for pellets and poor grade wood here, but way to many buddy buddy handshakes going on to ever allow that to happen.
I can verify this as I'm in the UK and not far from Drax - former Coal Fired Power Station, now converted. Soon to be another one too. UK Gov brought in the Renewable Heat Incentive and the demand for low grade timber went through the roof. I'm in a 1000 tonne (tiny by your standards I should imagine) douglas fir thinning atm and I could sell the firewood / chipwood 100 times over. Price and demand are strong!
What do mean when you say low grade wood? Softwood? Thanks
Low grade softwood is only good for a pulp product or biomass ext. It is either dead wood, rotten butt stick, or wood that is to small or crooked to saw anything out of.
Hey Troy thank you for your content.I've learned so much about the forest industry here in NS.Keep your chin up,I look forward to more videos 😊
Oh ok, thank you.
My goal is to educate people about this issue. In order to do good forestry practice and make our forests healthy we need this market. When people see loads of logs and studwood on trucks going down the road, some have no idea of the process of how it got there, so my goal is to educate some on that process.
Thanks again.
I cut on the weekends by hand and all my wood goes to port Hawkesbury paper. I throw everything in one pile
New subscriber here
Thank you!