It is so great to hear how much thought goes into firewood from other countries. Here we bring home what the sawmill wont take….usually the half rotten junk (Old mountain pine beetle killed pine) and try to burn that in our stoves. Very little planning or thought goes into our firewood pile in northern British Columbia!

Sorry it has taken so long to reply. If there is something I am not aware of it.

New Zealand has a system….I don’t know much about it but they have a market price that fluctuates etc.

Since the mid 1990s we have been contending with a large mountain pine beetle outbreak. The control and salvage effort meant huge areas of forest were clear cut. Very common to have openings that were (are still) thousands of hectares. Most of this ground wasn’t challenging; “pine flat” was the common descriptor. This meant a shift away from…[Read more]

I guess everything is relative….harvesters are still pretty new where I am atno matter what shape they come in. And it is interesting to see old systems coming back. For a long time we tried to make hand fallers, self loaders, clambunks (to name a few) disappear. Now all are being talked about as “needed” to achieve our timber supply the…[Read more]

One of the factors is amortization of capital….short seasons (In northern climates) means narrow windows to get the next crop in the ground and therefore less ability to amortize a major investment. In natural forests in western Canada there is also a lot of variability a machine has to contend with. Of course it depends if you are planting…[Read more]

A related question I have is why did the feller bunchers “disappear” in Europe? For us here in North America (western Canada) they are a very useful tool in the tool box.