Horse Logging in Western WA

I did a lot of riding in my youth. Years later, I considered horse skidding, back when we decided to log our property ourselves. The practice got a passing mention in one of my WSU sustainable forestry courses. I know someone who did this for bug-kill removal in Idaho's Sawtooths. But we didn't try it, in part because we didn't know who had horses and rigging for the job.

"King County turns to horses to move logs through delicate site" (Seattle Times 9/22/10) describes a county biologist's use of horses to move logs into sensitive creekbeds. She was rebuilding fish habitat, so heavy equipment would be counter-productive.

WSU's Forestry Extension presented a horse logging workshop several years ago, and organized a field day featuring horse logger Wes Gustufson. The process is slow. Skidding with horses (and dragging logs rather than grappling) still creates some impact. Road apples distribute the seeds of noxious and invasive weed species, unless horsemen are very careful with feed and grazing.

If you're really interested in learning about horse logging so you can use it on your place, contact Andy Perleberg at WSU -- or find Wes at his company, Wood'n Horse.

Rancher's Plan to Stop Pine Beetles

At the Cleantech Open I usually focus on the energy-related contestants. But this semifinalist's story in Planet Profit Report caught my eye today for another reason.

DenDroCo has a molecule that disables a beetle's sense of smell. Without smell, the beetle can't follow others to mass-attack a weak pine tree. Without mass attacks, the beetles can't kill trees.

The emotion Ray Prill expresses at the loss of his trees hits very close to home for us. He almost chokes up in his interview.

Here's a rancher who stepped out of his element, found a discarded discovery from the 1980s, helped get the researcher a grant, and is now in the limelight and writing a business plan. We wish him luck.

NRCS to inspect our 2010 forest thinning work this week

After 3 solid days of skidding, we're finally down to the last few logs to remove from the 4 acres in this year's plan.

We've worked every weekend lately to finish thinning and decking. A crew is coming in to prune trees, and another outfit will bring in a loader and trucks to take away the logs. There are probably about 60 tons of logs waiting to be loaded out.

All of that needs to happen before the rains come. And the rains are coming. It's starting to rain as I write this. When it rains for a few days, everything, especially roads, gets dangerously slick and stay that way until it snows. Then it's impassible.


Two of the acres we thinned this year are within view of the house site, and along the uphill side of a level road. That was fairly easy work, although we paid extra attention to the impact on our view.

The other two acres are on the north property line, on a very steep slope. This is a remote area where we're doing additional thinning to create a fire break along a ridgetop.

The extra logging, steep slope, and lack of road made this a very difficult piece of land to log. Several of the logs were 200-300 feet from the winch point. I had to pull about 300 lbs of cable up the slope to each log. It was very slow work -- but the world's best thigh workout.