Logging Big Hardwood in Maine with Timberjack skidder

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's monday morning uh july 20th just getting to the wood lots about quarter of five already about 79 degrees outside supposed to get real hot today there's a heat advisory so see how long i make it if i can make it till 11 o'clock i'll be fine i'm not much for the heat so i don't push it too hard i'll just work till i get you know too hot and park it so we're gonna cut a little hardwood today the matlog market's pretty hot and uh so we're gonna run around in here and chase some hardwood logs we're back over at the littlefield farm where we was this past winter and there's a lot more left to cut here i have hardly put a dent in it still so that's what we're going to do today is cut some hardwood mat logs hopefully and some hardwood pulp markets real tight a lot of stuff's going on with the coronavirus and uh you name it everything's going on so we're kind of playing around whatever the markets are buying and it's week to week right now but i'm gonna fuel the skidder up and sharpen the saw and head in the woods hopefully before the sun comes up here give us a few hours before it gets out in the field oh let's get things fired up hey like my uh air conditioner [Music] hey it works a lot better than nothing especially when you're in the woods there's no breeze at least i can get in here and and cool off all right she ain't gonna need much time to warm up this morning it seems that it's already 80 out i've been running the 550 a lot lately a lot lighter i don't get as hot running it it's been a good saw even the hardwood i gotta run a file across it sharpen it up a little bit let's see first need the helmet oh uh-huh [Music] oh oh there's some nice ash in here it's not the easiest to get at because there's a bunch of undergrowth in here it's an old lot so there's pockets where it's really easy to get at and then there's other stuff [Music] it's all choked up i mean that's all regen from years ago you know we only cutting here with the farm tractor off and on a little bit these mat logs are 16 feet long any hardwood except puffle and basswood so and i actually just found i hadn't been cut i've been cutting the ash but uh [Music] i had to sell it for grade logs and it wasn't averaging out real good for a thousand and then i called another matlog company and they said they'd buy the ash for the matlog price which is a lot better um a lot better than what i was getting per thousand so we're gonna try a load this week i'll put a lot of ash in it and see how it does i'm guaranteed to set price right across the board and 16 footers they scale out a lot better than your short logs so just push this one over drag it up find a couple more in here i usually only grab about three of those [Music] [Music] now that hemlock is going to screw us up behind it [Music] um thought i had enough weight to break those hemlock branches off but it don't but there's always an alternative way i guess this dead thing laying here too that little piece kick back at any time [Music] um i'm already sweating humid out looking humid well i think we can pop the hands off it [Music] nope [Music] i want a pain in the spot right there [Music] so [Music] so so [Music] wow well we got it but by the book nothing's by the book cutting wood by hand especially when you're trying to get production out that's my own fault doing that just nice logs in it get some sixteen hi oh right there get another one out of here mm-hmm 3233 [Music] hmm ah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so so well i made it about five hours and the humidity is unbelievable this morning you can't even breathe uh it feels like you're just trapped so i'm not gonna push it um there's absolutely no breeze here either um so i'm not gonna there's no sense to get hurt or overdo it for a little wood um supposed to cool off tonight there's a front coming through so we'll hit it tomorrow morning again um got a good start though on these mat logs the mat logs are nice because you can get rid of what would be just big ugly pulpwood for you know a nice price and uh really really up the value of some of this stuff and as long as it's 16 feet and straight just flush they don't care about knots as long as they're trimmed off good and they'll take as many as they can get right now and so we get a little bit of uh soft maple and some ash in here that's gonna make this pile up and then just the tops hardwood pulp over there but uh anyways it's been a while since we had a video and uh just wanted to thank we have a lot of new subscribers and we appreciate everybody following us still hopefully everybody's staying healthy and safe with everything going on it's kind of crazy and obviously it's different whatever parts of the state or different parts of the country you're in but everybody's in the same boat i think i'm pretty fortunate i can still work in the woods and the markets aren't the best but at least at least there's some stuff open to keep us working um so anyways the skidder nothing's really changed since you guys saw it last this winter i'd like to get a coat of paint on it before fall um that's kind of my only thing i'd like to do with it other than that it's it's been running real great and i just serviced it the other day change all the fluids and stuff it's been uh real dry and the start of the spring here it was real dusty and things have actually gotten a little better we've gotten some rain now and the ground's got some moisture in it but it was it was very dry so it's just been a weird weird season so far [Music] so we're gonna head up i'm heading back to the house and if i get enough time i'll show you what we're growing this year we're just growing some potatoes this year the strawberries died over the winter unfortunately and then we lost what was left of spring to an early frost and we had that drought there i could have irrigated but there was just so many that had already died i didn't i didn't push it so uh we scaled back our haying too not hanging as much this year we we've only done maybe a thousand bales maybe maybe a little less and i probably got about uh 500 uh first crop left to do and that's going to do it until second crops ready so we're just focused this year about doing our own hay and uh sell a little bit to pay for doing it but we'll head up to the farm and see what's going on up there and try to give you a quick catch up with everything and uh we'll see in a few minutes yeah back up to the farm i drove down i actually forgot i built a uh horizontal beehive it's a little different than what everybody else uses around here but i saw it online and thought it was interesting we're giving it a whirl the bees are doing real good we got in the spring and uh it appears that maybe we had a swarm i didn't catch it a few weeks back and so the hive's kind of starting all over now but we opened it up a couple days ago and they got a couple frames of capped honey in there and a lot of brood and so they're doing good now and they should be all set i hope we gave them plenty more room so they don't get a tendency to swarm but uh yeah so the bees is new to me and it's kind of neat seeing them work we'll drive up real quick i'll show you the potatoes i'm being lazy today so i'm in the truck these also this is our squash and pumpkins we grew them on just dirt this year last year we did it on plastic if you remember seeing that and uh i thought i'd give it a try on dirt this year and see if there's any advantages disadvantages i've been cultivating with the tractor the at the far the far end of the field did a lot more weeds in it we actually got to do some weeding this week i just i guess the plow when i plowed it this spring i didn't get a good a good turn on it up here it worked a lot better and you can see the weed pressure is almost minimal but we got some pumpkins two rows of pumpkins a bunch of buttercup squash and butternut again and some delicata so i know it should be good we'll have plenty we're gonna save some save some cost on uh plastic and then we have these are our storage beets i don't know if you can see up through there at the other end is carrots and uh everything's doing well right there we just hand wet those the other day some friends of ours planted some dry beans they got a bunch of different variety of dry beans here so we had some extra room they put them in those are growing good then we have our potatoes i got two rows of uh burbank russets two rows of gold rush and then we got four rows of the new orleans reds and uh we actually just started digging the norlin reds yesterday and eating them we had some bug pressure but i found some spray that actually works good and it's not super toxic either i mean it's it's a proof organic use it's it's called spinosad it's it's a type of bacteria i guess and it really works well and it's got a good residual effect so it lasts a few days um i had tried some other stuff and it didn't touch them the potato beetle from what i've read has become pretty resistant to many many things on the market but this stuff seems to be working good and we had a heavy heavy heavy infestation and it took care of it within 48 hours so if anybody wants potatoes we're going to be selling potatoes we're not sure yet when we'll be selling them but we're thinking about starting to dig up these young ones because they're all about golf ball size to baseball size and perfect eating and then we'll keep a couple other rows and see if we can get some big big ones for storage as well but we're gonna have plenty plenty to sell and should be they should they should be good up here in the barn and i don't know if one of the chicken chickens is upset about something what is your deal they they got a loud mouth on them this is our calf we had we if you remember we had we bought two angus bread angus um back around december january there and one of them we had to get rid of she was just a horrible horrible attitude worse than a bull any bulls i've been around she would charge and and everything but uh this calf right here we had the vet come up i don't know if you can hear it on camera she's got really coarse breathing um she went through heavy-duty antibiotics and some steroids and never phased her a bit no fever eats fine gain and weight like crazy yvette thinks maybe she had a an infection when she was younger and i didn't catch it and it left some scar tissue in there and that's why it sounds it sounds worse than it is but she's healthy otherwise other than that that sound when she's breathing through her nose and then our two will be butchering this fall they're growing like crazy heifer there and then this steer right here all the cows are doing good but we're down two because we sold like i said we sold that other the other angus there in her calf i just didn't want anybody getting hurt so i just want to thank all the new subscribers and uh we apologize for the long delay it's been a few months for since the last video but with everything going on and stuff we just haven't had extra time today i thought it'd be a good day though to get the cameras back out and try to do some catching up we're almost to the thousand subscriber mark which is a big milestone on youtube i guess they say so if you like all this share it like click the subscribe button down the corner so until next time thank you for watching and we'll see on the next one

Channel: McCormick Family Farm

Views: 159,310

Keywords: logging, timberjack, skidder, woodcutter

Id: MWI4vloKfxM

Length: 26min 54sec (1614 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2020