Was it worth it?

well it's high summer now and I still never made a video about the forestry and we've just been finishing up fixing up most of the forest paddocks the fencing that was smashed up during operation so I thought we'd do a build throwback to the winter when we were cutting and what was happening in that process and some of the mess that it made on the farm and what I think about that now so this is a machine that does the damage as it was very impressive machines but highly destructive in terms of massive compaction and the rate at which they can just take down trees I mean this thing has to be cutting down the big tree every 40 seconds to be making money here in Sweden if it goes to like 60 seconds a treat and they're losing money and where the ground is all frozen up it's okay now they've trashed my strawberry patch which happens you know I haven't bought in the logging truck yet and that will be doing much more damage as it brings up super heavy loads of timber but should be a couple of days to go and then there won't be the skyline anymore so I've been asked to move a little bit of the corner fencing here just to make it easier to get through you can see it's very wide tracked vehicle monster pulling timber out it's gonna be too wide it's making a bit of a mess but the ground is falling up okay but I think taking the logs out is gonna really [Music] so here on the neighbors land and stars I'll patch it this is what it looks like when they come through I'm out of breath because of the deep snow in the forest the ground seems to be holding up okay which is reassuring but it is looking like warm weather for the next day so it's hard to tell they're gonna be working through confined spaces when they get up to our land over here and they've assured us that they won't totally trash the fence but well let's see what happens it's gonna look pretty bare after this is gone but the new forest is coming up here on the neighbours land staying off that it's gonna need some tightening up afterwards oh it's gonna be very different watching the ecology at this point in if we just hop over the fence here so it's where the pigs have been digging it up all year and a lot of light that's gonna come onto the ground now you can see they're resting for the weekend so there's the Machine over here by the eggman bill but I expect to see a flurry of RasPi and forbs and grasses and then hazel and willows and poplar and birch and eventually cetera quite a lot of fallen trees on the other side of the electricity line that's kept open there but they reckon we can get full price for that timber timber shouldn't lie too long because you get beetles that are boring underneath the bark and damage the wood quality but also breed and then infest other parts of the forest so we just have to see now I think it'll take a few days to film them to get through and clear and then we'll come up and see what it looks like up here but it's it's gonna be quite drastically different I think so this is down at the business end and you can see there's a chainsaw blade there and that is kicking out these grabbers are holding the tree it's cutting it tilting it to get a direction of fall and then it's cool computerized and it spits through a log taking off all the side branches and cutting it into exact lengths and that is all recorded on an on-board computer so there's live data streaming of just how much material is being put through in taking place but as you can see there's a very different landscape around here now and it's making quite a bit of a mess in there and it's a few days now of bringing the material down you can see up on the hill the wagon this job time up here at the turning circle that's the view it's gonna be very different very different amount of light coming on to the ground there now and so it's gonna be interesting to see what grows up this year there's a lot of fencing to repair because of the tree work but all that's been left as a few of the taller birch you can see up there pretty drastic so the tree house is on the edge of a clearing now they have cut a lot of trees but they've left the Sun so that we can build another house one day let's go see the tree house so where I put the tree house and this is the view the machine is Stirling the long job of picking up the wood but you won't say the machine is taking the trees mm-hmm well they have made quite a mess they've trashed a lot of the fencing we're gonna have to speak with him about it because they're responsible to fix any of their the damage they make but they they've taken out a huge amount of our fencing that was not in the contract well this is what they've done to our field and they've hardly taken any of the timber out yet there's been quite a lot of double lorry loads leaving as you can see up on the hill it's still all there but they have made a horrible mess they're in their contract they have to fix this but it's Wow what's a pretty catastrophic this is very nice we've been building over the years that's a will cover back nicely it's I want to go up and see what's happened to my forest fencing see how much damage is up there this was a metre deep hole now one thing they made me do is tape down the corner of the pig paddock here which seems a little bit stupid they crushed it now but they're not even using it as a pathway this is our neighbours land so this is the old backline of the forest and the fence is in remarkably good condition considering you can see some of the wires here are fine but it's they've trashed the wire but not the post generally is a couple of smash posts and a couple of corner assemblies that have been damaged but it's actually not as bad as it seems here for example it's fine and because we're not gonna have pigs in here for some years now as this recovers I might be I will analyse it once they've cleared all the wood out but it may be that I just restring and there's a two or three line fence if I can I'll just replace it with what's there and just have to put a bunch of new insulators on but essentially I can see a bunch of smashed insulators but if I can get the original wiring back then I may as well they've left a few sad lonely birches the quite a drastic view you can see the tree house over here it's gonna be quite some getting used to Wow six o'clock in the morning and they've started work moving wood but we still got no power which means no one has got any power and family but they were here late last night but they went again so I guess it might be a bigger problem than they could deal with but we need some power so the electric just came back on is now 8:30 in the morning it's apparently been off all the way to the main road which is seven kilometers away so a lot of houses without power update is they've taken all our timber out but the drivers are unhappy they're having to pile timber between our tree lanes now and they're very aware that Latian damaged the trees but it's making a real mess we'll go down there and have a look but powers just come on I don't know if it's temporary but they're talking about having to reroute the cable which means digging up even more of a field and it's to be honest it's such a mess in there that oh not happy about it it's it's it's been a bit of a nightmare to be honest and a lot of people here rely on electric for their heating because they've got these modern ground-source heat pumps so they haven't had heating for the last 20 hours in its - degree so well that's why we want a hot water system with wood because woods reliable at the end of the day he can always put more wood in so but yeah we'll go and look at the damage in a minute when I've had a cup of tea then they must have cut the electric line that comes under here somewhere and so they reckon there's only a day left to get the timber out so he's piling it here he's trying not to destroy our trees but they reckon they can be done with getting the timber out today but the electrics back on which is good but I don't know I feel so mixed I think this is you know it's gonna take it's gonna heal up but it's gonna take the whole year just to get this back to some kind of order I mean that machine just rips up the ground and I think the drive is a pretty unhappy is like the whole job seems to have been badly and this is well this is what you get for bad time in the weather's you know the winters are not as cold as they used to be at the ground have been frozen up a month ago this would not have happened and I think there was a bit of a lack of due diligence checking the electric line you know especially when they knew they were digging this deep under the ground but now pretty full-on that's a crazy machine this drive is really cool he's really aware damage tree crops and see like that [Music] [Music] maybe come on Sam well feeling my heart yeah the whole team here is so bad I know you've been doing a very careful job Jonah not put a lot of your birth creek and yeah what happened last night the cables can make that all scarehouse he should have checked in yep because it is holden when they originally came the first time we told him it is buried under the ground here okay so first you guys checking forestry the electric guys are concerned because they need to get they basically have to dig up this cable and avoid my little chestnuts here and they have to get a new cable in here but they're concerned that the digger won't be able to drive over these tracks they want to just drive through the field and I said look I'm sorry but you guys have already made a massive mess and even if it's a pain in the ass you're gonna have to flatten this and drive on this because I can't have more machines trashing my trees I mean it looks way worse than it is in a sense like yes we've spent years building this soil but this is a roadway this is a track that is a access to the neighbors forest and it's a right-of-way for him so it's always been used as the track that we access the other bits of land but you know I want them to stay on that and not come into my tree crops which to them poppy seems really insignificant and pointless because they've got a job to do and it's a big industry a big sawmill that's out of power everyone else has got power now because they've we routed the power but there's a big industry that's shut down but it's like well you know it's your problem actually it's not my problem that this happened you didn't do due diligence in the planning when the drivers I mean they're being really polite but the drive is a really pissed because they just feel bad about the job they've had to do but I feel you know yeah like right now it's a big mess but it's fixable like you know it'll take the rest of the year to fix but it is fixable but if they start driving anywhere else through the fields then I'm not gonna be a happy bunny and so I think we'll just be up here make sure they need to start fixing the cable now but I want to make sure that they're not going out of what we've said because yeah I'm just not up for that so I was just talking with the forest you going here saying they want to come in May and flatten off the pastures for us but I said look I need that done in late March really because we've got to start moving Eggman bills around the place and I want it you know as soon as grass can start growing I wanted seeded and ready to go because it's gonna be hard to get Eggman bills across those big tracks because they're going to sink in the ground so we're gonna have to wait and see cable under the under the track that this machine has been making bigger and this guy's sister the tuna quite the map I think you know for those of you watching this you probably gonna find this so drastic and is very drastic but you know I don't I also don't want to be that guy that's like this pain in the ass and they tell him and they go tubing it's important to monitor work being done on the land because like you know I totally understand these machines are super heavy and the ground isn't really it's not idea when the ground they are doing the best they can to not destroy once it looks really gnarly he will recover that's the beauty of nature like they wanted to come back and take fresh wood in the summer that you can't leave lying on the ground is the Beatles but I'm sure there's another this big second coming in here there's no timber to be harvested out of here for another 8090 years and I no intend to be employing a machine Mexican bit taken away able to go [Music] [Music] mrs. what the road over the bridge looks like somehow it stayed in one piece oh wow well let's talk about the economy of this this timber is basically they were trying to give us a fixed contract for seven thousand euros for ligh timber luckily we took it on a per measurement basis so we'll get around twenty thousand euros now if you take that out after taxes about ten thousand euros which doesn't feel like a huge amount of money in the context of things that's you know nearly two hectares there's taken 7080 years to grow it's a bunch of money you know white money after-tax it will pay for a new hot water heating system around the house and the glycol loop through the greenhouse and there beautiful masonry stove but you know the timber company are making the money on it you know there's nothing more profitable than turning lumber into plank timber and they make a killin on it and it just goes to show you know what it's like at the war end of the industry it's you know it's causing major ecosystem damage and a lot of mess to fix up afterwards but I'll be glad when this is all done and spring comes and we can start seeing it repair but there's a bunch of fixing up to do and I'm not looking forward to it really but that's what you get you know we're we're using big industrial machinery for a small farm so it's you know that's the way it goes there are the low-tech ways to take in timber out but it wouldn't be economic at all you know we would certainly not have made any money and it felt important to capture a bit of that money because you know that's helping us renovate our home and yeah I feel so mixed it's quite emotional because there's a lot of beautiful tops all that we've been building that's been damaged and we can build it again but it's yeah it's it's just an interesting experience around okay so these guys are now found the cable and there we they've got a basic dig in you cable under this road which means forestry machine can come back in so they are actually now bringing in the heavy transporter to take the forestry machine away they're gonna have to come back up here to take these logs back down and then it's deciding whether to take the few remaining loads out the front of the hill which is a good Kalama or there's forest tracks about a kilometre up north in the forest but it's turned into a right pallava and so far the drivers been doing a really great job trying to avoid hitting our trees but it's these are my little baby walnuts from seed that I don't really want getting trashed after several years so trashing a bit at the end of this row here but that's the way it goes crazy mess well I guess that's the end of this episode the machines out and it's got to come in a different way but there's no way to close this story until the spring when we cover up the ground and start all the repair work and hopefully if I get this book done in the next weeks I'll be up fixing the forest paddock so I want to get the cows up off the pastures everything starts to thaw out so they don't impact the pasture too heavily and can be up in the forest patches but I'll keep you posted I think you know it's gonna be an ongoing thing to reflect on throughout the summer now as we start to see different species popping up and the cows will helpfully bring some of the flora and fauna up into the forest but yeah crazy days I you know I don't know what words I can say in the face of all this it's pretty drastic and I hope there's something insightful useful in that and just makes me really dread the day that they take this forestry all of our North beds are on our neighbors land and they just kindly let us use that for free but at some point they're gonna have to cut all that timber and it's a good volume of timber it might be that we move this wagon which is becoming an outdoor kitchen this year and so we can stack up logs there but I want to try and avoid them trash in the market guns that will have spent 10 years or so you know building no big beds on so I'll be willing to invest in a way to avoid them doing that but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it but yeah sad days is this it just feels intense but interesting and I don't know what else to say so this is what I know it's screening up but it's very dry period and this is heavily compacted CEPS or so you see the grass of is in yeah he's totally stunted and you can see these expensive plays backing away so it's gonna be some years until this is recovered over on our neighbors land is basically very little we grow up at all because they've not seeded it off so we put some seed down just using cold remnants of what we got but it's yeah you can see patches of it pretty terrible it's only now that we've been able to come through bringing the eggman beers over been getting a lot of strawberries out this and the lanes here and soon back up to nut field but we've been putting a thick litter on the ground we're trying to on the soil a bit as far as we can last bit of fencing down here is the borderline of our property and we making the corner post here then stretching the wire here so this is the large plantation and the paddock in there and this is the long thin plantation that you will have seen pigs in if you've been following our videos bunch of times so that's the last bit of fencing to fix feeling which is great and as I said the benefit that they've left the one benefit is that we now have a bridge that's accessible with an Eggman bill potentially to get down this steep slope into our neighbor's land that we can graze now it's got a lot of brush sticking out of it but this is really raised up from the river compared to what was here before and it's taking you know massive diggers over the top of it so it's very strong no problem magma bills and that's that's one good thing that's come out of this is that we could actually definitely change the way we improve our neighbor's land which hasn't been improved and we're basically using his land to cut hay or haylage and so there's no reason why we couldn't scale up hands again and improve the ground like that so this is all soil erosion that you can see at the base of this tree there's 40 50 centimeters of SOI let's wash down out of here this is all new soil sitting on top of the surface this is not the soil type that was there this was dug over by the pigs before but this is actually mud that's cascaded down the hill from the tracks of the machines now it's dried up a lot recently after this sort of wet spring but you can see the cascade coming through here really damages the hydrological cycle when they come up now this is what it looks like now in July having crossed the midpoint in the season and we've now actually finished all the paddocks so you can just make out the treehouse in the background and so we have 110 paddock here and that's in paddocks that the telegraph hole the electric line runs through and we fixed up this paddock to the fence line you can just make out on the hill here so our paddocks are operational again and that's fantastic but it's going to be a long time till this gets sorted out now we've got the fences up we can actually bring the cows and sheep in here and we will possibly winter graze up here so that we can put down a lot of seed and it's a shame in a way not to have pigs like the pigs do a fantastic job of cleaning up this mulch the forest paddock where the ram is right now is beautiful if you get down now you can really see you constantly landscape and when you compare it to the neighbours land you don't get any of this brush and you get much different species assemblies just from having the peaks through once the trees were gone also because the actually the machine is left a bigger mess than the pigs would they've come through with a digger and level of the pathway sword off its not so level and you can see when you up here looks very different - it probably comes out on camera but you know give it four or five years it will look like the second step here not not this level this level and this is what it looks like after maybe six seven years so it's gonna change but I want to bring animals in here to disturb the landscape and start bringing in astral species through the cows and sheep again so it's great having sheep back at the farm that will help with clearing the undergrowth and we'll be transitioning this off to agroforestry with a lot more focus on grazing and that's you know this is what's had to happen to get that whole thing started was it worth it well once now in the fencing's up you know I can really see as summers kicked in and all the landscapes we greening again it's you know it's a matter of time till it's becoming beautiful and dense again but it causes a lot of stress and heartache and I think for the money we get out compared to what the company would make on the job like this you know is it worth it I don't know but that's it I just thought I'd show a bit of the old snaps for you for those that have been following our channel for a while I never put out a video about this and I think it's just because I was feeling so heartbroken about the whole thing and feeling a little hard done by whilst it's a lump of money we got in it's it's a small amount of money in the great scheme of things in terms of the money passing through a farm likeness and so you know it's from the mess that's made oh I wish in some way I just kept the forest in place and and yeah well that's the way it goes we've explained why we had to cut in and that's the way this yeah hope you found that interesting in some way don't forget to click subscribe share the video if you enjoy our content and we'll see you soon in the next video bye for now [Music]

Channel: Richard Perkins

Views: 19,687

Rating: 4.9124489 out of 5

Keywords: ridgedale, forestry, ridgedalefarm

Id: M-qFYD8OfyU

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 08 2019