The Plant
August 8, 2016 2:55 pm Leave your thoughts
Plant spruce seedling in DMI West FMA fly-in cutblock 2016
Walking through the naturally regenerated young aspen during our tree plant quality checks has to be one of my favourite times of year. After only a few year or less this aspen already trump my 5’2” and they are invigorating. They are a sign of nature’s resilience, they make the entire cutblock feel incredibly fresh and alive. As students we get to go into these planted blocks to check the quality of the planting operation and address any concerns our planters may have.
Our checks are 50m2 circle plots with a 3.99m plot cord where we check for the desired density of trees by the prescription, quality microsites, planted correctly without leans, J-roots, too deep. We also check the transportation and caches are being done or maintained correctly: not squishing trees, kept cool, shaded, air circulation, correct labels. The prescription changes depending on the type of cutblock and the type of plant, fill or road & chipper.
Tree planter at work. West FMA 2016
The tree planters access summer blocks, harvested during the summer, by truck or quadding down ripped, reclaimed roads, and they access the winter blocks by cutline if hard enough grounds or by helicopter. From my helicopter ride image you can see the irregular shaped cutblock and retention but it’s hard to tell from that height that the aspen are over 4 feet tall, sometimes over 5. The block was full of pioneering species and strawberries as well.
West FMA winter cutblock, fly-in block for planters
Bonus content! As I’ve mentioned before, the safety training never end! The mill’s safety team got to play with their new fire training machine and we got to empty old fire extinguishers for practice. It’s a great way to help understand the various fire extinguishers we have from the buildings to trucks to quads so that we’re each prepared.
Fire extinguisher practical training on mill site with Safety/Loss Control