Spring Planting Contract

June 22, 2015 12:00 pm Published by Ryan Wilkie 1 Comment

Hello everyone and welcome back. First off, I would like to thank Green Dream for the sponsorship and hope that I can do my part to do everyone proud. Your investments in my fellows and I are aiding us to become better people, and to help raise us up to be able to take the mantle in the near future. Forestry has such a broad spectrum and allows each of us to find our niche within the industry that matches our own personal diversity.

Now to catch y’all up on what has been going on since we last left off. The first two weeks were for newbie training which consisted of lots of coffee and paperwork, online training modules, a quick drive around town, more coffee and a day ripping around on quads raising huge dust clouds and probably annoying the crap out of the mill staff working around the yard. We four summer students also did some survival training, so we basically built a rockin’ fort for four and a fire each. ‘Best students they’ve had’ apparently. Go us!

After all that, we were allowed to join in on the fun and actually put some proverbial boot to …dirt and get working. Two of us were handed off to the harvesting side, that was Adam and Logan, and then Taylor and I went to the silvicultural side of things. Danny who is one of the silv supervisors, took us out and showed us the ropes for what happens on a tree planting contract. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to this side of forestry. The contract was for a harvested area 15 miles from any real accessible summer roads, and surrounded by marsh and black spruce swamps. First day out in the field this summer, and for the rest of the contract I got to fly in and out by helicopter. Very cool, if I do say so myself! The planting contractor, Cal, was a super friendly gentlemen, along with his staff whom were all very welcoming. Every morning before the morning meeting Cal would greet us with a big grin, and sing praises about what his kitchen had cooked up that morning and feed us til bursting. Needless to say we were never left hungry and the food was amazing! I mean five star restaurant good but in a big brown bush tent and enough to feed 50 people. My mouth waters just thinking of it; ginger cakes, brownies, cookies, fruits galore, bagel-wiches, and probably the best rhubarb crumble I’ve ever had. And that’s saying something, I’ve tried a lot of rhubarb crumbles. Sorry mom…

All of Cal’s foremen worked like a well-oiled machine, smooth, smart and productive. You could tell that the contractor took care of his staff, almost all of the people there have been with him for many years, (up to 12 years!) and everyone had nothing but good things to say. One of the forewoman actually drives from Quebec every year to work for Cal even though there are countless other contractors between here and there. The best way to put is how she, Marie, said in a strong French accent: ‘We are family,’ and they really are.

Now, as far as the actual working part of the tree planting contract for us, was by comparison to tree planting, a walk in the park. We were responsible for doing quality control checks of the areas in which they were planting, and then reporting back to the planters, foreman and to Cal. So we did a lot of walking and talking. I always knew tree planting was hard work, but my respect for planters is now tenfold. People I’ve worked with in the past have complained about how labour intensive their job is and backbreaking. Yeah… sorry, it’s not. These guys and gals go for 10 or 12 hours a day, and in all weather conditions, and, it was 25° or more for almost the entirety of this spring plant. It was hot. And extremely dry, seriously, a single cricket rubbing its legs together would have set the whole province alight.

And on those long, hot days, we had a lot of time to talk and ponder on the important things. For example, is a zebra white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Or if an army of squirrels could be trained to plant seeds in cut blocks? That would be a sight eh? Sadly, there was no army of squirrels to see, or many other animals for that matter. Lots of tracks and lots of other err, evidence, but we didn’t have any close encounters.

Lastly, on Friday, Adam and I were sent to do some creek crossing inspections driving around on quads: