Atlantic Forestry January 2023

Woodlot workout

by David Palmer

Some people go to the gym for a workout – I go to the woodlot. It doesn’t do much for the cardio side, but it’s excellent for the muscles and the mind. Climbing on and off the ATV, manoeuvring the logging arch over hummocky ground covered with logging slash, and sometimes using brute force to roll a log onto the pile constitutes a calisthenics program that is second to none. Or at least that’s what the aching muscles say after four or five hours of hard labour, which is about all I am good for these days.

I’m all rigged up now for small-scale logging, with a little Kawasaki 300 to provide motive power, and a home-built, quick-coupling logging arch that slips over the end of the log and neatly lifts it off the ground as you start forward. The ATV is good even on rough, hummocky ground, and the arch is perfectly balanced and light enough to move around easily by hand. The hardest part is piling logs more than one tier high, which is a necessity, given the limited space available. Manhandling the 16- to 20-foot pieces onto the pile with a pulp hook and a cant hook is hard work. It makes me think there must be an easier way, other than spending $8,000 or more on an ATV log-loading trailer.

I remember watching horses yarding out pine logs on a Russell and Swim operation near Doaktown, more than 30 years ago. They dropped the log in front of a steadily growing pile, the log chain was unhooked, a light cable was attached to the whiffle tree – and as the animal walked away, the log would roll smoothly onto the pile. That age-old system, known as parbuckling, has been mostly forgotten, but this old logger could be plotting a revival.

I’m removing 50- to 60-year-old understory Balsam fir from among larger, older Red maple in an area where I cut poplar in 1994. (I worked one day a week all winter that year, driving the 90 kilometres from Fredericton to cut poplar while my neighbour’s horse, Prince, yarded. We cut and sold about 55 cords of wood from about an acre and a half, leaving Red maple and Yellow birch). You can hardly count the rings in the first 20 years of fir life, then the trees picked up growth in the 1990s (probably in response to the 1994 harvest), before slowing down in the past 10 years. Most of the trees are only six to 10 inches in diameter, but they have stopped growing and are in slow decline.

The wood is dense, heavy, and mostly sound. It’s good for studwood, but too small for logs – which is too bad, because Irving is paying a good price for logs in Chipman (roughly 160 kilometres away). With the fuel adjustment, signing bonus, and trucking zone factored in, the delivered price is about $120 per tonne, or $245 per cord! The local trucker wants $65 per cord to haul it. After the marketing board levy, that leaves the producer with about $175 per cord, which is the best price we’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, less than 20 percent of the trees I’m cutting are yielding a 16-foot log with the minimum six-inch top, so it will be a month of Sundays before I can put a load together, if ever.

In the meantime, there’s a decent softwood pulp market across the border at Woodland Pulp ($72 per cord roadside), so I’ll just keep cutting and sorting the logs and see how things develop. If worst comes to worst and a blizzard shuts the operation down, the logs will be added to the pulp pile and trundled off to Maine.

I’m not sure what’s stimulating a pulp market that has been moribund for years. The talk on the street was that once Irving’s second tissue machine in Georgia came online, the demand for pulpwood would shoot up. That seems to be happening. In 2021, JDI was paying about $38 per tonne for pulp wood, a price that had not budged for years. By November 2022, the gatewood price (for wood delivered without a contract) was $47 per tonne. Add a signing bonus and a fuel adjustment, and the price is up into the mid-50s per tonne, or well over $100 per cord. Paired with studwood at $92 per tonne, the harvest proposition starts to look lucrative.

As for Woodland Pulp – a company near Calais supporting two tissue mills and shipping hardwood kraft pulp to China from Eastport, Maine – times must be good. Previous attempts to bump up the mix of softwood in the blend haven’t been successful, but apparently they are trying again, and have boosted the softwood price to about $110 per cord, leaving the producer with a roadside price of $72. Hopefully this time they’ll be successful, and we’ll have ourselves a longer-term softwood pulp market in southwest New Brunswick.

CUT ALL THE FIR?

I was telling the truck driver about the poor condition of the fir on my woodlot in southwest New Brunswick, which is on the southern limit of this species’ range. It seems like an increasing number of insect pests and other scourges are being visited upon us. His response was: “All the fir in Charlotte County should be cut.” That’s a bit of a broad brush, but he might not be far off. For years, foresters and climate scientists have been casting gloom upon our provincial tree; it’s not resilient, and is threatened with extirpation in the southern part of its range by the end of the century, they say. Most observers in southern New Brunswick would agree that fir has gone downhill during the last 40 years. The classic, handsome, cone profile has been replaced by a bedraggled spire, and even wreath makers are having trouble finding healthy tips whose needles aren’t missing or chewed up. But the end of the century is still a long way off, and in the meantime we must live with the motley remnants of our most abundant tree, which accounts for about 25 percent of forest cover provincially, and much more on some woodlots.

So as I do my woodlot rounds, taking stock of the ubiquitous fir and trying to peer into the future, I add up its pros and cons. The cons are well tabulated. It’s vulnerable to climate change and susceptible to all manner of attack. Its lifespan and growth have shortened, and it often develops butt rot, thus requiring “sounding up” by cutting off 16-inch rounds until you get back to solid wood. Another grievance that I have may sound petty, but golly, does it ever gum up saws, machinery, clothing, and people! At the end of a day’s cutting, the resin-coated safety pants can practically stand on their own. The black, sticky sap coats whatever it encounters, including human surfaces. The antidote, said a friend from Newfoundland, is butter – and sure enough, she was right.

On the plus side of the ledger, fir is extraordinarily good at propagating itself. There will never be a need to plant a seedling, so there is also no need for expensive site preparation.

Secondly, fir grows well, and responds favourably to pre-commercial thinning.

Third, as a small- to medium-sized timber tree, it fares well in today’s lumber industry, where size doesn’t matter and the name of the game is maximizing two-by-four production. The “F” in the ESPF grade stamp stands for “fir,” so it is an acceptable species in a high-value market.

Fourth, its fibre provides acceptable raw material for the Northern Bleached Softwood Kraft (NBSK) pulp grade, the raw material for paper and tissue, which is also in high demand.

Fifth, although most mills prefer spruce, as it yields more high-grade and the kiln drying time is shorter than for fir, the price gap has narrowed, and in some cases disappeared altogether.

Six, fir off the stump weighs more than spruce. Since most wood is purchased by weight these days, that adds extra value to the payload at the company scales.

Seven, those sticky resins also produce a powerful and pleasant forest scent. Long before smart people dreamed up conscious “forest bathing,” woodcutters were inhaling the elixir of fir, and likely being calmed by it. Everyone knows the heavenly aroma of a Christmas tree lot. After a day in the woods cutting and handling fir, you’ll carry that same smell with you on a trip to town – and believe me, noses will twitch, and heads will pivot. Gals will wonder, “Who is that handsome stranger emanating godly essences? It must be eau de forêt.”

Eight, how can anyone not love a tree that contributes so positively to everyone’s favourite holiday? Can you imagine Christmas without wreaths and greenery?

Nine, as energy costs rise, so too will the value of firewood. Though it is most commonly hewn from high-BTU hardwoods such as Sugar maple, Yellow birch, and beech, other species are burned in places where good hardwood is scarce, such as Grand Manan, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick’s North Shore. While hardwoods such as maple contain about 25 million BTUs per cord, fir and spruce are about 15 million BTU, or 60 percent of the heat value. So with today’s firewood prices topping $300 per cord, perhaps fir should be worth about $200. I’ve burned fir before, and I like it. It gives off perfectly satisfying heat, especially during the shoulder season, or when paired with a chunk of Yellow birch. In some stands that have been suppressed for years, growth is slow and wood density is high; I bet fir from those stands will have a much higher BTU value.

Well, if this load of wood is going to be anything other than aspirational, it’s time to put down the pen and pick up the chainsaw. But wait a minute – it’s turning cold and starting to snow. Maybe I’ll just leave the fir standing after all.