For the “dogs”

AFR: I really enjoyed the January 2022 article by Larry Rockwell titled “Winter in the woods.” After reading the line, “The yard teamster would drive dogs into the logs,” I decided to send along this photo of “log dogs.”

Just a matter of time?

AFR: I am amazed at the number of new large homes and buildings built across the countryside these days, often quite far from all services, especially fire services.

AFR: Your latest issue of Atlantic Forestry does an excellent job of bringing out the importance of the people on the ground, both in the forest and in the mill, with the ability to adapt to the needs of the client. The scary part is the lack of such people today in so many places in Atlantic Canada where big industry has swallowed up the local forests and hauled them away to high-production facilities.

AFR: I subscribe to Atlantic Forestry Review and read your article in the latest issue about “Greater trees!” on page 31. New Brunswick has been doing an awesome job documenting their large trees.

I manage a project called “Giants of Nova Scotia,” started three years ago to raise awareness about the recently discovered hemlock bug (HWA).

AFR: Hats off to the young people who do planting, PCT (pre-commercial thinning), crop tree release, and pruning, and to your article that tells all about it (“Youthful exuberance, anyone?” AFR Nov. 2020, page 6). There is such a great need to bring back forests from the mess made by all those men working the joysticks in the huge harvesters, in air-conditioned cabs. We could use a few more articles about all this hard work and restorative forestry.

AFR: Your latest issue contains some interesting information following the Northern Pulp closing and its 2,000-cord-per-day equivalent appetite for wood. The high lumber prices have offset a lot of pain, as the good money has always been in the sawlog market.

AFR: I receive, read, and enjoy both your Rural Delivery and Atlantic Forestry Review magazines. After reading the March 2020 edition of Atlantic Forestry, I noticed and wondered why only the largest mills are ever mentioned. For example, page 8 lists the mills that have found a home for their wood chips since the closure of Northern Pulp.

AFR: Two hurricanes in a one-year period and lots of power failures have occurred. Too many of our rural power lines pass through the trees. Any recent efforts to deal with this has consisted of crews of flaggers and helpers, with one man up in a bucket trying to clear the main power line. More is needed to improve the situation.

Yuletide tragedy

AFR: As an “old-timer,” I’d like to submit a verse based on an old-time folklore story I heard as a boy, about a young feller who went to the woods and suffered a fatal accident, and so didn’t get home for Christmas. It possibly could have happened in the woodlands in the area of the Right Hand Leg of Trousers Lake in the country east and north of Plaster Rock, N.B., but I can’t be sure about that location.

Celebrating Slim
AFR: I want to extend my most sincere appreciation to you all for your article about my father, “Slim” Johnson (“Celebrating Slim Johnson,” AFR May, pg. 25), following his induction into the Nova Scotia Forestry Hall of Fame. Your article last year following my father’s induction into the New Brunswick Forestry Hall of Fame (“Celebrating Slim Johnson,” AFR May 2018, pg. 9) is similarly much appreciated.

Spray skeptic
AFR: Thank you for the focus of your editorial in the last AFR (Mar.-Apr.) on glyphosate spraying (“A word or two: Science and the beast,” by David Palmer, page 5). It does seem like nobody’s opinion is swayed by facts anymore, so I won’t quote any from the Stop Spraying New Brunswick website. It’s true that glyphosate has indeed been approved by Health Canada

Resource giveaway
AFR: Another giveaway of Newfoundland and Labrador resources by Jerry Byrne and the Liberal government to Active Energy Group. A large tract of our forest is given away to this company for the making of pellets for export, providing fuel to heat homes in other countries.

AFR: Your article “The product and the purpose” (AFR July, pg. 4) sure reveals a lot of weaknesses in our forest industry. It sure leaves the voting public in the dark about so many parts of the industry. Nobody is asking how much wood we are cutting, where we are cutting it, and how much we should be cutting.

AFR: Mr. Jess has really hit the nail on the head with this one… (Letters, AFR January, page 6, recommending manual forest restoration operations in Nova Scotia.) It would return the industry to the hands of the little guy, who is pretty well out of the present picture.