Shelley, getting ready to make a stew for supper.
Nate, in his hi-vis safety shirt.
A courderoy bridge of logs that we laid down to allow the quads to pass over a nasty swampy section on the road.
Jesse, a guest foreman. He and his crew joined our camp for three days.
Mikaela.
Our first rollover accident in my own camp since I started planting with Folklore in 1995. It happened on a beautiful sunny morning, on a pretty flat and clean road, with the foreman going about 60 km/h at the time, about twenty minutes after we had a camp safety meeting to talk about our PIR Audit. During the meeting, I had specifically reminded everyone that driving was the number one risk for planters, and that drivers have to drive carefully and people always have to wear seatbelts. This accident was a perfect reminder of why wearing seatbelts is critical, even on short drives with good conditions. Everyone in this truck was wearing their seatbelt, and nobody received even minor injuries.
The truck, however, sustained $29,500 in damages, and had to be written off totally. We salvaged just about everything we could before it got taken away, although we forgot to drain the diesel out of its fuel tank.
This is a photo of the road where the accident took place. It looks unbelievable that a truck going at that speed would roll on this road (although it wasn't this dry when the accident happened, due to rain the previous night). What happened was that the truck was in two-wheel drive and was sliding around a bit, hence the reason that the driver had slowed down to 60 km/h a few minutes before. However, that was probably still too fast for conditions. The tail end slid sideways a bit, and one rear wheel slid into the ditch where it dug in and caught, and the truck just rolled over sideways. If you can see the two little puddles up ahead in this photo, on the right side of the road ruts, that is the exact place where the truck rolled. I've never seen anything like it. Again, remember to always wear your seatbelts!
Some fire gear on display on one of our blocks.
Wax cardboard boxes in Hinton, at the recycling facility. We try to recycle as much as we can, although the recycling facilities have problems with wax cardboard, so they can't take everything. They can usually mix about ten to twenty percent wax cardboard in with their regular corregated cardboard, so when planting season comes, we overwhelmed them with wax cardboard trees boxes until they can't take any more. Those boxes then get slowly mixed up with the regular cardboard over the subsequent months. It's unfortunate that they can't recycle more. Taking empty boxes to the dump seems like a huge waste.
Unloading the trucks and setting the boxes up in piles of sixteen, in preparation for flying them in helicopter slings.
Greg and Sharon, going over plans for where all the caches are going to be set up.
Leanne, our student checker from West Fraser Hinton, with Maverick.
A broken window in my truck. This was another incident that was completely unexpected. Dustin closed the passenger side door in my truck, and my driver's side window just fell apart. Dustin hadn't even slammed the door hard - in fact, he shut it so softly that it didn't latch. I have no idea why this actually happened.
Dan's ETV, parked on a hill overlooking one of our blocks.
Jackie, getting ready for another bag-up, with flagging tape and flowers in her hair.
Colin, watering trees in the morning. It was actually raining at the time, but we wanted to make sure the seedlings were good and wet. I've always been of the opinion that using silvicool inserts in planting bags, and having wet sponges, is a waste of time with plug seedlings. I think it is mostly a carryover practice from the days fifteen years ago when we planted mostly bare-root stock, which dries out many, many times faster in planters' bags. With modern-day seedlings, the plugs will stay moist in planters' bags for days as long as the plugs are good and wet when they arrive at planters caches. We do still use the inserts and sponges when foresters ask us to, but it probably doesn't make any difference whatsover, especially considering that all the trees are usually planted less than an hour after the planters load their bags.
A shovel, plot cord, and plot book.
A big tow truck. We got one of our trucks stuck on the side of the road one day, and after a cursory attempt to pull it out with one of the light trucks, I didn't think we had enough carrying capacity to pull it out with what we had on site. We left it there for the day, and came back the next morning with better tow ropes, and we also brought a heavy truck to assist in the pulling. As we were setting up, Shannon Fagin of Tylace Oilfield Services drove by with his big tow truck. He saw what happened, and volunteered to give us a hand. Fifteen minutes, we had the stuck truck out, with no problems. Thanks Shannon! If anyone in the Whitecourt or Edson area needs heavy extraction services or things like that, you can call Shannon at 780-778-8417 or 780-778-9200.
So you're Canadian eh? Show us your beaver.
As requested, Joanne's beaver. He's hiding his face, just like Joanne, but you can see his broad, flat tail very well in this photo.
Kelley, standing by the sign for Kelley road. It's even spelled properly.
Amanda put up signs to advertise the dance party for the next night off.
To improve the social and recreational life in camp, someone decided that we needed a swimming pool. Unfortunately, the only one that they could afford was designed for about four kids. Here's a photo of four of the kids, relaxing in the pool.
Playing games in camp, the morning of the day off.
Dan, with his quad. It appears to have some front-end damages, so we're taking it to Gateway to get it fixed.
Despite having several heavy items weighing down the sides of the dry tent, it blew away in a windstorm, as usual. This time, it ended up in a ditch beside our camp. Here we see some of Greg's crew, getting ready to move and fix the tent.
Checking out the situation inside the tent. It was a fairly deep ditch that it blew into, as you can see from the person down on the left.
Colin and Jackie, getting ready to plant the "bear block." This was a small lease of about three thousand trees, surrounded by big trees. The problem was that there was a dead bear at the entrance to the lease. Most of you have probably never smelled a bear. I have, and the only way I can describe the smell is that it reminds me of death. Luckily, I've only been close enough to a live bear to smell them on three different occasions, but it is a smell that I will never forget. And unfortunately, a dead bear, rotting in the sun, smells even worse. It's too bad there wasn't any wind going through the lease, because the smell just hung in the air.
The smell was so bad that I rubbed coconut sun-tan lotion all over my face before putting on my handkerchief (which had incidentally been soaked in Deep Woods Off). Despite this, the smell of the bear was still so strong that I threw up in the handkerchief while I was wearing it.
Cookies that Joanne baked for the planters for block treats.
Kyla and Ellie, relaxing in the grass while we waited for another crew to catch up to us.
Some sort of unknown flower that had turned to dander.
This little bird was hiding in the grass. I think it was a young kildeer. I believe these are the annoying birds that screech at planters all day long when people are working near their nests, and they do fake dive-bombs at planters.
Jim and Leanne, reviewing some paperwork.
Sorting out boxes to be reused. We usually try to recycle boxes. Occasionally, we try to reuse boxes, by sorting out the ones that are in really good shape, and shipping them back to the nursery, so trees can be packed into them a second time. However, I'm usually very reluctant to do this, unless the boxes are in extremely good shape. I definitely prefer recycling over reusing - reused boxes are very hard for planters and foremen to work with. Reused boxes usually lead to extremely poor stockhandling, because they fall apart so badly when we are trying to quad boxes out to caches. I know that it saves money, and it's the right thing to do in an environmental sense, but I'm surprised that any foresters tolerate this practice, considering how badly their trees usually get mangled in the reused boxes. Luckily, we had very little rain on this contract, so some of the boxes were in moderately decent shape.
Loading good garbage boxes back into the reefer, to be sent back to the nursery.
Here's a photo of Dan's crew and Greg's crew, all bagging up together at the road, before walking into the overflow block at the end of the contract.