Millar Western & Alberta Woodlot Owners' Association Tree Planting July 2009

A tiny little spider, unknown species, crawling up the side of my hand.

I shut the front door of my truck, and the air pressure blew the back window out.

Waiting for Greg to pull Tony out of the ditch, so we could get by and drive to the blocks.

Mike.

Baby pine tree.

It is not often that you come across a random bird-house on a block.

Equiment on an old abandoned oil lease.

Aaron.

Sarah.

Another Sarah.

This ferocious little fellow showed up on the back of a quad. He was the guard dog for the block.

Aw Brad, flowers, for me?

Another odd discovery on one of the woodlots.

Trying to figure out what was dripping out onto the ground. It was coming out of the radiator, but it didn't look or taste like radiator coolant. It looked and tasted like motor oil to me. We got the truck into a repair place in town, and it turned out that the circulation line for the engine oil had cracked inside the radiator, and was leaking out slowly.

A white-tailed deer. This one was extremely relaxed. I was about twelve feet away from it, taking pictures, and it stayed pretty calm.

The outhouses back in camp.

It was unbelievably hot in this photo, as you can see by the sweat pouring off me.

We drove past some other planters one morning on the way to one of our blocks. It turned out to be a crew from Shakti Reforestation, so I took their photo.

Sean, loading some boxes onto the quad.

A sign on one of our blocks in the Ocelot.

A cache on one of our blocks.

Aaron.

Log decks on one of our blocks.

The muddy driveway into our camp. I think that Jim likes to torture us by finding the muddiest possible camp sites in most areas that we work.

And here he is now, helping move some garbage away from the kitchen to our garbage trailer.

Our satellite dish system. We eventually figured out that mounting it on top of a trailer is great for the additional height, but most of our trailers settle into the mud quite a bit after a week or so, so the dish always becomes mis-aligned eventually. As long as the clearing is open, putting the dish on the ground seems to work a lot better.

An SRD officer and Ross from Millar Western, inspecting our fuel cache.

One of our blocks at Millar Western. I have to say that the woodlands department at Millar Western did an excellent job this year of trying to maintain cleared quad access trails for us on a lot of blocks. Occasionally it backfired, because the muskeg underneath was too thin and the quads just sank if we stayed on the quad trails. But the access was generally a lot better than if they hadn't tried to leave any quad access for us.

Flagging tape at an intersection on the trail, so the planters would know which way to walk into a block.

Sean's crew, with a cache set up directly behind their truck.

Conor from Millar Western, inspecting boxes in Marlowe's shade tent.

Fixing the 5-Ton. A mechanic had come out onto the site to fix a fuel supply problem the day before, and after I drove it, I went to check the oil again and noticed that the engine was suddenly coated in diesel. Jim and I spent a few minutes trying to diagnose it, and quickly realized that the mechanic had forgotten to re-secure the nut on the rear fuel injector.

My bags on the ground, in the midst of a hail storm.

The 800 road, branching off the ocelot.

Nate, unloading a quad carefully, with Jackie watching. Nate broke his back last year doing this same thing, so we've learned to be quite a bit more cautious around the quad ramps. For safety, it's best to make sure the truck is on perfectly flat ground or facing downhill, and the quad ramps should be attached to the truck with a pair of chains.

Getting ready to start a new block in the morning.

Some of Nate's crew at the morning block safety meeting.

Picking up a food order from Sysco. This was generally an extremely painful process. I've used Sysco for years in New Brunswick at my restaurant, because they've always been the best supplier there. However, there was only one order the entire summer this year that went smoothly in Alberta. I ended up getting quite irate with them on the phone several times after they made major mistakes in our delivery, or showed up six hours earlier or later than they said that they'd meet us.

Tony, unpacking the tarp from the back of his quad.

Scooter talking to the helicopter pilot on the radio, with Dylan standing by for instructions.

Helicopter nets.

Greg, sitting in the front seat of the helicopter.

Some of our blocks, as seen from the air. They look so different when you get to see the aerial perspective.

Marlowe, talking to the helicopter pilot.

Cortney, planting on one of our "under-plant" blocks.

Nat, working on another section of the same block.

Fields of canola. Northern Alberta seems to be covered with canola at this time of year.

Jamie Giberson, along with one of his sons. Jamie is the current president of the Alberta Woodlots' Association, and we ended up planting a woodlot for him. He was very, very surprised when I showed up with a crew - Jamie planted for me on my own crew back in the early 1990's. The crew were happy with the cooler full of iced tea that he brought out to them!

Getting ready to start another woodlot.

Lorne, from Carson Forestry Consultants, reviewing some maps with Nate.

Yes, it was this warm out. Heat stroke is always a danger once temperatures get into the high twenties or thirties, with planters working out in the direct sun for eight or nine hours a day.