Planting in the USA

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Fri Jan 08, 2016 7:52 pm

Also today I finally paid $30 to download an article from the Society of American Foresters Journal regarding accident rates among forest workers in southern Oregon. It was written by the leaders of an advocacy group active in the Pacific NW trying to improve the conditions of forest workers there. If you would like to read the whole thing I would be glad to send you a copy. I seriously doubt any of my $30 went to the authors of the piece, and most likely none of the very comfortably-living Foresters who skimmed over the piece paid any attention to it whatsoever.

Here is the intro:

T he deaths of two forestry services workers in separate on-the-job acci- dents in southern Oregon since
November 2011, are testimony to the inher- ent dangers of this work. One young worker with little training was killed in a chainsaw accident, and the other was killed when the van in which he and his coworkers were rid- ing was hit by another vehicle (Oregon Oc- cupational Safety and Health Administra- tion [OSHA] 2011, Pfeil and Freeman 2012).

These fatalities are indicative of a much wider problem in the forestry services industry in this region. A growing body of literature has documented high injury and fatality rates, wage theft, and generally poor working conditions among forest workers in the United States.

For example, forest work- ers in Oregon experience three times the rate of occupational injury and illness of the workforce at large and 10 times the fatality rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] 2011, Hayford 2013). Even these high rates are likely to underestimate the problem because of incentives that both workers and employ- ers have to not report injuries (Azaroff et al. 2002, Ruser 2008, Sarathy 2012). To date, no studies have focused explicitly on occu- pational safety and health in the forestry ser- vices industry.

I was hoping the article might give me a little background on it all, for use in another question. I still hope to work with my local National Forests on the risks on some of their brushing work lately. I am not that concerned for my safety as I have figured out some of those risks, and will just walk away from them. My question for them is - will Jose, Jesus, and Manuel?

DanAykroyd69 · Post by **DanAykroyd69** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 12:15 pm

I'm an American, message me if you'd like my CV and phone number.

No third paycheque fever here, especially if the prices in the U.S. really are as dismal as I've heard. I have way too much student loan debt shackling me down to be able to walk away from any job.

peroxide · Post by **peroxide** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 3:13 pm

DanAykroyd69 wrote:I'm an American, message me if you'd like my CV and phone number. No third paycheque fever here, especially if the prices in the U.S. really are as dismal as I've heard. I have way too much student loan debt shackling me down to be able to walk away from any job.

Planted with this guy in Ontario, picked cherries with him in BC. Hire him!

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 5:19 pm

Hi there, not much news right now unfortunately. I am in Kentucky, doing chainsaw Crop Tree Release working for a friend of mine. At least 3 weeks to go on this job.

I had a Bid Opening this afternoon for work in Virginia, but didn't get any phone calls or email - not a good sign, but official word could come tomorrow. That agency asked me to bid specifically as they have had trouble using heavy equipment operators to plant. I still have a bid coming up in West Virginia for a medium-ish project. My Abandoned Mine Land client who last year asked me to plant a half-million hardwoods now doesn't have their s**t together at all - but they will have a little bit of work. How much, they can't tell.

I pay pretty good on Federal work; not Canadian levels but $14 ~ $18 hr minimum depending on locale, could give a piece rate to experienced folks that would work out better. My friend who helped me in South Carolina in December hit $200 or $250 every day, but he is a 15 year veteran.

In other contracting news, I am about to create a "Congressional" with the US Forest Service. I am on my 3rd Contracting Officer who needs bidders for projects but refuses to reveal bid results and is then mystified why they have a bidding pool of zero or one. I am going to have my Congressman (a fire-breathing, gov't hating Tea Party member) obtain the bid results for me. This will put a permanent mark in some USFS employee files.

And as mentioned above somewhere, I know of a bid from one of the Hispanic contractors that was way, way up this year. The same thing happened on the job I am working on currently for my friend. So that is a bit of good news. Maybe the Obama Dept. of Labor is starting to discover their cojones at last. Let's hope the Bernie Department of Labor really tears into this stuff in 2017 - he has the momentum going - you are the only readership where I could use "Feel the Bern" which is otherwise becoming trite, but Iowa was a ray of hope. Cruz is a straight up agent of the Giant Vampire Squid though (Goldman Sachs) - the GOP is already heading towards implosion but he would speed it up. Whichever right-wingnut wins Iowa never does well anywhere else though.

DanAykroyd69 · Post by **DanAykroyd69** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:28 pm

It's a shame we don't have as big of a tree planting industry in the U.S. Why is that? Wouldn't it be nice to create jobs?

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 5:38 pm

The industry is huge in the USA. About 1.5 Billion seedlings / year are planted. American Society has moved on from physical outdoor labor, and very little of it is done by actual Americans any more. Agriculture, Seafood, Nursery/Landscape, Silviculture Labor, the story is all the same and largely similar in many of the trades, particularly the more labor oriented trades like Drywall, Roofing, Painting, and Framing. When children grow up arguing with their parents over mowing the lawn twice a month as their only physical work experience in life, they aren't moving up to an outdoor labor job later on. But then the Oil Patch never had trouble getting roughnecks to work brutal 12 hour shifts outdoors in all weather, by simply paying them $70K / year. But that reality is different in economic sectors with other foreign competition and even the demands of Society for cheap food, created by low-paid workers with zero benefits. Hispanic labor is not going away any time soon, at least not until the robots put so many people out of work we can't afford to have foreigners working for us any more. Right now, though, everyone is a winner - except the crazy people who like to work outdoors, just because.

Post by **Scooter** » Mon Feb 08, 2016 5:53 pm

Newforest, any comments on this article?

http://news.streetroots.org/2016/02/05/ ... ry-workers

Here's just the intro, there's lots more:

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on the working conditions and treatment of immigrant forestry workers.

Next: Street Roots will explore the role of government regulators and land management agencies, as well as contractors.
Any Oregonian who watches network television is probably familiar with periodic campaigns of state-sponsored ads boasting “strong laws” in Oregon that require replanting after logging and other healthy-forest management practices. These ads are paid for by taxes collected from the timber industry and broadcast on its behalf.

What you won’t see in those ads is the invisible labor force that keeps the timber industry, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management compliant with those “strong laws.”

For the past three decades, Oregon’s timber and forestry sectors have been hoisted up on the backs of thousands of immigrant and guest workers from Latin America. But language barriers and the isolated nature of their work have kept them out of public view, have given them little recourse for workplace violations and have made them susceptible to widespread exploitation. That was the sobering message delivered by immigrant workers and their advocates before the governor’s Environmental Justice Task Force in September.

The testimony has drawn the attention of Oregon’s top industry regulators, Bureau of Labor and Industry Commissioner Brad Avakian and Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division Administrator Michael Wood, both of whom are joining the task force’s continued discussion Feb. 5 around issues facing immigrant forestry and farmworkers.

For first-generation American Joel Iboa, forestry and sawmill work has been his family’s legacy. He grew up with relatives who were missing body parts and suffering the health effects of working in Oregon’s forests, sawmills and fields. He listened as his aunts and uncles told what he described as horror stories about accidents out in the forest and gross mistreatment of workers; sometimes they laughed while he sat quietly in disbelief.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Tue Feb 16, 2016 3:10 pm

read that on the 'book, thanks again.

The Northwest Forest Worker Center mentioned in the article has been working hard on immigrant rights for several years now. I have tried contacting them to exchange notes but have never got a response. They seem Oregon-specific but I wish they would expand to other states in the region or even nationally.

The article discloses the main problem with Labor law in the USA:

"an average of 14 of Oregon’s 284 reforestation employers were inspected each year"

and the majority of the inspected companies receive numerous fines. But if only 5% of the industry is ever inspected, any given contractor has pretty good odds of getting away with whatever they want, and then the corporations and government agencies that hire such contractors get cheap labor service with plausible deniability. It's the secret of the GOP (Republicans, the more 'pro-Business' of the 2 parties) - they don't stand up and say let's scrap this or that labor law because that would make big headlines. Instead they quietly gut the budget for enforcement of that law. My favorite comment ever from a Canadian friend was this one - "my country is pretty fucked-up, but yours is just plain Evil."

I'm looking forward to the other 2 parts in that series. I wouldn't mind a bump here or the F-Book or both when they come out, I'm in and out of cell service quite a bit. Have only worked ten days in 4 weeks on the saw job I am on, mostly due to weather impacting safety conditions running chainsaws on steep slopes. Life is getting tight. Still more planting bids on the horizon though.

Also looking forward to more Bernie Sanders victories. Super Tuesday will be crucial. He is my only hope for ever having 21st century health care, I know that.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:07 am

got some news through the grapevine this a.m.

apparently the other day there was a nationwide conference call among concerned parties about shortages of H2B workers for reforestation contractors. A big famous one (the one that paid out $3 Million after losing a class-action lawsuit for violating labor laws) is sitting on 50,000 acres to plant this season, with zero tree planters available to even start the work. the seedling nurseries are growing concerned, I believe....

I know I will raise some upcoming bids on this news. entry-level manual labor is in a major state of flux everywhere, not just for reforestation. net immigration totals have been showing more people leaving the USA than coming in for many years now as the Obama administration ever so slowly works on labor law enforcement.

I'm not well positioned to take any advantage of this right now though, which sucks. the guy I'm working for running saws has had non-stop Chaos eruptions - weather, family, labor. I've only worked 7 days in 4 weeks and we should be done with the work by now. Instead we have several weeks to go. I've been wanting to go back to my old non-safe way of running saw by myself, but won't any more.

Post by **Scooter** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:19 am

This is good for you, I think?

I know that there would be a huge range here, but what would you estimate to be the average density that you'd plant in the States? Or if such a guess is completely impossible, what kind of ranges are common?

I'm just doing some quick mental math here ... 50,000 acres is over 20,000 Ha, which at a density of 1600 stems/Ha (fairly common in BC) would translate to over 32 million trees worth of ground.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sun Feb 21, 2016 4:58 pm

Densities depend on growing strategy and would run from 436 to 622 / acre most likely, on the industrial contracts the big contractors get. 50,000 acres would need perhaps 27 million seedlings. Haven't heard much more information yet. Could be exaggerated, but visa problems have been steady for such contractors for several years now.

I like the news for some bids that are still upcoming for me...

DanAykroyd69 · Post by **DanAykroyd69** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 4:12 pm

newforest wrote:The industry is huge in the USA. About 1.5 Billion seedlings / year are planted. American Society has moved on from physical outdoor labor, and very little of it is done by actual Americans any more. Agriculture, Seafood, Nursery/Landscape, Silviculture Labor, the story is all the same and largely similar in many of the trades, particularly the more labor oriented trades like Drywall, Roofing, Painting, and Framing. When children grow up arguing with their parents over mowing the lawn twice a month as their only physical work experience in life, they aren't moving up to an outdoor labor job later on. But then the Oil Patch never had trouble getting roughnecks to work brutal 12 hour shifts outdoors in all weather, by simply paying them $70K / year. But that reality is different in economic sectors with other foreign competition and even the demands of Society for cheap food, created by low-paid workers with zero benefits. Hispanic labor is not going away any time soon, at least not until the robots put so many people out of work we can't afford to have foreigners working for us any more. Right now, though, everyone is a winner - except the crazy people who like to work outdoors, just because.

You're right about that, When I worked at a tree nursery this past winter, there were other young men there whose eyes would light up when I told them about planting, but would complain nonstop about how hard it was to work at the nursery. It wasn't hard work. You had to be fast and be able to lift objects of moderately heavy weight sometimes, but it was pretty easy for the most part. I don't like to tell people that they can't do something, but there's no way in donkey dickskin these dudes could handle working in the bush. They're too used to sitting around on their computers all day picking their asses with one hand and tugging off their rotten little peckers with their other hand. Too soft.

Nate · Post by **Nate** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 4:22 pm

newforest wrote:The industry is huge in the USA. About 1.5 Billion seedlings / year are planted. American Society has moved on from physical outdoor labor, and very little of it is done by actual Americans any more. Agriculture, Seafood, Nursery/Landscape, Silviculture Labor, the story is all the same and largely similar in many of the trades, particularly the more labor oriented trades like Drywall, Roofing, Painting, and Framing. When children grow up arguing with their parents over mowing the lawn twice a month as their only physical work experience in life, they aren't moving up to an outdoor labor job later on. But then the Oil Patch never had trouble getting roughnecks to work brutal 12 hour shifts outdoors in all weather, by simply paying them $70K / year. But that reality is different in economic sectors with other foreign competition and even the demands of Society for cheap food, created by low-paid workers with zero benefits. Hispanic labor is not going away any time soon, at least not until the robots put so many people out of work we can't afford to have foreigners working for us any more. Right now, though, everyone is a winner - except the crazy people who like to work outdoors, just because.

Well said:

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Sat Mar 12, 2016 11:30 am

newforest wrote: Hispanic labor is not going away any time soon.

I mean, not if a certain individual goes through with his campaign promises...

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sun Mar 13, 2016 11:49 am

well there are two of these threads now, sorry. I will just post here as I'm not sure I'm hiring right now. A nice medium-ish bid in West Virginia is probably mine to lose after doing the job last year, but that bid isn't due for almost two weeks yet. I'm just planting with some old Amigos most days, to help them get more done each day and get done earlier each day during a rough outbreak of temps in the mid-20s Celsius. Plus it is just awesome to work with a bunch of 2 million tree veterans every day.

the difficulties for the contractors using foreign visas are real. I'm still working on discovering the details, but one was a major bottleneck on visa processing several months ago. The bureau that handles that shut down processing work for 17 days (business days? dunno) while they installed new software for the work. (Sounds like classic Government Inaction in action there). Simultaneously, the number of requests for visas doubled over the previous year. Employers for low-skill (I know, I know) labor are going crazy trying to retain labor, regardless of nationality.

So the contractor sitting on 27 million seedlings is in a tough spot. I don't feel sorry for them in the slightest (truly an Evil Empire), though I do for some of their clients that are now looking at No Planting this year (Site Prep it again? Tough call. Many of them will just expect next year's planting crews to just crawl through a bunch of thorn-laden bullshit their own Foresters won't walk through). Nurseries involved are not in a good spot either and there will be a lot of legal action in the coming months I expect, and there will be a lot of late planting done in hellaciously hot conditions.

Simultaneously, I hear rumblings of a 'new law' governing the foreign labor visas for tree-planting (H-2B). I don't think there is much actual new law, but the Department of Labor is beginning to actually enforce existing law on things like not charging foreign workers for their lodging, and many other details that have always been in H-2B visa law that have been routinely ignored by holders of those visas. The Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Timber Investment Companies (TICos) and such that own most timber land here these days are all crying about planting prices, which will be heading upwards. No pity for them either. Everyone in Forestry aside from tree-planters has been making plenty of money for a long time.

Post by **Scooter** » Sun Mar 13, 2016 6:20 pm

I just merged them.

Post by **Scooter** » Mon Dec 26, 2016 7:01 am

I just merged six different topics into this giant topic about planting in the United States. It killed the post count, since a merge doesn't add together posts from all topics, and just used the post count from the last topic merged into. That doesn't matter, but if anyone is wondering why the post count is so low, the topics used to have thousands of views between them.

I'll link to this thread from the Companies Index, so it's easy to find in there too.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 5:45 pm

my basic take right now is nothing will change for the nascent 2017 planting season (in the south planting has been under way for a couple months now).

Trump promises to investigate foreign-labor visas "on day one" - January 21. But all the hubbub over those visas is generally for H-1B visas, the kind used by Information Technology employers to basically replace middle-aged Americans with young IT graduates from the developing world for much less salary. I'm fairly sure the H-2B visa system used for reforestation work will not likely change, and seems to be working smoothly this year after some hiccups last year.

Unemployment, as I type, stands at about 4.6% nationally in the USA. There are a lot of different Unemployment statistics one can argue about if you like to look at politics as a perpetual tweeting contest on the 24 hour news cycle. But any way you slice it, that is a very low #. The economy is good and that means most people that truly can work, are working. People that are unwilling to take a job while they strive to find a better job, and are instead just waiting to find an easy job, are not the type of people you want to take out tree-planting.

What will the future hold? I think there will continue to be a slow emphasis on catching illegal employers. And the corresponding tightening of the illegal labor supply will place more pressure on the US Congress to reform the H-visas in a general sense. Almost all employers that use them universally hate them. (H-1A is for Agriculture, and labor is extremely tight in Agriculture).

Working with illegals out planting trees for so long changed my life. I now understand that in the 21st Century, the 'First World' countries have achieved the highest and most comfortable living conditions of all of human history. And as a result, when it comes to employment, employers have to compete on living and working conditions as much as on income. So if a job is really hard and a long ways from home and pays well, people will just take a couple good paychecks and head off to an easier job, closer to home. In the USA, there is also the situation with health care, which is insanely delivered by employers, and greatly lowers the 'portability' of employment. Once you have a job with health benefits, it is best to keep it. And no seasonal job will ever offer health care. So seasonal work is best left to college students, though the students that actually want to work are an ever-decreasing specimen, and my planting season is not during University off-season, like your. Or seasonals can be foreigners, who can just be sent home before they are likely to ever need any health care. And people that work on farms or cook food in restaurants can just die young, with all the rest of those lazy "takers." Makers gotta make, they don't have time to worry about the invisible people that supply them with services. Rome had Citizens, and Slaves. And so do we. Very few see a problem with that. Soon, we will be Great again.

But then Trump might could start a trade war with China, and that could get ugly quick. And also Amazon recently opened the first cashier-less grocery store. So if you would rather not shop at home and have the little brown box flown over by a drone, you can instead go down with your smart-phone and pick up the items you want by having an RFID chip on every package on the shelf and all that is really needed is maybe one human security guard with a gun to keep you from running out the door with the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue in your hand (what would you run out with? just a steak?). How fast will technology lead us all to start smashing those evil weaving looms? Who can say? I don't care, my job is safe. There is no need at all to replace cheap foreigners with expensive robots.

Personally, I think there were up-sides to the recent Presidential election. For one, it was time for the Clintons to go: the long, slow slide of the Democrats into being Republican Lite needed to end. Goldman Sachs never loses an American election, that I can tell you. Trump won the election twenty years ago when Rush Limbaugh famously said "I'm an entertainer, not a journalist" and facts have been in slow decline ever since. (Hillary also lost twenty years ago when she let her husband cheat on her, repeatedly, insuring a permanent hatred among a very large % of human beings who then had to find a reason for hating her that they could say out-loud, to other people, like, you know, being stupid with emails. Cheating hurts, and forgiveness is not human.(.

But re: Truthiness, I firmly believe Reality is going to smack Trump up-side the head, repeatedly. (Q: What is the hardest kind of Tea to swallow? A: Reality). The US Military is a firm believer in Reality. They use it to find the best ways to kill people, and they are well-prepared with maps of what the rising oceans will do to our country, among the plans for dealing with the many other calamities awaiting us with Global Warming. (Will you Marry Me, Canada? Seriously.) They will also be well-prepared to tell Trump what Reality is, to his face. Military people are like that, at the end of their careers. There is also the recent Fact that Solar Power is now cheaper than Fossil Fuels in large parts of the world, and even the Koch Brothers can't argue against lowest possible price. Reality will also strike hard when the GOP has to try to cut taxes, raise defense spending even more, not cut Grandma's benefits, and balance the budget all at the same time. They promised. Then there is the straight cray-cray idea that one can deliver health care via an insanely profitable middle man - the insurance racket - without Death Panels for Grandma. The one thing the US Health Care "system" has going for it is not a single other country in the world is trying to copy it.

So Trump will lead us to the Promised Land at last, in 2020, when the pitiful Conservative Fantasy bubble that very-very-low-information Conservative voters live in, is popped once and for all, for well and good. It will be ugly, but Conservative Fantasy would have only grown more fantastical if Hillary had been elected. Trump will be the only person who can pop that bubble for _those_ voters, and he won't have much choice.

So for me, I would rather live in the woods than amidst a bunch of whiners from any political party. I learned recently of the crazy prices urban hipsters will pay for found objects I know how to find in that strange place called the Outdoors, so I got that going for me. I will be running chainsaws in the mountains of Virginia to start the New Year, and have a nice big Pine plantation job to plant at home in Michigan in the spring. I was a softy on the price because I wanted to guarantee I got it, because I do like to sleep in my own bed every once in a great while. There are a few medium-ish planting bids on my horizon that might tempt me, and for people truly hoping I bid on their work, but I am beyond tired of hiring drunks, the mentally ill, stand-up people that mean well but have a hidden health problem, and people who's word is their bond, and that one is in Junk Bond status with more down-grades on the way. I have a whole lot of saw work in Michigan's Upper Peninsula already contracted for the summer, 2017, and it is Paradise up there on the south shore of Superior, complete with melodious Jazz DJs in French on the radio. I have some nice leads on spots to hunt for Coaster Brook Trout (20"+) when it rains, and it is one of two places I have found in the USA where it is still possible to drive to the bar and drink more than two drinks, and never hit pavement where the cops hang out, on your way home to camp ("on your way camp?"). The other, discovered with many thanks to this very website, is in ranch country in central Montana, and which not coincidentally also has a surplus of large Brook Trout, as no pavement = no people. I plan to hire slowly for the saw work and then offer planting work to people that can run saws, going forward, rather than the other way around. I have several new ideas on where to advertise for the right people (Forestry students, maybe; Trout addicts, definitely). I also have some acquaintances currently living outdoors at Standing Rock, Dakota territory, and I think people that can handle that situation will probably find tree planting as easy of a walk-in-the-park job as I do. Because it truly is an easy job. What's hard is changing any mind-set that it isn't.

And thus some of those medium-ish bids might just tempt me, and I might just hire the just exactly perfect person. It's easy. If you have some tree-planting experience and you find yourself just an estimated profit 'shadow-boxing the Apocalypse, wandering the land', I can probably put you to work temporarily on your wanderings.

mwainwright · Post by **mwainwright** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 6:06 pm

That was a good read

ChinRoll · Post by **ChinRoll** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 4:19 pm

Yes, great read, Newforest! Nice to know there are still some sane, intelligent people left down there.

Post by **Scooter** » Sat Jan 21, 2017 11:09 am

Newforest, how will this potentially affect things in the US for you, and for forestry?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/21/technol ... oplead-dom

hunterthechosen · Post by **hunterthechosen** » Mon Jan 23, 2017 10:07 pm

I'm a Canadian-American vet, five seasons (1 coastal). Let me know if you ever need another planter. I have American citizenship.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Tue Jan 24, 2017 5:16 pm

H-1B is the visas used in the Information Technology sector. H-2 (there is an A and B version) is used for labor.

As an example of how the H-2 system won't change, there is this: a month ago, Trump's son applied for six H-2 visas for the pruning season at his vineyard in central VA. It is considered a routine request and caused barely a ripple in the press. Growers offer $15/hr for this, towards $20 with experience, but can't fill out their crews enough to get it done. Baby, it's cold outside.

Changing the H-2 system would mean opening up Labor to the laws of Supply and Demand. Wages would rise substantially for low skill work now done by foreigners. Prices of products would rise substantially, particularly food. That is unlikely to happen. Low-skill jobs are no longer considered Real Jobs, and the people that do them aren't considered worthy of benefits like Health Care. Working at a Low Skill job is the worker's own sorry fault. The Ayn Rand Cult is on the ascendacy, bigly.

Trump talked the "Buy American. Hire American." talk in his Insugral speech, and again today in his deathline approvals. (What's up with this Trudeau character and the Death Sands anyway? I don't get it.). Anyway, Hire American is only for Real Jobs. Shovels are not Real.

I haven't been beating the bushes for planting work too much. I tried a marketing effort in south Georgia this summer, hoping to exploit the visa problems many contractors had last year. I made a tactical error in my 30 or so cold-call letters and emails, but I don't regret it at all even though I greatly want to plant in the area again to meet Janisse Ray, the author of "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood", and I have a friend-of-friend lead on that now. Might try again next winter. Anyhow, my mistake was thiss - I brazenly stated that I would ask for 15¢ each to plant those big 6A plugs (the best plugs, imo). I had heard 13¢ was an average there lately, perhaps high, and sometimes 14¢ happens in South Carolina, which has been harsh on illegals lately. So I went for it, given the visa issue: a price increase. I did not receive a single reply.

But I did pick up a small job on a clay site where you can almost see one of the warmest corners of Canada - near Toledo, Ohio. And another one in the Opiate Triangle of Doom - Oxytucky, aka Kentucky. So April is now full for me and the National Forest in West Virginia mountains where I grew up is really really hoping I bid on their wetland project this year, at 25K stems. I can get an experienced, awesome results override on lower bids there, I know.

I have to soon hand out tax information to the two excellent planters I had there last year. I'll let them make the decision on going for that one...

...and the phone will still probably ring a little more yet.

Post by **Scooter** » Tue Jan 24, 2017 5:41 pm

You do have one slight thing going for you. Fourteen cents USD is about nineteen cents Canadian, so the numbers aren't quite as catastrophic as they first appear. Still pretty dismal though. Also, I think your cost of living down there is probably only about 70% of ours.

Mind you, I'll take our lower wages and higher cost of living any day in return for keeping Canadian health care.

Post by **Scooter** » Tue Jan 24, 2017 8:48 pm

I can't help but follow the giant slowish-motion train wreck that is American politics right now. In thirty years, if we still exist, people will be teaching university-level history courses with titles like "January 2017."

In a very Harper-esque move, Trump today has silenced most public agencies, decreeing that all research be kept secret, and all communications with the public are to be by prior approval only. The National Park Service (and other agencies) had to delete tons of tweets about climate change and other contentious (to Republicans) topics, in a very 1984-like iron curtain coming down on public media.

However, there has been one bright light in the tunnel. For those of you who use Twitter, a parody NPS Badlands account has opened up, and it's off to a good start: https://twitter.com/BadIandsNPS

It's actually difficult to find the parody one unless you click on my link. That's because they're using a "fake L" in Badlands to make it look like it's the real one. If you look very closely, you'll see that the height of the letter L in the above link is not the same height as the letter D. For comparison, this is the real account that had all the tweets deleted: https://twitter.com/BadlandsNPS

"Half An Onion In A Bag" is also good: https://twitter.com/HalfOnionInABag

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Wed Jan 25, 2017 6:27 am

You do need good NewSpeak skills to live in the USA right now. Trump is an environmentalist, he says.

There is an old theory regarding Freedom of Speech which holds that the best way to reduce Hate and Hate Speech is to let it out in the open. I would say this theory is now being put to it's ultimate test.

Post by **Scooter** » Sat Jan 28, 2017 7:52 am

Although the reforestation industry in BC is currently looking pretty good right now, with the government talking about new investments, a big question is what will happen with Canadian softwood going to the States. Ultimately, that has a big effort on reforestation, although it takes about two seasons before the impact is really felt.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op ... story.html

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sun Jan 29, 2017 5:17 pm

Wasn't the Softwood Agreement already scheduled to be re-discussed this year, and still for some odd reason a separate duck from NAFTA?

Not much news here on planting. Several south-eastern National Forests havd bids out for their Shortleaf Pine restoration projects. All of them are at a bigger scale than I really want to tackle though - zero plans to try any Rookies this year with Unemployment at 4.6%. But I am thinking to enquire on some of these to see if they lack bidders, a possibility when they let out the bids so late in the southern planting season. Then maybe I could help them with just one or two manageable size sites. And one N.F. where I've planted Shortleaf before hasn't posted their bid yet.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Tue Jan 31, 2017 7:38 am

Haven't read that link yet on the upcoming Softwood re-negotiation but will eventually.

I did just look up the result of the first of the Shortleaf Pine jobs for the U.S. Forest Service. It is on a small National Forest in eastern North Carolina, where I have seen millions of trees go in the ground, regularly on land bordering the Federal holdings there. It went to a local contractor that is widely disliked by any client who has a true interest in, or is held accountable for, the actual results of a tree planting job - she was fired from Weyerhaeuser some 20 years ago now. Businesses I have been involved in regularly took clients away from her and the clients were very grateful to see that tree planting can be done well.

But then planting plugs on cut-over land is much, much more idiot-proof than planting bare-roots and it is true that just about anyone can do it well enough to make some trees grow. Skill levels needed are much much lower with plugs if the client is willing to pay for them and any scratch labor force one can assemble can get-r-did.

It went for 11.5¢ - to the contractor. I am unsure of the site prep involved however. I would have lost a bid at that price, gambling that no one else wanted to do Federal work with the increased chance of Labor scrutiny. She is not known for running a legal crew but there are plenty of sub-contractor of a sub-contractor type deals to supply one in the US reforestation industry today. The Federal scale for tree planting in North Carolina is the one and only place I have ever seen a Federal wage listed at exactly Minimum ($7.50 / hr) for the work, plus $4.50 in cash in lieu of "benefits" (no health are for you, 'amigo', good luck). Someone in the Federal Labor bureaucracy actually went out and determined the true regular local going rate for an occupation, rather than just automatically increasing it by 3% / year like all of their other wage scales.

The same type of work on State of North Carolina work is still going for 8-9¢ and is quite competitive, as a lot of that work is located quite close to where 3 different contractor's crews actually live (due to that is where there is a lot of hand agriculture work the rest of the year), and they all want to get work that is a close drive for the crew whenever they can.

On the price in Georgia, keep in mind those #s were also contractor prices, and would include all contractor overhead. On those big heavy plugs, I have never seen anyone reach 3,000 per day even on a farm field, and that is with 5-6 year veterans in perfect physical condition. 2,000 even is my personal best, and that is on a clean site only and an extremely tiring day. On clean cut-over, 1,750 seedlings is a nice routine #.

Post by **Scooter** » Wed Feb 01, 2017 1:18 pm

And with that, they started to destroy the wilderness ...

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/8 ... 8661932032

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Wed Feb 01, 2017 8:06 pm

It is like a trainwreck. The sad thing is, I am a passenger on the train.

Softball questions from call-in radio; the rightwing media bubble is frequently referred to now as a circle jerk.

Re: selling Federal land - the nominee to be Secretary of the Interior is on record as opposing Federal land sales, and the Republicans are not unified on that question. It is regularly pointed out that a GOP hero, Teddy Roosevelt, created the system of Federal lands we have today.

Re: Harvests on Federal land - the National Forests are not part of Dept. of Interior, they are part of Dept. of Agriculture, which is always run by Big Ag type people. Policy for the U.S. Forest Service is frequently not high on priority lists and I doubt anyone will remember to consider poor old USFS until much later this year. In some places around a lot of N.F. land, there is no longer much mill infrastructure as they havd been harvesting so little - and it becomes difficult for them to then sell timber. But only some places. Where mils are gone though, it is not easy to re-start a harvest program.

The agency is full of "ologists" these days, as in Biologists, Icthyologists, Geologists, even Archaeologists, and Timber Harvest is a lesser focus of historical "Multiple Use" policy. The Forest I am working on now only cuts 3 million board-feet per year on nearly a million acres. The 3 Forests in my home state each cut 40 million feet, but that barely dents their holdings.

There is fairly wide agreement that they could and should increase harvest. They struggle though - a Federal harvest contract is over an inch thick, and buying Federal timber is not always a first choice for buyers. A State level sale contract is only a few pages. And for a majority of proposed Federal timber sales in the West, they all trigger an automatic lawsuit by environmental groups.

Confirmed the riparian buffer job just east of Toledo today. One of the first tree plantings that will be done purposely because of the phosphorous loading in Lake Erie. I'm excited for this one; I think these will start to take off, and wet clay can't usually be planted by machine. There is a lot of tree planting work for the Chesapeak Bay restoration and it would be an obvious help for Lake Erie.

Maybe way southern Ontario is considering promoting similar plantings...

Post by **Scooter** » Tue Feb 07, 2017 9:48 pm

Newforest, I can only offer my sincere condolences. I'm not sure what I would do right now if I was an American, but I feel that it would be ungentlemanly.

Looks like Trump is now getting ready to just eliminate the EPA. THE ENTIRE AGENCY.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-con ... l/861/text

Post by **Scooter** » Tue Feb 07, 2017 9:54 pm

Trumps takes credit for "creating" a few hundred jobs at a Ford plant, then eliminate fifteen thousand at the EPA, plus ... well, the EPA.

I know he's not good with things like ... business ... considering his six bankruptcies. But seriously, does he not think that the fallout from firing fifteen thousand people at a single government agency might engender just a little tiny bit of a negative reaction in the press? Somehow I think the EO that allowed coal companies to dump waste into rivers got overlooked in the general furor last week, but I don't think the elimination of the entire EPA can be swept under the rug.

Or dumped into a river, so it were.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sat Feb 11, 2017 9:12 pm

Eliminating the streams protection rule for surface mining would actually cut tree planting but by a very, very tiny amount. And would actually be supported by a large majority of the people where those streams actually are. West Virginia gave Trump his largest majority of any state. WV state-level reclamation enforcement (the agency that comes out to make sure mining companies actually do what they are supposed to, after the mining) recently got called out by the Feds for basically not doing anything. But that was the Obama Feds.

I won't work for a coal company any more. They all teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, and so do I - doing a job and not getting paid at all would crush me completely.

But the phone has been ringing some...

And the anti-GOP base is more fired up than ever before. Trump could well ultimately prove to be the ultimate Progressive candidate.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sat Feb 11, 2017 9:19 pm

The proposal to sell some Federal lands (and junk Fed law enforcement positions) was withdrawn quickly; it garnered little support even within the GOP.

The idea of erasing the EPA altogether, the fate of that remains to be seen. It is a little known fact that the EPA was created by ..... Nixon. If much happens, it will just energize the anti-GOP forces in the next election. The EPA is not costing the USA many jobs at all, that is just corporate propaganda.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Wed Feb 15, 2017 8:59 pm

So today I went to a pre-bid meeting to do a small planting job on the one National Forest in West Virginia. It is at the north end of the Forest, an area I have never visited, after growing up on the south end and lately working there for several weeks each spring.

This job would have it all, within 15 minutes away -

State Park open year round with hot showers - check
On-site camping behind a locked gate - check
Beautiful high altitude scenery - check
Trout - check
Live music venue catering to touring acoustic artists - check
Brightly painted V-dubs laying around in shambolic states of maybe running, maybe not - check
No less than 3 Breweries including one with the cojones to declare itself the "Best in WV" and where I know a bartender - check

In other words, yes, I would like to live in a hippie ski town. And plant trees. And get paid to plant the trees on top of all that?

The only down-side it that it is a small job. Only 6K stems. Two days for a cracker Vet? Nope.

3-0 White Pine, as in three years old, bare-roots. Could be ugly-ish, and near ten days of planting, with seedling prep and a shortish walk-in. Darn.

Post by **Scooter** » Sat Feb 18, 2017 9:08 pm

Probably a biased source of news, but if the truth is anything similar to what they're proclaiming, this will probably turn a few more people against the GOP:

http://blog.humanesociety.org/wayne/201 ... stwp021617

Note I said, "a few."

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Mon Feb 20, 2017 9:24 pm

Not much planting news for me right now. Moved down to a "Release" job where I planted Oak for a hunt club several years ago. They are being swallowed by the rest of the natural regen, so it is time to intervene. Absurdly warm weather right now, not good for the bare-root business. Probably start planting around the first of the month, though this Consultant might have miscellaneous other jobs for me. And am starting to prepare an application to be in a bidder pool for marking timber...cuz you can't plant trees year-round, though if you count herbaceous wetland species, I have planted something on all 12 months of the calendar. The non-forested wetland jobs are usually done by the specialty growers of those plants, mostly for stormwater retention ponds around parking lots, etc. Quite lucrative.

Good piece in the LA Times today about Coal and The West. Natural Gas is wrecking it, and Trump would basically have to become a true Socialist, perhaps Marxist even, to do anything about it:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-p ... story.html

re: Federal lands and predator management - this is a classic Urban vs. Rural political question. A definite issue in my home state of Michigan, where the predator in question is the Wolf, though the Federal angle is listing under the Federal Endangered Species Act, which is localized in application. I think the predators in Alaska are not officially Endangered. I could agree with there being a 'States Rights' issue here, though that canard is only dragged out on one side of an argument and routinely ignored in other arguments. Alaska has had running policy debates on this for a long time. Hunting is a sport in slow decline in the USA; in general hunters are losing political power on wildlife management policy for the most part.

Post by **Scooter** » Fri Mar 03, 2017 6:51 pm

Here's a photo of someone planting some hardwoods in Mississippi today!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRMroqhjKaN

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sun Mar 05, 2017 3:47 pm

I would wager those came from a public/government nursery. Large scale commercial producers of bare-root hardwoods top prune them to an 18" standard generally, to facilitate planting. Public nurseries are a lot more lazy.

It's better to plant the pruned ones - better survival. But some clients who don't know much about tree seedlings will issue a categorical NO on the idea. (And order the biggest bare-roots they can find, sometimes).

On sand mine reclamation I used to plant just root-stocks basically, cutting the whole top off save about 2" above the original soil line. On a dry site those would outperform unpruned seedlings.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Tue Mar 14, 2017 8:00 pm

people who work, manually, remain invisible, even in the subject of an article that quickly drifts to people with "real" jobs = Information Technology

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/ ... picks=true

me, well when the interior freezes it is good to have friends on the coast, so I'm planting with my old crew, more for something more fun to do than staring at a screen all day than the actual pay, $43/M. probably several 2 million tree veterans on this crew. it's a little bittersweet to hang out with these guys right now. Trump hangs over all. we talk about the game last night and whether that next flight of clouds is dark enough to actually drop rain. robots don't need to talk about the actual work, especially when the client is an idiot wasting a killer site index by flat planting land with a rich, but tight soil that doesn't drain out = stunted, sick Pine trees later. one Hurricane or strong Tropical depression this summer and he loses all 300 acres of seedlings. all of the intelligently managed land around him is bedded first, we can see a few plantations on the horizons we have planted over the years.

lost at 7-10 days to this newest cold air bubble drifting over the Pole. don't know how many yet because I don't know if the nursery lifted the bare-roots before their ground froze up. but since it's a public nursery no one there can probably be bothered to sort that key information out for my client. might have to give up (to some friends) the beautiful job on WV's highest mountain though I do have the one by the ski towns contracted. the problem is having the bare-root pine job at home, last, on a dry site. I still think it will be a fast, warm spring. Or I can hope the wavy jet stream comes through for me and keeps spilling that precious cold air. which makes a mountain job un-plantable.

if only someone in the nursery industry in my home state would step into 21st century seedling technology...but they all tell me they are too old to launch a new product line

but I did get to look at a massive cone tumbler at a nursery that Weyerhaeuser just sold, and the new nursery company probably doesn't want. I'll offer them a little more than the scrap value but then I have to figure out how to haul it home and then where to put it. the seed business is as good as any other when 21st Century Human Beings no longer want to go outdoors.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Mon Apr 19, 2021 11:42 am

What's new for planting trees in the USA? Nothing, really.

If four years of Donald Trump as President, topped off with a border-restricting, recession-causing, full-blown Pandemic didn't change the basic mechanics of what foreign labor does or doesn't do in our country then nothing ever will. And really nothing at all actually changed on the use of illegal labor in the USA the whole time the Donald attempted to Build The Wall. A few illegals here and there and a few employers here and there got in some trouble, but you can't have a law 100% just for show, now can we? Someone has to make it look like something is happening. So some 10-ish million illegals are still working away in our economy, because it needs them. And everyone except the idiots who actually believe the Survivor:White House show on TV all day every day is actually real basically understands that. Though very few understand that all the illegals running Chinese buffets controlled by the Triads didn't cross the Mexican border, anyway.

That is now largely tangential to tree planting though, which uses completely legal foreign labor on temporary visas. The first thing that happened when virus impacts peaked early was the government actually accelerated processing of farm-worker visas, despite the quick spike in unemployment to 15%+. Why get down on your hands and knees to work when we can just ring up checks for everyone on the unborn grandkids' credit cards? We can't be having tomatoes get more expensive for everyone, now can we. England has been in a state of public debt for well over 300 years now and paying taxes to pay for all the government services in the past is just how life works in The West, and always will.

And that is largely tangential to tree planting too, which for the most part doesn't use those Ag visas, but is part of a special class of visas called H-2B. After four years of bluster and that pandemic driven unemployment spike, last summer the Trump admin finally attempted to shut off the H-2B system. It took the Industrial Forestry business about 8 whole weeks to get that reversed on a special exemption for Forestry only and they are currently busy attempting to get the # of visas it allows to be increased, because the Industrial Monoculture Forestry system needs them. Americans simply are not going to plant trees.

Meanwhile lefty green think tank types are awash in proposals to simply hire young Americans to plant tree our way out of global warming. But in that, everyone wants to be the General and from inside their comfortable offices they have basically little to no idea how when or where the Soldiers will do such work.

About half the trees I planted in my 2020 season could have been planted upside down, for all the difference it would have made to anyone. But I am sure all of those projects were touted as great successes in the year zero of the coming decade of tree planting. Trees reproduce naturally? Who knew? All too few, and less and less of such people every year, sadly. Land is empty white space on a computer screen, just begging for people to come and plant trees on it, underneath all the trees that are already there.

I still plant trees and do my damnedest to get involved before the seedlings are purchased to help ward off so much of the simply lighting the money on fire work that goes on. But I have very few plans to hire anyone, ever again. It's just not worth carrying the insurance and spending the time to train people who are just going to quit anyway. So I stay super busy and anyone who has some get-up-and-Go can too, planting trees in the USA.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Thu May 20, 2021 9:14 am

Are you yourself running any projects in the summer? And with the increase in housing prices, is there any *good* news for the US planting industry in 2021?

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Fri Dec 17, 2021 8:33 pm

Thomas wrote: ↑Thu May 20, 2021 9:14 am Are you yourself running any projects in the summer? And with the increase in housing prices, is there any *good* news for the US planting industry in 2021?

Hello, I saw where I was summoned recently on KKRF, so figgered to check in. I don't really plan to hire any time soon. I do saw work in the summer but hope to transition to marking timber then as pre-commercial thinning in hot temperatures is just no fun and I would rather work in the shade if possible.

I did end up planting until June 29th this past summer however. The final project of the year was a scalp+plant+tube job on which I did quite well @ $2.50 / stem. I only had one day where I hit a pure 200 count (my friends who have done hundreds of thousands of tubes hold 200/day as Personal Bests); my usual average was more like 150. But that included 2 separate strong heat waves and I lost the one cool period across the term of that job to having to move all my seed gear out of a shop building for several days after my landlord died. 3,600 tubes was a mountainous project overall and some help would have been nice.

The biggest struggle on that one wasn't actually the heat, but the pure stupidity of the project. The land-owner had finally finished off removing all the Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris, a major European timber species), which is quite invasive here and just doesn't make good timber, typically dying from pathogens well before reaching sawlog diameters. It was planted extensively in previous decades for Christmas Tree production. All good so far.

Somewhat fortunately for me the land owner dragged the block extensively, mostly to prep for a pair of "pollinator plots" which are a common project here now where a mix of wildflower / prairie species are planted for Bee & Butterfly habitat. Along the way he also dragged the areas I had to plant and that frequently made the sod scalping much easier for me. But is where one portion of the stupidity crept in.

Most of the project area had a pretty good amount of tree species regeneration. Black Cherry was the predominant example @ 3-400 stems/acre, but there were plenty of Populus spp. colonies, as well as maybe 50 Amelanchier spp. per acre as well as 2 Maple species (Red & Sugar) and the occasional Red Oak as well.

I went out there and planted Black Cherry, Amelanchier, and White Oak in an equal mix. Overall it was good to add White Oak to the site. But most of it will be just buried in the natural regen and it is pretty unlikely the land-owner will ever come back and release those Oaks from competition. Everything he dragged was sprouting like crazy of course, and by the end of the summer many of the Black Cherry sprouts were now twice as tall as the little seedlings in the tubes. The total cost of the project was somewhere past $10 / stem. All just to pointlessly add little trees to an existing forest, for the most part. The same mistake I have seen for years and years and years.

The planting stock was abysmal, as well. Very little of the stock met the expensive height spec, with some seedlings only a few inches tall. Small stock survives better, in some cases, however small deciduous stock is very vulnerable to insect defoliation without enough root reserves to flush leaves more than once, and I was very worried the entire time. The White Oak came from Tennessee, though I am the only person that knows that. It will be interesting to watch it for frost damage there at the very northern edge of it's natural range (northern Michinga). The other 2 species came from who knows where; the nursery involved doesn't actually grow very much stock any more and is more of a seedling broker. About 10% of the Oaks I was given were already dead though again I was the only one who understood that. I demanded they replace the ones I culled and they did. Overall I achieved around 99% survival in the tubes even while planting through a drought and a heat wave. Planting gel will get you through anything and only an idiot can kill deciduous planting stock completely, though there are plenty of idiots in the world.

The even sadder part of the project was the installation of 10K Red Pine seedlings, which went in by machine in early April. Everyone involved was upset that I couldn't plant the hardwoods at the same time, but this was the last job I accepted for the season and I didn't reach it until late May. First call, first serve. The bare-root RP stock was delivered in black plastic garbage bags! It was then planted by a brand new machine planter who otherwise runs a food plot business for wildlife. It took a crew of 4 three days to put in the 10K stems; an experienced machine planter (they have all retired now) would do it with 2 people in one day. They did not use planting gel. About 1/3 of the stock was dead before bud break even commenced. I had to plant 400 White Pine at random in the hardwood areas, back in early April, from that same planting stock and could only achieve about 75% survival.

Everyone involved just shrugged and said "Oh well, drought." I planted plug Red Pine everywhere else last season and averaged 90% survival pretty easily. The entire project, both the borderline failure Red Pine planting and the pointless tree tube work, was funded by the US Federal government. So it goes on projects run by people with degrees in "Resource Conservation" from several states away from where they end up working, &/or "Ecology" or even just generic "Biology." People with Forestry degrees here go straight into lucrative procurement work and don't look back.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Fri Dec 17, 2021 9:05 pm

As for news on the planting business in the USA there isn't much. Planting is still a big business with probably 1.5 Billion seedlings planted per year. The serious timber investment corps. don't mess around with idiocy as described above. There is an unlimited amount of work available really, but the foreign labor crews are still the only solution and always will be, in my opinion. Americans just don't grow up understanding anything about physical labor any more, and our society continues to tell everyone that if you sit on your butt to make money, you deserve more money than those who don't - it's that simple. Although there will always be some people who can and will do what it takes to plant trees, there won't be a critical mass of such people to in turn make the seedling nursery business very viable either. (Seedling nurseries also use seasonal foreign labor nearly exclusively).

Overall I think my country is at a bit of a serious crossroads lately with the concept of "labor." The pandemic has accelerated one basic trend line (early retirement) that everyone has seen coming for decades now, one summed up in just two words: Baby Boom. As that population cohort retires from working life, there are smaller cohorts coming along in younger ages as the birth rate has declined. Anyone can see that the solution to that will have to simply be increased immigration, just to staff nursing homes, to give one example.

Meanwhile one of our political parties has continued to derive support from racist fear/hatred of The Other, which seems to me to be one of the oldest routes to political power in all of human history. Immigration is deeply unpopular and I have seen media coverage that something like 2 million fewer immigrants have entered our workforce since 2016, than would have been expected to based on trends earlier in the 2010s. Immigrants both legal and illegal continue to arrive, which is all anyone can really focus on. But the numbers are lower, and not enough to meet the basic demand for labor in the largest economy in the world.

To me the result is obvious: Inflation. Of course this is good for low-skill occupations, in a way. But prices of everything are rising, quick, and everyone of all classes and occupations is upset about it. Businesses of all types (probably except most "Professionals" outside of health care) are struggling to find enough warm bodies to meet demand for their goods and services. Automation/robots will be one solution. Will it be the only solution? Will anyone pull the full Alexander and cut the Gordian Knot? I dunno.

As for the tree-planting business, it too will struggle with labor supply. Seasons will grow longer and seedling survival will suffer. The visa system can't really keep up with demand for foreign labor, and no one in Government wants to address that by simplifying it or adding to the visa totals though that last concept is in front of Congress once again right now. It is the new "Third Rail" of American politics.

So I know I will stay as absolutely busy as I can be, typically planting 7 days a week in the spring unless there are lightning storms around, or extensive travel is needed for me or the seedlings or both. I am trying to lighten the schedule a little so I can do more work with the spring seeded species - Aspens, soft Maple, Willow - but the free time for that is hard to come by. I no longer work long seasons in the south-east through the winter months as my parents are just too old now, though I do have a nice project in Kentucky this February, which will be a nice outdoor break from indoor cone processing work that I will start up soon (still on saw work right now).

I do hope to somehow work in planting project design to help reduce the pointlessness of so many projects I see, but that aspiration is still slow to develop. I also expect there will be a renewed push by Government (in the next year or 2) to put together crews of young Americans to "Plant Trees!" And I would like to work with that inevitable attempt though I think it will probably be doomed to failure. But if I can get some sort of work or consulting on such projects, the first thing I will do is tell them to bring in a few more experienced experts - from Canada. No one (outside of already overbooked contractors) in our country understands the physicality of planting work or the support infrastructure necessary to build to put planters out on a planting site. Kids wearing hiking shoes eating McDonalds every day ain't gonna cut it.

Another factor now beginning to limit tree planting here is a very simple one: supply of tree seed. Collecting tree seed is physical outdoor work and those with experience doing it keep leaving the business by the most definitive way possible: Death. Due to old age. But then seed collectors were exploited via low wages for a long time so the Forestry biz and Gov't agencies are now just reaping what they sowed in that regard.

For anyone with the gumption to just go outside and work in the weather, the sky remains the limit.

Post by **Scooter** » Sat Dec 18, 2021 4:04 am

Thanks for this post. Your write-ups are always a fascinating insight into reforestation south of the border. Always an interesting read.

A few points/questions:

- 1.5 billion trees, that surprised me. But at the same time, didn't surprise me. Canada probably plants around 700 million per year nationally right now, although now that the federal liberal 2 Billion Tree program is ramping up, there should be an extra 250-300 million added to that total (per year) by 2026. I didn't expect that the US is currently planting more trees than Canada, although considering the population and resource extraction and growth rates, it should be.

- The biggest impediment to having Canadians come to the US to plant trees, even as a small influx of "expert advisors" to act as a catalyst to start building an industry, will be health care. My guess is that twenty percent of Canadian tree planters end up going to a hospital (or walk-in clinic) each season for various problems. Most of them aren't serious (ie. not life-threatening), but we take planters to town for everything from stitches and infections to sprains and impalements. When a Canadian visits a hospital in Canada, we just whip out the provincial health care card, and you're in and out without any cost to the planter. But I could envision all kinds of problems for a Canadian who has to visit a hospital for stitches or an infection in the US.

- You mention Planting Gel twice. What's that?

- You mention soft maples. I had to look that up. Soft maple refers to any of four common maple species with wood that is lower density than sugar maple, namely: red maple, silver maple, boxelder, and bigleaf. And hard maple refers to sugar maple. Am I correct in this understanding? I've only planted red, silver, and sugar maples. Boxelder is outside of the range in Canada, although I've seen bigleaf on some of my blocks on Vancouver Island. What about any of the other species of maple in North America? Are they included in the "soft" group? For instance, I've seen Rocky Mountain maple in the gullies of some of the blocks that my camp will be planting near Cache Creek this coming May. And I've seen striped maple in the woods on the east coast, in NB/NS.

- Finally, how do we get more people interested and experienced in collecting seed? I feel that's a critical skill that's going to be a big logistical problem in Canada too, especially as we start planting more deciduous species throughout the country.

mwainwright · Post by **mwainwright** » Sat Dec 18, 2021 7:57 am

Thanks for that newforest, I really enjoy your reports from south of the border. Yours is a perspective that is pretty unique, and not really available anywhere else.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sun Dec 19, 2021 4:50 pm

Stumbled upon an op-ed in an Oregon newspaper just now; author is director of an Oregon Loggers Association:

“ Last year, more than one-third of forestry employers were unable to secure enough U.S. or H-2B labor to meet their needs. It is anticipated that more than 130,000 visas will be requested for the second allotment in FY 2022 where only 33,000 visas are available.”

https://www.registerguard.com/story/opi ... 927301002/

In the western U.S., a major labor need now (referenced in that op-ed) is for fuel reduction work. I did it once in Montana, thanks to this very website. Just drop small diameter material, all day, every day. I enjoyed it. After a while you end up with the saw in one stem before the previous stem has fully hit the ground. We were high up in an ‘island range’ out on the plains, disjunct from the main front of the Rockies. The scenery was phenomenal, looking across to the Crazy Mountains, the core refuge range of the Crow people. Could drink beers on the road to the bar and then walk out the door with a cold one for the ride home/camp (all dirt ranch roads, no people), all right in front of the deputies, who respected us because we were working. Fishing woulda been phenomenal too if I coulda stayed longer, with unlimited large Brookies to catch, considered a weed out there.

Anyone who wants to work in the woods in the USA certainly can. Though it would certainly help if one is willing to become fully immersed in hearing Spanish as a first language all day. Doing that permanently changed my life for the better. Compared to having grown up hungry in a one room dirt floor cinder block hut in Chiapas, and then smiling all day every day out on a tree planting job anyway, whatever happens to me in my first world life just rolls right off ultimately.

About 6 weeks till planting for me right now, can’t wait. A lot of conifer cones to open between then & now though. Is kind of interesting work and will be nice to hang around a wood stove keeping the barn warm. But would kind of rather be out releasing crop trees, which is a superior Forestry investment to planting, in my opinion.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sun Dec 19, 2021 5:11 pm

1.5 Billion seedlings - is a number I saw some years ago now; no current reference. The southeast and Pacific NW regions cut&plant on a large scale and I doubt that has declined much. ArborGen alone probably produces 400 million seedlings in the south.

Planting Gel - this is a critical material for dry site planting in my opinion. It is a polymer that absorbs water; larger granules are commonly sold at Big Box stores everywhere for use in potting soil mixes. For seedlings, a fine grade is used. It is mixed with water and then bare-roots are dipped in to it. If handled properly, good amounts of the gel go in the ground with the roots, though production crews will typically sling the stuff off as fast as no one is looking. It also protects roots from drying between leaving the nursery packaging and being planted. It is also sometimes used as a root packing medium for seedlings, which are dipped in it at the nursery.

Once in the ground, the gel will release water as soil around it dries out - and the roots are right there adjacent. Survival % will definitely improve; it is like insurance against drought. I firmly believe that on the driest sites of sand and rock, quality bare-roots slathered in planting gel would outperform plugs in terms of raw survival %. But planting stock and quality of planting both have to be top notch.

The most common brand name for it is Terra•Sorb.

I have long asked plug growers to use it in their soil mixes - & they in turn are sometimes approached by manufacturers of gel who point out that it reduces watering needs while the stock is growing. But I can’t get anyone to try it. I live in an area of sandy soils and I think it would be an advantage built in to the plugs.

newforest · Post by **newforest** » Sun Dec 19, 2021 5:25 pm

Soft Maple - here in Michigan is either Red or Silver Maple. Box Elder is of course an Acer also but isn’t referred to as a Maple. I have to cut some in a few days; might or might not stay motivated enough to pick the seed on it. Truly a trash tree but probably planted at least a little bit on wetland projects. Often has a cool red color to the heartwood; I want to figure out a use for that.

I think Silver Maple should be planted much more on wetlands. The Bald Cypress of the north. For that matter, Bald Cypress should be moved north, immediately, imo. I planted some near Toledo, so maybe some day Erie will bring you some.

We have 2 natural sub-dominant Maples, Mountain (A. spicatum) and Striped (A. pennsylvanicum). Striped M. can be a weed tree that competes with timber species but Mountain M. is smaller and not problematic. I enjoy finding and picking both of them although the seedling market uses very few, perhaps not even 5K per year each. Both pretty trees in their way, particularly the Striped. Neither reach even pulpwood diameters.