Now that's a random subject for a motorcycle thread isn't it?

But, there is a good reason for this. We are currently involved at work with a major conversion of a large farm from dryland sheep farming to a massive dairy unit.

Got the latest plans for next years program of new pivot irrigators today. Did a quick calc and it would appear that it requires the felling of 12 km(!) of current shelter belt planting on the farm.

This prompted a discussion at afternoon smoko of the merits of tree harvesters.

One of the guys had never heard of them so he needed a Youtube demo.


Let's just think about that; if you had a team of ten guys on the ground. they could still not cut down and process two trees in just over 50 seconds. Let alone the very poor safety record (in this country) of the forestry industry in general.

 

Round here those things are the industry standard. However they are not converted excavators but high tech purpose built six wheeler crawlers filled to the brim with computer technology, they can go pretty much anywhere and pack enough lights to illuminate a football stadium. "Moto:s" we call them (MOniTOimikone/ multitasking machine or sth), there are several factories here. For exaple picture google "Ponsse" and see what I mean. Bit of a pain to move the links around with the phone. Some of the smaller ones work via a remote control so the harvester can stand at a distance and operate the machine from there. You can even get education to become a MoTo operator via a polytechinc college.

 

Great stuff..............

I need something like that for my lawn

Actually any large powered equipment to play with would be nice!

Cheers, SB

 

Yeah, they are pretty cool pieces of kit. When I think about how long it would take me to cut down two trees and cut them up into stove lengths: I have to wonder why I bother?

An excellent display of the power of hydraulics (when it is used for good, and not evil)

 

Tree huggers look out!

 

I do want to ask, just out of curiosity sake, what happens to the stripped bark and the leavings? The only reason I ask is with the traditional method, the bark and outer skin can be turned into other products. It would be interesting to see the cost savings of stripping it in the field minus what could be gained by turning it into other things.


I must say that is an impressive tool though. I've cut many cord of wood in my day. That makes it too easy. :-)

 

I'll have to show that my my lumberjack friend.

On second thought, why depress him?

 

All the bits left over are burnt here, they sometimes let the public go through for firewood but usually it all just gets burnt on the spot.

 

Here, there's a machine for that too. It gathers the bark, branches etc, bundles them up to tight packages and stacks the stick "logs" up to be taken away. They are then dried and ground to sawdust like material which is then compressed into pellets that can be burned in special types of furnaces to heat up buildings like cowsheds and such.

Pellergy | Wood Pellet Burner

Here's a link to a US manufacturer but there are several finnish ones too. At one point people did a lot of conversions to their burners cause the price of firewood and heating oil was so high due to a few very cold and long winters.

 

Yeah, the pellet burners (using the forestry scrap pellets) were popular here for a couple of years.

There appears to be a couple of drawbacks though.

They just don't kick **** as much as a logburner does. Good for atmospheric heating in a formal lounge or such like, but just don't kick out enough heat for being the main supply for the house though.

If the power goes off they stop working.

And they can only burn pellets. For the last six weeks of winter I was burning some kind of American Pine that can out as gluts around the pipes for the new pivot irrigators for the dairy farm. Completely free; go pick them up, slice to the required length, sit back and enjoy.