Selective Logging Near the House - Oregon

Well some of the trees were my pets that I have watered and fertilized for 22 years now. But they have grown so massive and being so close to the house that they are dangerous in a big storm or a a raging fire. Some were actually leaning towards the house. We had a number removed by the shed to make that area safer and easier to move things around. It has been quite a job even though we hired Charlie and company to log - they do it on shares. With excavator the work was really fast and there was a lot of clean up - fir trees have a lot limbs. The giant trees were Grand Fir and the others are Douglas Fir.

We have so much more light around our house now. It will be much brighter all year long as well as much safer in a storm on wildfire.


Charlie has helped us with several harvests. Here he is cutting my baby tree, it was kind of hard to watch but amazing at the same time. It was over 42" in diameter and had grown a lot in my 22 years of watering and feeding it.
His helper is driving a wedge in the cut to get the momentum of the tree falling in the right direction.
Charlie threaded the needle and dropped the tree perfectly so other trees were not damaged.

Boooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. The ground really shook.
Charlie cut it off nice and level so we could put............ put................ put............. yes, you guessed it a statue on it. HHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAHAHAAAAAAA
They run a tape to measure the log for the optimum length for the mill - get the most wood and the most $$$. You really only make $$$ if you harvest a large area and send 15 truck loads to the mills.
Here is the wee one for size comparison to my pet tree.

Someone is feeling the spirit of the timber faller.............. DUCK.



What an amazing machine. A great tool for harvesting on ground with a slight elevation. Does a super clean up job. Dan is an expert operator.
Here are the logs ready to be hauled to the mill. A truck comes with a loader. They are cut by computer and head to a Home Depot store near you. haha
lots more light around the house now. kind of like clearing the park from right near the house.
I want to build a covered space behind the shed to store firewood so it is nice and dry. In this part of Oregon you can NEVER have enough dry space. It is humorous to have people move up from California in the summer when the weather is sunny and beautiful and then see them plant a for sale sign in their yard in Feb. when we have been socked in with clouds and rain for 90 days and counting.




Charlie is cutting the tree. The front side was knotched and the knotched removed. Now they are cutting and driving a wedge in to get it to tilt towards where they want it to fall.

see the video on youtube
the Final Wedge - look out Janai

Charlie makes the final cut. He motions to tell Janai to move over around the side of the house near me to be safer.

The big tree falls hard and loud - having problems getting this video to upload - oh well

This is the final drop. A huge Boooommm and the ground really shook as it hit the driveway. Some limbs break and are driving about 2 feet into the earth from the force of the falling tree.

I heard that Oregon Forestry said that if a person owned 250 acres you can selectively harvest timber and forever and make about $60,000 a year. Selective harvest is when you pick just some trees out of a stand or forest. You leave smaller trees to grow and be harvested in future years. Such thinning makes for a really healthy forest. Ours was nasty when we bought it - absolutely dead underneath with nothing growing. By harvesting a few trees here and there we have a very healthy stand with lots of plants growing underneath. Great habitat for all the critters - bear, cougar, elk, deer, racoon, etc.


There a few really steep places on mountains is where clear cutting is the only way to log. But it is way overused and a ton of soil is washed down off the moutain mucking up the streams and rivers. Oh well, you take care of what you can.

The undergrowth in our forest is so intense and huge I call it the jungle. I have to carve out little paths so we can walk through it. Man the deer really appreciate that as I can tell from their tracks but then so do the cougars when they are hungry for some fresh deer.