1.2 million trees later...

Hallo!

We're now on a break between our spring and summer contracts so we have a few days off to leave camp and take a holiday. For most of us, it will involve anything but camping. The last day of our spring contract was by far the most interesting and one that none of us want to repeat. There were 13 000 trees to plant (that isn't a lot) which should normally take ~10 people the morning to do but it took the whole camp a full day (until 5pm) to get them in the ground.
Here are the reasons:
- The trees were not spruce or pine, they were aspen. Think long bare sticks.
- They varied from 4 to 7 feet tall.
- They had bare roots (no nice small and neat plugs)
- We had to dig* holes to plant the trees and some people resorted to planting with fire shovels.

The general consensus was that it was a job better fit to a landscaping company: it felt more like gardening than treeplanting. Thankfully we don't have to do this sort of thing on a regular basis because it was for study purposes rather than straight reforestation.


The trucks lining up to get washed. It's been a very wet season and a day of work can have them looking like this again.
Jasper is getting quite big and still working on being accepted by the other camp dogs.
One of the uses for duct tape. This tape job makes for even funnier tan lines than the usual glove one.

One of our walk-ins.

A spruce tree. Including the pod, these ones were about the length of my hand and forearm.
Sunset last night.

That's about it for now. We're hoping the beginning of summer also marks the end of the hail storms we've been having. Which reminds me of one last interesting story before I head off: my wool long sleeved shirt got eaten by a groundhog. I left it out to dry after a hail storm and came back to find that half a sleeve and part of the neckline was missing. Earlier in the day I'd caught him at our cache eating trees...I wish he had stopped at that.
xoxo,
Freyja

*For those of you wondering: we don't consider our treeplanting as "digging" because we don't have to scoop out any dirt in order to put the seedlings in. This is also part of the reason we don't consider ourselves gardeners.

Planting for Dummies

Here are some of the first pictures of the season! Hopefully this gives you a bit of an idea of what we do out here, though I have yet to take my camera onto the block with me to take pictures of the actual planting.
That said, here are a few treeplanting terms that might come up over the next few months:

Block: any area of clear-cut land that we are planting.

Crew: A crew typically consists of five planters and a crew boss (who also plants unless it is a double crew in which case the crew boss will spend the day checking trees, etc).

Planting bags: Two bags that sit on either hip and are filled with a few hundred seedlings.

Cluster fugde: When all the planters in a crew are squeezed into a tight space of land to fill it in and spend more time crossing each others lines and such than planting. CFs are frustrating.

Fist: Fiberglass Insulated Seedling Transport. They fit onto the back of a pick up like a huge cooler and can hold between 20-30 boxes each of which have between 300-400 trees.

Cream: Really nice land without grass , slash, rocks, and other obstacles.

Slash: the logs and branches left over from clear cutting....somewhat like the excess in a meat packing factory. Slash can be spread out over the block or can be in large piles: it's nice when it's all neatly piled up...and even nicer when it's not there at all.

Burn piles: Large slash piles that have been burned down in a controlled manner. They, too, are cream.

Shnarb: General bad terrain including slash, fallen trees, poplars, grass etc. We don't like shnarb.

Duct tape: used for taping up fingers (to replace gloves), cuts, as tensor bandages, to seal boots, cover blisters, as protection from sunburn, keeping headphones in, etc.

More will likely crop up over the next couple weeks so I will add to it as they come. Here are some pictures of how we spend our days.

Me, Kate, and Tammy.
We leave very odd looking yellow grass spots when we move camps.
We get daily shows of interesting cloud patterns.
We get to drive into storms...and out of them.


We rely on trucks to bring us to work everyday and though they start out new at the beginning of the season, they are put through hell on the dirt roads. The drives to and from the blocks are quite possibly the most dangerous part of our day.
The trees we plant will go towards things such as pulp, particle board, pressure board, and other paper products roughly 70 years down the road when they're fully grown.
Birthdays are celebrated with a bang.
And finally, we save puppies. This is Jasper after his first bath. He is 6 weeks old now, we got him on our last day off and he's now trying to blend in with the four other camp dogs. (Don't worry mum and dad, he's not mine, I just got to pick him out).
So far Alpine (Tim and Mary's dog) is the only one who will give Jasper the time of day.