“Some of the logs are quite heavy …

So the site warden said in his notice of today’s session: “Please make sure you wear the stoutest boots you own.”

Knowing from previous experience that he was not kidding, I duly looked out my ex-Bundeswehr boots (these boots are made for walkin’) and even gave them a loving polish the day before:

(Sorry, don’t know what barracks-German is for ‘bulling’ boots.) 

Our tools officer had looked out his steel toe-cap boots, which aroused some interest among the inquisitive:

Other volunteers, I suspect, were relying on not dropping said heavy logs:

 

Our task today – the reason for wearing cherished stout boots – was timber extraction.

Indeed the task called for not only stout boots, but also stout gloves (who cares if they don’t match?) and stout jacket:

Extracting timber was something we had done before, at the same site: in Paradise Wood.  On this occasion, another of the Earth-Trust wardens was on hand, to drive full trailers back to the Centre to be unloaded.  The idea was that “we” (the volunteers, that is) “should be able to get a few trailers filled up.” 

In fact we managed only to get two trailers filled up.  In part this was because we had a delayed start to the session.  We don’t seem to have much luck at this site with vehicles in the way:

Another thing we don’t have much luck with at this site – and this end of the site in particular – is the conjunction of Earth-Trust landrover with Green-Gym thermos flask.  On this occasion the thermos had been loaded in the back of the landie, along with the tea-crate.  Unfortunately, the ride along a bumpy track did not do the thermos a lot of good:

In his welcome to the session the site warden had said, “All we need today is tea, cake, and gloves.”  Thankfully, more water for tea could be obtained when the trailer was taken over to the Earth-Trust centre for unloading.  Gloves we had a bagful of.  And cake we had in abundance:

The warden was right about our not needing anything other than gloved hands and booted feet.  He was also right about some of the logs being heavy.  

The first job along any fresh row within the plantation was to clear a gangway of brash – not so much because the brash itself is a trip hazard, but because it can obscure other hazards such as tree stumps:

Logs could then be passed along a line of volunteers and stacked by the path.  As we worked on each stretch, this rapidly created the impression that we were blocking ourselves in:

Stacked logs could then be transferred to the trailer.  Once full, but not over-loaded, the trailer could be towed to the Centre, and unloaded.  And that’s where we encountered a bottleneck in the work-flow, for the journey from plantation to Centre and back – though short in distance – took getting on for half an hour.

Meantime, the chain-gang could continue creating more stacks.  Those can be loaded on to trailer by other hands on another day.  This was quite a dynamic process, with each volunteer carrying a log to the next person in the chain:

As logs were passed along, Green-Gymmers kept up an ever-changing pattern of comment on the size, weight, and balance of each log.  At one point:

"This one's just a baby."

"This one's a teenager."

"Here's the man of the house."

"And this is granny ..."

"Is this what they call a family tree?"

By the end of the session, it was thought we had moved c 2 tonnes of wood.  Some 26 tonnes are burned each year in the biomass boiler on site.  So only another 2 doz tonnes to go!