I’m feeling a little sheepish after posting dra­mat­i­cally about that steep clearcut, and then not actu­ally get­ting sent there the next day. So I thought I would defend my honour by pointing out that last spring we worked a near-​​vertical high-​​lead block that was frankly worse than the one cur­rently in play. Here is proof:

Instead of the high-​​lead block, I ended the shift on a little crew tasked with some fill planting. It was good fill: a 10 year old plan­ta­tion with big trees and clear sandy sub­strate in between, which makes for some of my favourite work; swooping from spot to spot, lining up likely microsites while you work through the maze of existing trees, heads-​​up spatially-​​aware car­dio­vas­cular planting. We were also get­ting $0.25 a tree, which is pretty damn good. I will stoop for quarters.

Our spring trees are all planted, and we’re cur­rently pro­rogued, waiting for the summer trees the mill has on order to get going again. Something tells me some of those trees may yet be going into that big steep block.