Horse team helping harvest timber on Appalachian Mountain Club land

By Ted Shina

    TOWNSHIP 7, RANGE 9 — The wonderful power of modern hydraulic systems is taken for granted these days. In the logging industry, it’s possible to harvest timber in the north woods, yard it to the landing, prepare it as logs, pulpwood, or chip wood, then haul it to a mill without a human hand touching it – even once. 

Photo courtesy of Ted Dins

HORSE POWER — Jeannot Carrier of E.J. Carrier, Inc and a pair of Belgian draft horses conducted a timber harvest of Appalachian Mountain Club land near Greenville.

    It wasn’t too many years ago when all that work was done with muscle power.  The big muscle back then came from a horse, or, better yet, a pair of them. We’ve all seen pictures of the times back in the river driving era. The loggers lived in rough, rustic logging camps all winter, then they drove the wood down the streams and rivers to the water-powered mills in Old Town and Bangor. Horses were the primary means to get the wood to the water, until the steam engine came along.
    On the Appalachian Mountain Club’s (AMC’s) conservation and recreation lands near Greenville, we’re taking advantage of an opportunity to turn back the clock, Well sort of. 
    The logging contractor working to harvest timber from AMC’s sustainably-managed forests, Jeannot Carrier of E.J. Carrier, Inc., owns two beautiful Belgian draft horses. He asked if AMC had any timber stands where they could work this summer. The rest of Carrier’s operation is equipped with the usual, modern harvesting systems, including feller-bunchers, processors, and forwarders to harvest and yard the wood. Then, up-armored tractor-trailers, rigged up to go deep into the woods, haul that timber to various mills in the region. Jeannot had a crew to wrangle the horses, and a professional logger to cut the trees.
    Benual Esh and Barry Woodcraft are working those big Belgians. Woodcraft isn’t using an axe and a cross-cut saw. He’s using a modern chainsaw, and the rig used to yard the wood behind the team wouldn’t fit in one of those old movies from the lumberjack days. And, of course, the wood they produce is still loaded hydraulically onto a modern logging truck. But, the horses do conjure a sense of an earlier time.
    After reviewing five possible harvest blocks, chosen for their sensitivity and small size, Jeannot settled on a 16-acre stand of mature spruce. It was a small area that would have been difficult to operate with the conventional, modern equipment, and small enough so that the horses could cover it all. The horses can get around some obstacles better, and their light “footprint” on the ground allows them to harvest areas that would be risky with larger equipment, as far as ground disturbance and water-quality issues are concerned.
    The plan is to selectively thin out the stand of spruce, taking care to leave healthy, wind-firm trees while harvesting the trees to go to market.
    They typically use one horse to get the trees to the main trail, then they use the two-horse team and a cart to yard the wood to the landing. Harvesting techniques on AMC’s land typically involve modern equipment, but these Belgians help to show that older methods can be appropriate in certain stands and their efforts fit well into AMC’s objectives to inform their members and the public about forest stewardship and the long history of logging in Maine.
    Ted Shina is senior operations forester for Huber Resources Corporation and team leader and lead forester for the AMC’s sustainable forestry operations on its 66,500-acre Maine Woods Initiative property.