Sawing logs, dreams and advocacy

This week marked the start of my last month in Finland and I feel like everything we have been learning is starting to come together as we wrap up our classes and write our final reports. This week in school we were taken to see the first commercial thinning of a pine stand for Silviculture class. We also had time to talk to a few different classes about some things we are passionate about at home. 

Juha Tiainen took the exchange students and another class of his to see the first commercial thinning of a Scots pine stand in a forest near Kauhajoki.  A company purchased the first round of thinned material for bioheat fuel.  The recent snow and freezing temperatures marked the start of harvest on this well drained, sandy soiled plot.  It’s important to wait until the ground is frozen solid to support the harvesters and forwarders that roll down the strip roads.  If conditions are too wet, soils compact and root systems can be harmed by the heavy machinery.  The cold weather also eliminates the need to spray stumps with fungicide as the spores will not spread to other stumps over winter.  Though pine can tolerate the poor soil conditions on this site they still grow slowly.  The thinned pine were only 8-10m tall at 50 years age. However, the company’s minimum stump diameter for energy wood was only 4cm meaning there was almost zero waste wood associated with this first harvest.  By allowing uneven aged growth of the stand the manager eliminated the need for a precommercial clear cut, saving 300euros/hectare.  Having a couple rounds of thinning in a one full rotation of trees is very common in Finland and helps trees grow faster, healthier and with less competition for resources.  Utilizing proper forest health practices allows the manager to collect 3euros/hectare of government subsidy.  

Efficiency in the harvest itself is important economically and in terms of minimizing fuel consumption.  The man operating the harvester was self-taught but with 35 years of experience he has a strong reputation as a skilled operator.  He can take up to 4 trees at a time, using the machine to fell, limb, cut the trunks to proper length and pile them neatly for collection by the forwarder.  Increasing productivity in thinning and collecting the wood saves money and fuel use in the total process.  This field trip was another good opportunity to learn about the different parts of proper silvicultural management in a Finnish forest.

Earlier in the week we even had a chance to do some non-commercial thinning in a stand near the school with circular blade saws. After learning about safety and maintenance of the saws, Juha took us to the forest and had us thin a seedling stand; a valuable experience in picking which trees should stay and how far they should be spaced for optimal growth.  Our Silviculture class teaches us proper management in theory, sown us it in practice and allows us to try it ourselves via this thinning experience and our forest management plan reports.

The exchange students have also been busy preparing and giving presentations to the English classes on campus. As a group we have presented about where we come from, our school experience at Cal Poly and we’ve given individual presentations on topics of our choosing. Though we felt a little out of place ‘teaching’ Finnish students I think we did an excellent job as a group engaging the audience and representing who we are in an interesting and educational way. Chase talked about surfing and beach culture – very fitting, as we are both from beach towns. Sara talked about natural parks and tourist points in California – a good way to convince people to visit and showcase the varied California points of interest.  Sarah talked about everyday and holiday food in America – which made everyone hungry and the exchange students homesick. I talked about the Cal Poly Logging Team, of which I am the president. It’s a timber sports team that competes against other schools in traditional forestry skills events. We also learn a lot while harvesting our own practice wood, representing the school on campus, at the school ranch in Davenport, CA and the states we travel to for competitions.  I’ve missed my team a lot this semester, especially since they are hosting our awesome annual competition, Cal Conclave, at the school ranch this Saturday November 10^th.  It’s a lot of work to host but one of the best events we do as a team all year.

My favorite presentation of the exchange students had to be Valerie’s.  She prepared a very informative piece on ‘I Love Farmers’, an organization that aims to educate people about agriculture and American farmers in a very unique way.  The volunteer run organization started at Cal Poly just a few years ago and has spread to Oregon, Arizona, Texas, Arkansas and more. It aims to share the good word about farming; where your food comes from, the people who grow it, why it’s so important and the pride farmers take in their hard work.  Young people today don’t seem to know or care where their food comes from as long as it’s available in stores.  There is also a lot of negative information propagated that gives an inaccurate view of farming.  ‘I Love Farmers’ uses advocacy and awareness to fight these harmful messages and promote a knowledge-based love for agriculture.  This presentation was most applicable to the largely farming audience and held their interest with videos, pictures, and the ever-engaging Valerie Grant.   I encourage you to visit ilovefarmers.org and take a look about the impressive work these students do for a good cause.  Valerie also has a wonderful blog called “Logger’s Daughter” on the right column of this page (http://loggersdaughterfinland.wordpress.com). Definitely worth checking out, too!

We’ve taken in so much during our time in Finland and now we’ve had the chance to process and release some material with presentations and papers for school.  All this excitement brewed a very interesting dream for me one night last week…  I had a dream I was home from Finland doing some shopping and somehow got into a very heated debate with a store employee about forest management. The employee I was speaking to thought wood products are horrible and contribute to deforestation, that the healthiest kind of forest is an untouched one and forest management only worsens wood pathogens.  I was trying to explain to him that wood products are renewable, biodegradable and tree growth sequesters atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (a greenhouse gas). Forest management aims to better forest health and ensure the availability of wood resources for future generations, also reducing the danger of hot, vast forest fires that threaten humans as well as the precious old growth trees he loves so much.  No matter what I said, this guy was firmly rooted in his poorly constructed opinion and would not be swayed. I just woke up frustrated, with a sore neck and still in Finland.

Completely absurd dreams are something I experience on almost a nightly basis but this one resonated some real truth.  Good intentions can be thrown completely off track with a little bad information.  When I came to Cal Poly three years ago, I was kind of a hippie.  I was very wary of the timber industry and resource use but as I went through my classes, my opinion grew and matured as I learned more about natural resource management.  I realized much of my pre-college stance was built on widespread misinformation. In Finland it has been amazing to see how differently people think about the timber industry and resource use.  Timber management is a source of national pride as well as an environmental means of production. Not only that, but climate change is literally common knowledge; as the northernmost agricultural country in the world Finland is closely dialed in on the subtle changes in crop production every year that change their usual agriculture schedule. 

In a nutshell; people are a product of their environment. What you are exposed to everyday shapes your beliefs and opinions whether or not you realize it. That’s why it is so important to not only get educated, but to advocate the truth.  If someone told me when I graduated high school that I would be the president of a logging team in a few years, I would probably slap them. Now I’m Environmental Management and Protection major who is proud to run a team that sustainably cuts down trees for education, badass sporting events and to sell the used practice blocks as firewood. I’d even be sleeping soundly at night if it weren’t for all the propaganda there is to fight in the world!

So if you truly care about something, make your voice heard! But never stop learning and keep an open mind. You might be surprised how your views evolve with the times. 

Juha and his saw

Cutting in action

Log deck of thinned pine

Harvester

Presenting about the logging team

Valerie talking about 'I Love Farmers'

One of the English classes we presented to