Pasayten's Methow Valley Bulletin Board

Yup, I am 70 now and Howard is upper 70's. We both still get out and mow down, rake and clear brush. We don't have to mess with the trees.
If everyone that can, do these things, it will help the community overall. The more that do this on their properties and also have FS work around the edges(eventually they will) then we can avoid the violent fire storms I am reading about in "Fireweather". It is insane reading.

The only area that didn't spread fire or burn during the Carlton Complex fire on the FS land near me, was an older clear cut.

At age 66 several years ago I had no problem fire treating a heavily treed and brushy 2 acre parcel in Pine Forest. That gave me a whole lot of firewood.

Meanwhile, PF had local contractor logging greenbelt and lots where owners paid a set fee.

They did do a lot of high grading, so some of the more fire resistant trees were cut down, but they were also marketable Timber that helped pay for the work which still cost more way more than the timber sales.

When the Cedar Crerk fire moved though and was stopped at Pine Forest, I was thinking of the hard work just one old guy can do to help his community say safe. So it can be done multipled by many old guys with chain saws.

I'm involved in this forest issue quite a bit. In 2002 we had what was called a "gypo logging company" haul off about 8 truckloads off of about 12 acres.
We had another local group come in and limb and pile. We cut the ladder fuels down and piled. Then burned when we had 4" of snow and had a DNR permit. This helped our house from burning down in the 2015 fire. Along with locals wetting it down and then retardant drops. The fire did lay down at our property line versus the neighbors wherer there is a standing snag forest, which is not that bad of a thing. It is flourishing back there.
So if everyone could get their own properties in shape, it helps everyone. However there is a cost involved. We almost broke even with the logging.
The DNR does have a Forest Stewardship program where the cost is shared. And there are developments that do cost sharing.
Also the Forest Service needs to look at working closer in with their lands that abut private property owners. That may happen more and more.
But they do want to log vast swaths away from residential areas that will not keep the towns from burning down.
There is an event happening Aug.17th that will discuss the Firesafe Community. I will post more about this when it gets closer to the date in a a couple of weeks.It is not a Forest Service event.
It is worthwhile to use a logging company like we did. There is no way we could have done this on our own. Oh, but in the old days, didn't they use mules on properties? Ellis Fink comes to mind.
And like your statement David about harvestable and marketable timber. So true.

The original post on this thread was made in reply to other posts in September of 2021.

Again I reiterate that a lot of fire mitigation does not involve removal of actual trees and a lot of tree removal does not involve harvesting marketable timber.

In our ecosystem here, most Ponderosa Pines are relatively fire resistant if ladder fuels are removed.

Roflmao every summer during fire season this topic pops up, tells you how folks have absolutely no concept of priority planning.
Just like what idijet needs the county Emergency Management Office to tell you moving to condition one, anyone that has lived here through at least 1 summer should realize come June 1st anyone with even 1/2 a brain should already be in condition 1

Why wouldn't you use a Logging Company to cut down and haul away trees?

Yeah, I've been annoyed and frustrated about this problem since the Carlton Complex fires in 2014.

One thing that is important to remember is that not all land that requires fuel reduction is forest, and not all forests contain marketable timber. So just "logging the forests" won't solve the problem.

Another thing is that doing manual fuel reduction requires a lot of people and is pretty labor intensive. You should reasonably expect that to cost $1000+ per acre. Even prescribed burns which are slightly less expensive take a lot of work, a lot of planning, and have an extremely narrow weather window in which to do them safely.