A look at D J Services Borders' new Enviro-Mounder attachment for forestry establishment

A forestry establishment attachment designed and constructed on an industrial estate near St Boswells in the Scottish Borders region is making an impression. Since the first Enviro-Mounder started work on afforestation sites over four years ago, the machines have been producing screefs and turves for tree planting throughout Great Britain.

D J Services Borders has retained a double mounder and a single mounder ‘in-house’ for hire contract work, but director Derek Cowens has been very encouraged by the sales orders his agricultural engineering business has been receiving for the machines. A couple of single mounders and a pair of double mounders were recently despatched to Wales where, according to the customers, it was the right machine at the right price to suit the afforestation grants the Welsh government was offering.

(l to r) Agricultural contractor Trevor Griffiths, Derek Cowens and Brian Keen out on site. Both Derek (the engineering brains behind the development) and Brian (the forestry establishment expert) appreciate that no matter how well a machine is designed, only an experienced and competent operator can unleash its true potential.

The business is close to closing a contract with a European company that is in the process of procuring land in Lithuania. Again, the cost and simple efficiency of the Enviro-Mounder dovetail perfectly with the government grants available for converting marginal agricultural land to the growing of timber. A completed Enviro-Mounder, however, is already on its way further afield. After the latest machine left the workshop, Derek Cowens applied a decal of Canada’s Maple Leaf alongside that of the Union Flag. It is being delivered to a customer in the Canadian province of Alberta.

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The pandemic and Brexit have conspired to throw up a few inconveniences, according to Derek. COVID restrictions have seen the postponement of a demonstration event for the Irish Republic’s leading commercial forestry consultancy, Veon. It is hoped this can be rescheduled when international movements are normalised.

Derek Cowens with the latest Enviro-Mounder he has fabricated at his Charlesfield Industrial Estate workshop in the Scottish Borders. The single-bucket model is destined to be pressed into service to expand Canada’s forest estate. It has been ordered by a customer in the inland province of Alberta.

On the manufacturing side, some specialised components are a little more difficult to access and take a bit longer to arrive. An order for a couple of engines for one of D J Services’ new projects – a forestry maintenance machine, as it happens – turned out to be delivered more cost-effectively as a pallet-load. The half-dozen extra power units will probably see the workshop converted later in the year to a production line.

After working for some years as a stockman, Derek Cowens decided to take the plunge and set up on his own account at St Boswells. The new business found no shortage of work in the area and was soon concentrating on the contract fencing sector. It was still a tough, physically demanding way to earn a living and Derek was keen to spend more time in the workshop fabricating and repairing agricultural machinery. Investment in plasma-cutting technology has been a key driver in expanding D J Services’ forestry machine offering.

D J Services Borders has ensured that both models of the Enviro-Mounder are available on a contract-hire basis. Potential customers can ‘try before they buy’ and find out the capabilities of the machines with full backup from Derek Cowens in the St Boswells workshop and Brian Keen out on the afforestation site.

While Derek Cowens has the engineering skills to judge what is desirable – and even possible – with the materials available to him, it is Brian Keen from Kelso who formulates the concept that will achieve the goal. The Enviro-Mounder, for example, was a BJW Keen Conservation and Forestry innovation purposed to present clean and accurately spaced planting mounds to facilitate and accelerate the work of the tree planter. Out on the ground, Brian oversees the operation of the machines on hire and is able to report on the overall success of the afforestation projects.

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As it happens, only a few minor modifications have been incorporated into the Enviro-Mounder design since its inception. While the intermound width on the double-bucket version is invariable at 1.9 m, the addition of a measuring wheel between the spades, on the other hand, allows for accurate variation of the longitudinal spacing of the mounds and enables precise planting densities to be achieved. As each of the buckets automatically locks, it scarifies a length of ground and, upon its release, it turns to leave a mound of soil piled up at the end of the scrape. The working depth of the buckets can be altered from the tractor’s cab to form deeper scrapes and larger planting mounds.

Trevor Griffiths is used to firing up the computer on his state-of-the-art tractor, setting the software and allowing the technology to steer him across the highly productive arable lands around Kelso in the Scottish Borders. He monitors the progress of the huge attachments behind him on a camera screen. Nevertheless, he rates the Enviro-Mounder very highly. It is a basic, simple design and if he does his job well the site will produce a very valuable crop of timber around 50 years hence.

The Enviro-Mounder’s ability to produce accurately positioned mounds ahead of the arrival of the planting gangs brings distinct financial advantages to the afforestation projects. When the men and women who place the trees in the ground can follow the cultivation rows and see the mound where the next seedling needs to be placed, the production rate of the teams is considerably enhanced. Ideally, according to Brian Keen, mounds should be allowed to weather for a month or two. The soil will have firmly settled, but will still allow a seedling to be planted into a perfect growing medium with a minimum of effort on the part of the planter.

A screef and mound produced in the peak growing season in mid-summer will still inhibit competitive weedy growth well into the next planting season. The depth of the cultivation can be adjusted by the operator to accommodate ground irregularities, or on the orders of the local forester who will have an intimate knowledge of the growing characteristics of the land being planted.

Forming an alternative to continuous forestry ploughing – used so often in the past to prepare stony ground covered with rough vegetation for tree planting – the Enviro-Mounder avoids producing the furrows prone to channelling large quantities of excess rainfall off establishment sites. Holding the water at the planting positions, rather than draining it away, can also enhance transplant survival in dry planting seasons. On drier sites, foresters may well consider that planting in the screef, rather than in the mound, would prove beneficial by increasing the moisture available to the roots of the forest transplants. Both the single and double machines are constructed with main frames formed by 200 x 100 x 10 rectangular hollow-section steel. The rear frames that carry the buckets are constructed from 120 x 60 x 8 RHS. The buckets themselves are formed from 10 mm plate with 150 mm bucket edging for the teeth or blade. Discs lead the buckets to ensure precise turf cutting. The single mounder weighs in at approximately 650 kg and the double mounder at around 1,300 kg.

Job done! The planting squads will be in no doubt as to where the seedlings are to be positioned, and the quad bike drivers will not become lost when called upon to deliver more transplants to the teams. When the contract is completed, the local forester will have no problem checking the site and signing off the contract.

In many cases, ground conditions allow the use of wheeled tractors, but on poor load-bearing sites, wider pads could be fitted to tracked machines to bring the ground pressure down to as little as 4 lb per square inch. In Derek Cowen’s view the low weight of the single mounder and its comparative ease of transport make it ideal for establishment contractors who regularly undertake smaller woodland establishment projects.

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