A trip to Scandinavia affords our jobbing young forestry contractor the chance to see how things are done differently abroad and opens his eyes to some of the bad practice taken for granted in the UK.

LAST winter I planted many metres of hedge, the majority of which was on good virgin ground, some into existing old hedgerows and some into ground which was borderline ridiculous.

I spent many weeks with calloused hands and a shiny pinch bar on top of old stone walls trying to establish a hardy thorn or – at the other end of the ridiculous scale – squelching along, knee-deep in bogs or standing water trying to establish willow or hazel in the form of an aquatic hedgerow. 

It was mentioned on more than one occasion that ‘even if they die we will still get the grant money, so just do your best’. This irritated me to a degree, as I don’t like doing a job if I deem it pointless.

The UK’s big push to plant more trees for greenery and rewilding has, at least in my eyes, become a bit of a joke and after my recent visit to Sweden to have a good look round at what Scandinavia is doing with trees, I have returned more convinced that what we are trying to achieve here really is a pointless piss in the ocean.

You may remember the chap I used to cut for down in Devon, 6 ft 10 in Jonathan Robinson, ‘the unstoppable German’, who drove a forwarder through the week and won strongman competitions on weekends. Several years ago he packed his bags and took off for a new life in Sweden, working in a sawmill through the day while training for a half-marathon rowing world record attempt on nights and weekends, as well as other unstoppable activities like cycling and skinny dipping.

My wife was due a week off work and wasn’t keen to run the kindling processor in that time, so we decided to take the trip over to Sweden instead. I got to catch up with my mate and experience Swedish forestry, but grudgingly had to do it while running, cycling and swimming as my wife likes to partake in triathlons in her spare time (meanwhile I’ve grown to enjoy the pleasures of just sitting). 

We spent many hours wandering the forestry of south-east Sweden in hopes of catching sight of the elusive moose, but saw only roe deer and wild boar. As a handcutter, if I decided to emigrate to this part of the country I would sadly see my large collection of Stihls parked up and gathering dust. I would probably spend most of my weeks working in a sawmill, as after feasting my eyes on many millions of pine, birch and Norway spruce I have still yet to see a Swedish tree that isn’t harvester-friendly. Slow grown without being battered by strong British westerly winds and benefitting from strict maintenance and thinning plans, the result is sawlogs of the highest quality (and a hand cutter with a rapidly expanding waistline). 

The ground in Sweden I viewed like a double-edged sword. It’s a huge positive that you aren’t kicking the clag off your boots every time you get back to the car. After experiencing one of the wettest summers on record at home it was refreshing to have dry feet for a full week. The ground consists of light rolling hills based on rock, moss and a thin covering of leaf mould like compost, deep enough to support everything a tree may need, but shallow enough that the forwarders rarely have to run on tracks. After a couple of beers every retired forest machine driver back home seems ready to share the same story of he who winched out the most stuck digger with an old County from a bog hole in the middle of Kielder while the rain kept the midges at bay. The retired Swedish operator’s version of that story must go along the lines of he who found the juiciest of wild blueberry patches as he took off his tracks while the light summer breeze kept the mosquitos at bay. 

On the other side of the sword, the rocks got a bit carried away, in the form of boulders, sometimes the size of a house and very much resembling the big WWII concrete tank defences we have on our eastern beaches. At first I thought it made the timber impossible to extract, but old stumps in the moss proved me wrong. They manage it somehow, in the same way we use brash matts to navigate our way through bogs. Perhaps they make brash bridges? 

A felling job I’m going to be involved with in the coming months is based just outside of a town on a relatively dry, flat site with rather straightforward trees. The only concern is the rabbit warren of well-used home-made footpaths running through the block. Not only is dog muck going to be an issue, but there’s the health and safety of the public to worry about. In Sweden there was no public to be seen. In fact, there were barely any people of any kind. I believe the ratio in terms of density of people per acre is less than 10 per cent that of the UK. You could cycle for 50 km and not see a car.

So we took advantage of this, wandering off the trail. Led by my unstoppable German guide, we went foraging on people’s land. He assured me that as long as we weren’t doing any criminal damage no one would really mind. 

Since moving to Sweden he tells me he has really cleaned up his diet, foraging for apples and berries that grow naturally in the woods and enjoying lean moose, venison and wild boar supplied by local hunters. I took this information he gave me with a pinch of salt as his words were released between mouthfuls of kebab pizza. 

We left the local takeaway, woven baskets in hand, and set out into the forest in the hunt for chanterelle mushrooms to accompany the moose rump later in the day. I’ve done my fair share of hunting and gathering over the years, but usually armed with a 12 bore and spaniel. To have nothing but a wicker basket cradled in my arm was a whole new kind of hunt for me, but if I’m honest I very much enjoyed the forage. After initially picking several breeds of fungi that would have hospitalised me if ingested and receiving a bit of guidance, I was hot on the trail of the chanterelles. After a bit of wandering in the wrong areas I began to get a feel for the ground they preferred, commonly in shaded areas under the immature spruce. 

The foraging brought to mind the thrill of childhood Easter egg hunts. Although it may be a common occurrence in Sweden, I’m pleased my foraging took place there and not at home, as two grown men wandering around the woods with woven baskets looking for mushrooms in the UK would only raise suspicions of drug abuse. 

WANT MORE DANNY? 

While the demand for handcutters is practically zero in Sweden, I’m finding an increased amount of work piling up for saws in the north of England, a lot of it clearing up after other people. I’m often clearing up after harvesters due to the limitations of the machines on large or coarse trees, but now I’m finding myself cleaning up after other contractors have been and gone.

‘Cowboys don’t care’ is the phrase that springs to mind. Felling a block of timber is one thing, but my advice to anyone who wants to continue felling blocks in the future is try not to leave a mess behind. Broken fences, deep ruts, high stumps, missing timber and pissed-off farmers/landowners are all things that can be either avoided or corrected with a bit of care and consideration. It’s evident I’m following up contractors that either have no respect for their own work or are just incredibly lazy. 

My latest clean-up operation can only be described as an embarrassment left behind by harvesters – several windblown sites with finished stump heights ranging from one to three metres. I don’t quite know how the forwarder driver managed to extract the timber – perhaps he was Swedish? The contractor certainly gave all soil and toes a very wide berth, leaving a gaveyard-like finish to his blocks.

They were all to be cut off and it took me two days, employing every chainsaw operator I could get my hands on. Five saws working in synchronisation created a harmonic buzz down the valley. One distressed neighbour called to alert the landowner to suspected moto-cross bikes trespassing across the land. My team of bikers made quick work of the soil- and stone-covered stumps, but with kilos of blunt chains piling up. 

Five bodies, 14 combi cans and 84 blunt chains it took to put right the wrongs of a rogue.