Forestry In Ireland

I just wanted to write a bit about what I do for a living here in Ireland. I am what is called a tree surgeon. Basically that means I look after the health of trees.

I started out in forestry about 20 years ago, when I was a lot younger. I always worked for myself, much for the sake of any bosses health as much as for my own sanity. I could never get used to being told what to do.

So, when I first started I didn't know anyone, and didn’t know anything about the logging industry. So I bought myself as spade learned how to plant trees.


Planting

I planted so many trees in the first year. I got to around two and a half thousand trees per a day. I know that sounds a lot but they are small trees, maybe two or 3 feet tall, and once you get into the swing of things, you can easily plant one every 10 seconds. They come in bags of 100 each, you just pull them out of the bags and bang, bang, bang, plant them in the ground. It gets a bit monotonous and boring when you are planting the same tree in row after row after row, but it does bring in the money so there were never any complaints from me.

Then I was offered some work cutting inspection pass into forests. What that entails is cutting the branches off the trees at about head height all the way through the forest. This is to allow someone to walk through and inspect the inside of the Plantation.

Ireland, like almost all countries, was once covered in forests. Our native forestry species includes Ash, Sessile Oak, Black Alder, Rowan, and Whitebeam.

Much of the forest lands were cut down hundreds of years ago. But there are still several pockets of ancient woodland to be seen here and there, but not much.

Ireland has steadily making progress in planting new forests, and the hope is that we would get back to overall coverage of 15 to 20% over the next few decades.

At the moment, the majority of trees that we are planting are Sitka Spruce, a North American import. It grows quite well on even the harshest soil, so it suits Ireland’s soil structure and climate very well.

The trees are that I love working with, are the native Ash. This is used to make the hurley. The hurley is the wooden stick used to hit the sliotar(leather ball) in hurling, an Irish sport. The Ash needs to be 25 to 30 years old to produce top-quality Hurley's.

I am getting a bit past it now for climbing trees. Soon, I will hang up my climbing boots, my ropes and harneses. I will put away my chainsaws for the last time and then look out for a new adventure. While that will turn out to be, I don't know. I only know that forestry has been good to me, it has raised my children, bought my house, and given me a special love for nature. It also made me into an alcoholic and then saved me again. But that's another story.