And There We Go Again!

And I'm up north, in Matheson, Ontario more precisely, in Shillington, at one of Outland's regional yards for some pre-season work and training, before getting up to our respective camps to get things ready for the planters. So we basically pack trucks up once in a while, watch videos about chainsaw safety and get back to the motel at 5PM for some beer and joints...

Good life, but it'll get busy soon! Here's a few pics I snapped today and yesterday:




Toronto-North Bay: Another ride up north in an old beat up school bus...Hopefully for the last time of the season!



A flat-deck and some Northern Ontario skies



The Shillington yard.



Tila's fetching it...



Packing up a truck for camp set-up.



Deliverers being good at doin' nothin'...I'm also really good



Our classy motel in Matheson: Vi-Mar!

Another Great Planting Video...

Here's a wonderful video shared by an user on Replant.ca's forums.

I don't know if it's a real trailer, but it's a funny and spectacular video showing the craziness of treeplanting...and treeplanters!



Some non-initiates might wonder why there is some public pool footage. It's simply a popular activity on day-off. The music featured is Clint Mansell's Requiem for a Dream.

The original video can be found on YouTube.

My shopping list for the upcoming season...

Here's the items I'll need for the season. Some are general treeplanting lifestyle articles, others are more specific to my duties as tree-runner.

-Boots (My suggestion: Try an army surplus)
-A new tent (Do not hesitate to spend some extra bucks on quality)
-A decent mattress (Had none last year and I didn't suffer, but then, I slept half the season in someone else's tent, with quite a comfy mattress...
-Sunglasses (Go for relatively cheap ones. Like everything else, you'll go through them...)
-Quad Goggles (Not quite a must-have, but it might be useful if your job involves a lot of quadding in dirt/rain/bugs, and it looks cool, or I'd like to think so)
-A new leatherman multi-purposes tool
-A new animal hat (A tradition)
-An iTrip for plugging the iPod in the truck (Highly helpful when driving long hours alone)
-Probably an extra pair of pants
-Work gloves
-Rain/Wind jacket
-Traction-aids (A big maybe, most won't fit or work for huge pick-up trucks, but if I find something good, it might potentially be a big time saver...)



I think that's about it. Will add stuff if it comes to mind...

Swedes Planting Trees for Future Ikea Furniture...

Okay, that's a damn bad and overused cliché...

Here's a video depicting treeplanting in Sweden. It's quite different from what any Canadian treeplanter is used too, yet the similarities should make it familiar enough.

The boreal forest is basically one huge forest anyway!



I love those "tree guns" and that they don't need to bend over every 2 meters, but the one-side buckets must be rough on the hips! Nice outfits though, and I'm definitely not a fan of sausage crews!

Besides, girls are as good as guys at the job!

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, I've been incredibly busy, and as the treeplanting season is almost there, I've been paying more attention to the "real deal" than the virtual treeplanting...