How do you plant 1000 trees a day? Using a machine or by hand? We planted 40 fruit trees with my backhoe and it still took us more than two days! Wish I had known you then
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All by hand Amir!
I have two sets of custom-made '4-baggers' where you put all your trees (up to 70-pound loads), and have two dozen of shovels (& mattocks, & other specialised tools) that I shaped myself for any kind of terrain and trees.
The treeplanting set of 'baggers' attaches to your waist and over your shoulders. A regular set of treelanting bags is three of them.
Then you hit the slopes (sometimes with 80 degree+ angles; very steep!!!), and you plant the trees one by one using your shovel (used to be mattocks at the beginning), and picking the right appropriate tree from your bags for the right type of soil and elevation.
The trees can vary from being only six inches high to five feet tall! It all depends where and how high you are.
I can write books about describing to you all there is to it; but you can Google 'Treeplanting' and read about it from different perspectives. Some of my own personal experiences, as well my close encounters with death and mother nature are just simply unimaginable and absolutely incredible!
Amir, I know few people that consistently planted 5,000 trees every single day! But that was in Alberta, Canada, with totally flat ground and very good soil. You can plant (manually; no machine!) up to 700-800 trees per hour!!! But to keep that rhythm all day long is extremely demanding physically!
I only know three persons personally (including one girl) that planted 10,000 trees in one single day!
That was only for the record; because the next day they were totally burned out!
Mary Polson, the girl, had to work eighteen hours non-stop to accomplish that feat. The next day she planted 2,000 trees then quitted!
Also, you got pay per the tree (piece-work), and sometimes by the hectare, and it can be as low as five cents per tree, or it could be one dollar per tree; all depending on the terrains where you plant (the 'ground', how tough and steep and slashy it is). In some places the slash is ten feet high sometimes; so you have to go inside it down below, then get out, and finally plant trees all around it. And you do have 90 degree cliffs that sometimes you have to go around without any access for a quarter mile or so!
You can walk several miles per day in very rough terrains. And you can cover huge amount of land every day as well. Remember, you plant one tree at about every 9 to 12 feet spacing from each other!
A highballer can make $500/600 every single day, and up to $1,000/1,200 on some exceptional good days from the best contracts; but like I said it is very rare for a planter, but not for a foreman, as they also get paid by the production of their crew. But only up North, in the Interior, where they have that system.
Those that can make that type of money (the planters) are quite rare, and they are exceptionally strong and agile!
They are 'super-highballers'! I thirthy years I only met less than the total fingers of my two hands.
Me, I'm just a 'highballer', and my average was $300/400 a day (up to $600 on best days).
{If I work for an employer and cannot make more than $200/day, after two days I'm out of there!}
And average treeplanter career is about four to five years max! I did it for close to thirty years!
It is not for everyone! But if you luv physical work, and high altitude, and beautiful sceneries, and extreme challenges from mother nature, this is it!
And you also need nerves of steel! It is very challenging psychologically as well.
It is among musicians, artists, creators of any beautiful and pleasant and peaceful things of our society, one great positive job! It embellishes the destruction of man & nature, and provides air for the planet! For the people. And of course timber for our future houses.
And it is also very beneficial ecologically as it restores a balance, stops the erosions, and much much more...
I got tons of cards in Forestry and Ecology and Protection of the Environment. But the true ACT is the ACT itself!
The true Power of being proud of what you accomplished during your lifetime on Earth cannot be underestimated by the real Treeplanters of our planet!
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Amir, there is much much more to it (of course when you have performed that type of work for thirty years it has to), and no matter all what you can read on the Internet by googling it, it simply won't tell you nothing from the true veterans that have seen almost all of it!
What is unique with me personally is that I never worked for the same employer for more than three years.
{I luv to see different country sides, and also to meet new faces, new people; that's how I am!}
And in just one single year I sometimes worked for more than a dozen or plus employers!
And not only that, but I did a lot of mileage with my trucks. And again in just the course of a single year.
You simply wouldn't believe the extremely demanding things I did from one contract to another, from one employer to the next! Like for example (and I did that several times during my career), I would work a full day by planting 2,000+ trees, then come back to camp, pack all my gear, tent, etc. and drove all night (over 500 miles sometimes, and 100 of those in the bush), to finally arrive in the morning to another mountain, another contract, another employer, and start planting again! Without any sleep!
Bob (Robert, me) has tremendous endurance! And even now today still!
