Although this blog is predominantly focused on my music
and DJ’ing career, I also want to share some information about my other
career: Canadian Reforestation.
The information in this post is part of a training series
from the Replant.ca website. More
information can be found at this link:
I’ll put the text and audio download link from this
training module below, but let’s start with the YouTube video for the module:
Section 06 - “Camp Life”
Many first-year planters,
perhaps as many as eighty percent, will be working for companies that run tree
planting bush camps in BC. I'm not sure
if anyone knows how many separate planting camps operate in British Columbia
every summer, but my estimate is approximately seventy. Camp sizes vary considerably, and sometimes
two camps will merge during the season, or a camp will split into two, so it
would be difficult to get accurate numbers.
Regardless, if you're a first-time tree planter, there's a good chance
that you need to be mentally prepared to spend your summer in a tent. In this section, we'll talk about the
equipment and facilities that you might expect to find in a typical bush camp,
and we'll also touch briefly on alternative lodging arrangements for jobs where
a bush camp isn't practical.
Overview of Basic
Structure
Most camps are organized
as tent camps, although in a few camps, ATCO trailers are used on a slightly
more permanent basis to house camp facilities or even to act as housing units
for planters. However, ATCO Trailer
camps are quite rare in the tree planting industry, and not really that
mobile. Most planters will experience
mobile bush camps where all facilities are either contained in tents, or in
mobile trailers with wheels that can be moved to a new location by a relatively
small truck.
The kitchen is often the
heart of the camp. This is the domain of
the cooks. Sometimes, the kitchen will
be in a large mobile trailer, and at other times, a large tent will be set up. Either way, the kitchen will probably contain
two or even three stoves and ovens. These
items are usually commercial units powered by propane rather than being
household ranges powered by electricity.
There will be counters used for food preparation. There will be some storage space for basic
cooking supplies, such as pots, pans, trays, and utensils. There will be some shelving for food prep
items, things like spices and baking supplies.
There will be a fridge and a deep freeze, although those items might alternatively
be located outside the kitchen. And
there needs to be a three-compartment sink for dishwashing, plus a hand-washing
sink. The water supplied to the kitchen
will be potable, and there will probably be a propane heater to ensure that
both hot and cold water are available.
The mess tent is the main
social area of the camp. The mess tent
will contain tables and chairs for dozens of people. There will probably be a couple tables used
for setting out lunch supplies each morning, so the planters can make their own
lunches for the block. There may be
another table with a charging station so people can charge phones and
laptops. A generator outside the mess
tent will supply power for the charging station and for lights hung within the
tent. And finally there will be a
bulletin board which has dozens of publications that various government
agencies mandate to be made available to all employees.
There will be some sort of
shower facilities. They may not be very
fancy! Usually, water is drawn from a
non-potable source, such as a nearby stream or pond, and a gasoline-powered
pump sends water into the showers through a series of garden hoses. The water will be heated by a propane-powered
water heater. In many camps, a
professional shower trailer may be in place, with anywhere from two to four
shower stalls. In other camps, a
mid-sized tent may be used, again with two to four separate shower sections,
and the shower heads may be as simple as common gardening spray nozzles hanging
from the roof.
There will be a dry tent
of some sort. This tent may be heated by
any number of means. In the old days,
planters would have air-tight wood stoves, and would need to gather kindling
and firewood at each camp site, and various people would be responsible for
keeping a fire hot. Nowadays,
thankfully, it's more common to see propane blast heaters or large kerosene
heaters. After a rainy day, if you enter
the dry tent, you'll see dozens of jackets and other items of clothing hanging
from a series of clotheslines within the tent, and hopefully, by morning,
they'll all be dried out.
There will also be a first
aid tent or trailer. This facility will
have a full set of supplies to meet basic emergency needs and treatment needs
for any number of minor ailments. The
provincial WorkSafe regulations dictate the contents of each first aid room. Planters who are not designated trained
first-aid attendants should not be using supplies. Always find a designated first aid
attendant. These persons will treat you,
notify the company about supplies that need to be replaced, and ensure that the
proper paperwork and first aid records are filled out and submitted to their
head office and WorkSafe BC.
Finally, there will be
several outhouses. Each outhouse should
always have a large bottle of liquid anti-septic hand wash solution or
gel. The outhouses are generally dug at
each location in high and dry ground, where water can't collect during a
rainstorm, then filled in after camp is broken and ready to move to the next
spot. In some locations, port-a-potties
are rented by the licensees responsible for the reforestation contracts, in
which case a septic vacuum truck may visit the site once every several days to
maintain the outhouses until the contract is over.
The Daily Routine
A tree planting season
starts for most people in late April or early May. May is all about cold mornings, freezing
rain, and lots of enthusiasm. By
mid-June, however, things are heating up, light misty rains are welcome, and
after thirty days of planting, most people are starting to talk about time off.
Most planting camps work for three or four days, then have one day off, in a
cycle called "three and one's" or "four and one's." You'll probably also have four or five days
off each month due to unexpected downtime from vehicle hassles, frozen trees,
fog days while using helicopters, or snowstorms, or from planned downtime
between contracts when moving camp. When
this happens, don't complain. Take
advantage of the downtime to get some rest.
At other times during the busy parts of the season, you'll wish you had
more free time. The trick is to bite the
bullet and take advantage of planting when it's available. Incidentally, it's often traditional to have
a forced week or so off around mid-June, due to the gap between some spring and
summer contracts.
On a typical day, you'll
wake up between 5am and 6am, get dressed, and stumble into the mess tent. A huge breakfast awaits you, which you'll
have difficulty forcing down. Breakfast
is a critical meal! Although some planters will want to skip this meal, the
energy you get from a strong breakfast will be critical in ensuring a
productive day. After you've finished
eating, you'll make your lunch from materials provided by the cook: sandwiches, granola, cookies, juice, fruit,
vegetables, trail mix, and other items.
Smart planters get up early to get the best selection for their
lunches. After breakfast, you'll go to
your crew truck, make sure your planting gear is loaded, and head off to the
block.
Once you get to the block,
you'll grab your planting gear and day-bag, and be directed to your piece. Mornings are usually cold. On the block, you'll have to get out of a
warm vehicle, and bag up with wet trees that you've packed into a heavy set of
planting bags. On a nice day, the sun
will soon come out, and the temperature will start to warm up. Keep your head down, and keep planting. If the planting goes well, you'll be
happy. If your land is bad, you'll
become frustrated or unhappy, but you should realize that a certain amount of
bad land is inevitable. The foreman will
hopefully try to distribute the good and bad land evenly, or at least, if
someone gets obvious preferential treatment for a day or so, there will be an
obvious reason for it, and the advantage will shift to other members of the
crew a day or so later.
Bad weather, bugs, steep
blocks, slash, and other challenges may affect you, but remember, there's
always beauty everywhere, even though you may not have much time to look
around. At the end of the day, everyone
puts their equipment away, and you grab your day-bag and head back to the
trucks. Everybody stinks of sweat, and
the truck is generally filthy, yet people are happy. Even if you've had a bad day, at least it's
over. You give your foreman your numbers
for the day, and you probably fall asleep on the way back to camp. Once you've started to drive home, put
planting out of your head. If you can
try not to think about it again until you arrive back on the block the next
morning, you'll enjoy your summer more.
When you get back to camp, you'll wash up, and then eat a huge
meal. For many planters, this is the
best part of each day.
After dinner, it's all up
to you. Some people head straight to the
showers. Guitars may appear in the mess
tent, emails may get written, and there's lots of conversation. The smart planters will head to bed well
before nine o'clock, to get a good rest for a productive day starting the next
morning.
On the night off, which
refers to the night before the full day off rather than the actual evening of
the day off, you'll quit planting anywhere between noon and 5pm. This usually depends on the state of the
block you're on, the distance from camp to town, and crew dynamics. I've always told planters in my own camp that
on the last day of a shift, we always work a full day. That extra half day of production on every
fourth day of work leads to a 14.3% increase in productivity and earnings. Quitting at noon on the last day of the shift
made more sense years ago when the shifts were always six or seven days long,
but with much shorter shifts right now, you need to maximize your planting
hours for each day that you're on the blocks.
Anyway, when you're done work, you'll go back to camp and have
dinner. If you're going to town right
away, you'll need to grab your laundry and clean clothes. Your crew might have to load up empty fuel
barrels or propane tanks that need to get filled in town, or maybe hook up the
garbage trailer, then you can head into civilization. Town has a laundromat, restaurant, liquor
store, bar, and hotel. A large number of
crews will stay in camp on the night before the day off, and wait until the
next morning to make the trip into town.
It used to be that the
stereotypical routine for many planters was to drink as much alcohol as quickly
as possible, then to act like a fool, including vomiting, getting kicked out of
bars, getting beaten up by local red-necks, or getting arrested. However, times are changing, and this is not
the norm anymore. Nowadays, many
Interior planters realize that they only work for about fifty to sixty days per
year, and they need to make the most of this time, so they get as much rest as
possible on days off. A lot of planters
go to bed early on the night off, because the focus for their summer is on
working, rather than partying. No matter
what your preference is, you'll spend the day off doing your laundry and
running around town, picking up supplies.
Planting feels like
different things to different people. I
personally find that I completely zone out, except for paying some attention to
the process of planting. Once I've
bagged up and planted the first bundle or so, it usually feels like I'm bagging
out about two minutes later. Some people
find planting to be an exciting, competitive kind of racing activity. Others find planting to be frustrating,
boring, or physically exhausting.
Your Cooks and Meals
Obviously, with several
dozen people needing to eat large breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, it wouldn't
make sense to have an open kitchen where everybody prepares their own
food. That would be chaos, and would
also cause all kinds of food safety problems.
It's much more cost-efficient and time-efficient to have staff devoted
specifically to food preparation and service, and it also helps to do a better
job of ensuring that planters have access to a balanced, nutritious diet.
Some camps have a single
cook, although I've rarely seen this situation if there are more than 25-30
people working out of the camp. More
frequently, there are a pair of cooks.
Sometimes, they're equivalent in seniority, but more often, one is
designated as a head cook and the other is designated as an assistant. In some of the largest camps, it's even
possible to have a head cook with two assistants, although this isn't common.
What you eat depends
mostly on your cook. I've seen camps
where one quarter to a third of the planters were vegetarians. Because of this, most planting companies now
offer vegetarian food, and cooks are able to provide tasty vegetarian meals
that still contain lots of protein. If
your diet is more restricted, you should talk to your potential employer before
accepting a job. A cook making dinner
for forty other people might not have the energy to devote to a top-of-the-line
vegan or gluten-free dish for only one or two people. If you have allergies to anything, tell the
cook up-front, right at the start of the season. If you only have certain preferences, such as
not preferring mushrooms or onions, it would be selfish to force a cook to make
meals without such ingredients, as the rest of the camp would also suffer. But don't worry, there are usually lots of
choices at each meal, so you should be able to work around your preferences
without limiting the diet for others in the camp.
Planters are the key
component in the generation of revenue for a planting company, and planters
need to eat unbelievable amounts of food to remain productive. Most companies are very aware of this. No matter what else happens, you should get
lots of food. If you don't, there's a
serious problem with the cook or the company, and you should let your
supervisor or the company owner know immediately.
If the food lacks variety,
or if you'd enjoy something that hasn't been on the menu, ask the cook about
it. Usually there are very valid reasons
why an experienced cook will stay away from certain dishes, but occasionally
it's just a lack of awareness that there would be an interest. Remember that most cooks take enormous pride
in what they do. If you have specific
suggestions for more variety, talk to the cooks directly rather than just
complaining to other planters on the block.
Of course, some types of meals are just impossible from a logistical
point of view. Think about what it would
be like to have to have fifty friends over and try to cook them dinner, in a
kitchen that isn't much larger than you'd find in a typical house.
You're charged for camp
costs, which are generally $25 plus GST per day. This money covers part of the expenses for
your meals, the cooks' wages, the use of facilities such as showers, and
transportation to the work site and to town.
In BC, legislation prohibits the employer from charging more than $25
plus GST per day for camp costs, in a bush camp situation. No such legislation exists in Alberta, so
camp costs are generally higher in that province. For a crew working out of motels, if the
employer has arranged for your room and pays for it up front, the $25 per day
limit is not applicable, and the company is allowed to charge you any amount up
to the actual cost of the room.
Some planters wonder why
the company charges you to work for them.
It's a complex situation. It
would certainly be possible for companies not to charge camp costs, and just
pay the planters a slightly lower price per tree. If they did things that way, the net result
to the company could be exactly the same.
They could theoretically just figure out the reduction in tree prices
that would be needed to exactly offset the loss of revenue from collecting camp
costs. However, if they did that, the
most experienced planters would end up shouldering a greater portion of the
costs of operating the camp. Let me use
a detailed example so this makes more sense.
Let's assume that the
average planter at a specific company plants 2500 trees per day, and the camp
costs are $25. The company would
therefore need to reduce the price per tree by one cent across the board if
they wanted to eliminate camp costs. On
average, each planter would make $25.00 less from their planting each day,
because they're getting a cent less on each of their trees. But if they didn't have to pay $25.00 in camp
costs, then there wouldn't be any difference in the end, right? Well, the problem is that this is based on
average production. The fastest planters
would be losing a cent per tree on larger tree numbers. So a good planter who planted 4000 trees in a
day would effectively be losing $40.00 from their paycheque in return for not
paying the $25.00 in camp costs, whereas a slow planter who plants 1500 in a
day would only lose $15.00 from their paycheque. This doesn't seem fair, since the two
planters probably eat roughly the same amount of food. The fastest planters are the most valuable
employees, so a company wouldn't want to penalize them more than a slow planter
would be penalized. With the current
system of charging camp costs, each employee pays exactly the same amount per
day.
Other Equipment
I've already mentioned the
basic structures that you'll find in a planting camp, things like the kitchen,
the mess tent, the dry tent, the first aid tent, the showers, and the
outhouses. But there will be many other
pieces of equipment that you might also run into. I'll try to describe each of them briefly, so
you'll get a better mental picture of how complex a mobile tent camp can be.
Earlier I mentioned that
there would probably be a refrigerator, or a couple fridges, either inside the
kitchen or just outside the kitchen. A
much better alternative that I use is a complete walk-in cooler structure. This small insulated structure will probably
be about eight feet per side, and will have a cooling unit installed, plus lots
of shelving. A walk-in cooler can handle
the volumes of food required for a mid-sized planting camp much more easily
than a couple of fridges can.
For a water supply, it was
common in the old days to have half a dozen 40-gallon water drums in each camp
to supply safe potable water, and empty barrels would get re-filled in town
from a garden hose at a gas station. Thankfully,
most professional planting contractors now use a couple of large water
reservoirs, perhaps of around a thousand gallons each, and have potable water
trucked in. This is more time-efficient
and cost-efficient, and let's be honest – the water that came from garden hoses
at random gas stations probably wasn't always safe.
In some remote locations,
where it's difficult to have water trucked in, a company will use a
professional water filtration system.
Water will be pumped out of a stream and run through the filtration
system into a reservoir for the kitchen.
The filtration system will ensure that the water passes through a series
of perhaps three filters of decreasing size, to filter out large debris and
then smaller debris and then really fine sediments, although these filters
don’t necessarily make the water look clear.
The water then goes through some sort of chemical or ultraviolet
filtration stage which eliminates all biological contaminants and ensures that
the water, even if discolored, is safe to drink. The only problem with these systems is that
they're difficult to keep running, and if they're not set up and maintained
correctly, there's a risk that the water doesn’t get filtered properly and
people could become sick.
There's usually a fuel
depot in camp, also called a fuel cache.
This will probably be built in an area where sheets of plastic or
containment flooring can keep any spilled fuel from leaking into the soil, and
they'll be surrounded by a protective ditch and berm. The ditch is another protective measure to
contain any potential spill. The berm
helps protect the fuel cache from getting run into by a truck. If the cache is in an area where a vehicle
could conceivably back into it, a crew might also place logs around it to serve
as another barrier. There will probably
be poles erected around the cache with bright orange snow fencing or flagging
tape, to help visually identify the danger.
The cache will probably contain barrels of diesel and gasoline, plus
jerry cans, smaller containers of things like kerosene, and items like motor
oil. Many camps also have one or two
large fuel containers called tidy tanks mounted in the back of pickups. These are easier to fill and more efficient
to use to dispense fuel to other vehicles.
Don't allow people to smoke around the fuel cache, or around trucks with
tidy-tanks. Make sure that the tidy
tanks are properly grounded before use.
A dish pit will need to be
dug behind the kitchen. This is where
the gray water goes. Gray water is the
run-off after washing dishes, so it's basically a mix of liquid wastes with no
human waste. This pit will be dug
several feet deep and several feet wide.
It gets covered up with a few sheets of plywood, and then gets fenced
off with high-visibility flagging tape, as a safety precaution. You wouldn't want to fall into this pit! Unfortunately, the dish pit is sometimes an
attractant for bears, so I usually put a generator pretty close to it as a
possible deterrent. Many camps will also
require a gray-water pit for shower run-off.
The terms black water and night soil refer to human waste, and are
handled separately from any gray water pits.
Your camp will need
garbage cans. Often, a camp will have
several traditional garbage cans scattered throughout the mess tent and nearby,
and these will be emptied out by the cooks each morning after breakfast, and
again in the evening after dinner. The
camp may have some temporary bear-proof garbage containers, which are used on
an interim basis until the garbage bags can be moved to a garbage trailer. The garbage trailer should be enclosed,
rodent-proof, and bear-proof, and needs to be taken to a landfill to be emptied
at the end of every shift, before the garbage really starts to rot and crawl
with maggots.
Your camp will probably
have a number of VHF mobile radios.
Every truck should have one. The
kitchen should have one. And finally,
most foremen and checkers and supervisors will carry handheld VHF radios that
communicate on the same system. I've
also seen some crews where a foreman will buy several small two-way radios from
The Source and always have one of these radios in a waterproof container at
each cache, besides carrying another on their radio harness beside their VHF
handheld. This way, if a planter comes
back to a cache and needs anything, they can always contact the foreman quite
quickly. These radios are also great if
there's a first aid problem and the foreman needs to be alerted very
quickly. It wouldn't completely surprise
me if there came a day eventually when every planter was required to carry such
a small radio with them on the block.
This would also be an improvement to current communications between crew
members. The only headache would be to
keep them all charged every day.
If the camp is located on
a logging road, signs should be posted a few hundred meters away from the
entrance to camp, in both directions.
These signs can warn road users to slow down in case there are vehicles
entering or exiting the camp.
The camp will probably
have three or four gasoline-powered generators, each capable of generating
perhaps three thousand watts. Sometimes,
a camp will have a much larger diesel-powered generator instead, that can
generate in excess of six or seven thousand watts. We use the generators to power the kitchen,
electric pressure pumps (for water), the supervisor's office, lights in the
mess tent and other structures, and to charge the batteries for the handheld
radios. Some companies even use propane
powered generators. No matter whether
you're using gasoline or diesel generators, only a limited number of people
should be allowed to refuel this equipment, and they should be thoroughly
trained in fuel-handling procedures to ensure that the wrong type of fuel is
never added to any pump or generator. If
you put diesel into a gasoline powered engine, or vice versa, you will usually
ruin the engine.
Most modern camps have a
satellite internet system, used for an internet connection in camp. Just don't make the mistake of setting the
camp up in the trees in such a position that you can't pick up the satellite
signal! Most camps will run the internet
into a wireless router that gets set up in the kitchen or mess tent or some
central area, so everyone can access the internet from their laptops if they're
in the immediate area of the router.
Satellite internet systems are typically quite a bit slower than the
broadband that you're used to from a residential connection. Couple this with the fact that there may be a
dozen or more people trying to use it at any given time, and you'll quickly get
really frustrated with the internet speed.
It's a wise idea for the entire camp to have a rule that people aren't
allowed to run torrents or watch video on the shared internet, because it
really makes the internet connection quite useless for all other users. In other words, assume that the connection
will be suitable for reading emails or viewing sites with mostly text content,
but not much else. In areas where
there's decent mobile network coverage, the internet problems are often alleviated
because a lot of planters will just use their phone to go online, or to create
a private hotspot for their own laptop.
But don't count on this either, as a lot of camps are set up well
outside the range of typical mobile coverage areas.
Propane tanks are used to
power a lot of different heating sources in camp. A large propane tank, which is about four
feet high, is often called a "hundred-pounder." A large camp may have as many as a dozen or
more of these, or it may have a single large propane tank capable of carrying
several hundred litres, mounted on a mobile trailer. The propane is used mostly by the kitchen, to
power the stoves and hot water heaters.
Propane may be used for a smaller residential-type stove & range-top
that allows planters to make tea and coffee without imposing on the cooking
facilities. Propane is also used for
things like heaters for the shower facilities, and heaters in the dry
tent. Propane tanks need to be labeled
carefully as dangerous goods, and shouldn't ever be stored in such a manner
that a vehicle could back over one. It's
also wise to dig them into the ground and to tie them off to something solid,
so there's no risk that they could tip over and hit the ground. Don't allow people to smoke around propane
tanks.
Some camps have more than
one reefer. A reefer, or refrigerated
trailer, is often used to store as many as a thousand boxes of trees. Some camps also have smaller refrigerated
trucks that can carry several hundred boxes.
A full-sized reefer trailer can be forty, forty-eight, or fifty-three
feet long, and gets pulled by a standard large truck like a Freightliner
tractor. This tractor has what's called
a fifth wheel to use for attaching the tractor to the trailer. When a reefer trailer doesn't have a
refrigeration unit, it's called a dry trailer, but these aren't used as
commonly by planting companies, because if they're ever used for tree storage,
they need to be refrigerated. A tractor
with a reefer or dry trailer attached is known as a tractor-trailer, or an
eighteen wheeler.
The reason why a camp may
have more than one reefer, or possibly a dry trailer, is because it's an
efficient way to move a full camp around.
Once the camp structures and equipment are disassembled, they take up a
very large amount of space, and a reefer is sometimes barely large enough to
store and move the entire camp. The
driver of a tractor-trailer unit needs to have a special license known as a
Class 1, so it's very rare that you'd see a planter or foreman driving one around.
When You're Not in a
Tent Camp
Sometimes you may find
yourself working in a logging camp. You stay in logging trailers, which usually
come complete with one bed per room, hot showers and running water, laundry
facilities, a heated mess hall, and television and/or internet access. The
advantages are comfort, but sometimes at the expense of higher camp costs. Although BC has regulated camp costs, rates
for staying in logging camps are very expensive. If a licensee is covering the costs of
providing logging camp accommodations, then the tree planting contractor
doesn't have to pass these costs along to planters. If the planting contractor is required to pay
the logging camp operator for the room-nights, you'd better hope that your
planting company bid high enough on the work to absorb that significant
expense.
You may also be working
out of motel accommodations, or staying in guest cabins in wilderness
resorts. Usually, you buy and cook your
own food, or sometimes eat in a nearby restaurant, depending on what
arrangements the contractor has been able to work out. Depending on the size of the room, your
roommates, and their habits and cooking skills, this can either be a great or a
horrible experience.
If your planting company
is arranging for the rooms and pays for them up-front, the maximum that they
can charge to the planter is your share of the actual cost of the room. For example, if there are two people staying
in the room, then the maximum you can be charged for camp costs is 50% of the cost
of the room, plus the GST and provincial sales tax associated with that amount.
There's also a hidden
component to camp costs for people working out of motels. You're almost always responsible for
providing for your own food, so there's a cost of perhaps around $20 or more
per day to eat. So if you're also paying
$30 for motel costs, your effective total living costs would be around fifty
dollars per day (motel plus food).
That's one of several important things to compare when debating the pros
and cons of living and working out of motels versus a bush camp, if you have a
choice in the matter, since your food is included in the daily camp costs when
working out of a tent camp. Also, when
working out of motels, remember that you have to pay the camp costs for the
room even on days off, whereas in a bush camp, you aren't charged camp costs on
days off. Working out of motels is
significantly more expensive than working out of bush camps.
-----
Here’s an Audio version of this material, in case you
want to listen while you’re driving, running, at work, or otherwise unable to
read or watch video:
Click on the down-arrow icon in the upper right corner of
the SoundCloud widget to download the mp3.
Once again, for further information about this series of
tree planter training information, visit:
I encourage you to share this information with anyone
else who might be interested. Thanks for
your interest and support!
-
Jonathan “Scooter” Clark
