Photo by Hugh

2010 is going to be a rough year for tree planters. Rookies looking to get hired will likely have a hard time finding a company willing to take them on and many veterans will be looking around to see who has trees and is offering the best season.

The companies advertising on Tree-planter.com are a great place to start. These companies have gone out of their way to express their interest in finding quality planters and showing off what their company has to offer.

Lots of companies are not listing this year. In some cases, the company is going into hibernation for 2010, and in others they just don't have enough trees to be thinking about attracting people to work for them.

By: Alex Peters

One of the craziest stories I can recall from treeplanting draws from the advice and management of a terrible rookie crewboss. This story is about bears, but more specifically it’s about how one crazy crewboss showed no fear or regard for her planters. It was the second shift planting a contract in Beardmore Ontario and the bugs hadn't even hit yet. I was slowly planting my day away when I saw a group of planters convening on the road nearby. I was still new to the concept that every six to ten seconds wasted I would lose eight cents on my daily earnings, so I went over to see what was up. When I got there I found that earlier in the day a bear had stalked a girl a good 75M to the road before other planters noticed her yelling and backing away. They came to the rescue and the bear ran away.

We Will All Be Trees by Josh Massey gives us a hilarious and illuminating insider’s report on tree planting culture, combined with a biotech mystery.

Grant is a long-time planter with a cracked past, whose already jaded veteran worldview becomes increasingly unhinged throughout the course of a brutal contract. Grant, along with a slew of odd characters — including bikers, rappers, hippie rednecks and freeloving Quebecers – must attempt to upend the malevolent plans of Northern Cloners and reset the balance between planter and tree.

Employing a dreamy prose style and multiple points of view, Massey brings to life an engagement with nature that acknowledges its terrifying, illogical aspects.

Available through bookstores and online at Amazon and the Conundrum press website.

Article By: Alex Peters

Ontario is notorious in the treeplanting community. Many Ontario planters get a season under their belt and then diversify their treeplanting resume in a new province with the hope of earning more than 8 cents a tree.

In my first season we faced the usual mental and physical treeplanting challenges; rain, snow, stuck vehicles, and wildlife. But preparing for these certainly could not prepare us for the brutal reality that hit everyone in camp during the last few days of our summer contract.

Photo by Peter Le

"Adam Humphreys is a planter and blogger living in New York City working on a film called "Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer". The film, in post production, is based on an article Adam read in the tree planter hall of fame. He just got engaged."

Read Adam's Planting Related Writing

Photo by Jaya

Tree-planter.com has been around for a long time. We were only preceded by CanadianTreeplanting.com - a great (yet historic) website created by Wade Grandonni.

Tree-planter.com has changed and evolved significantly over the years. We hope you enjory this, our latest version that we have build on our own internally created Arkhitekton website management system.

This latest version takes full advantage of the ever-evolving content, recent (and still current) news articles - and most notably the beautiful photos that have been submitted by our community members over time. Mad props are due to the people who have made this site look as pretty as it does. Your submissions are most appreciated and will be seen and enjoyed by many thousands of people every year.

We have done our best to acknowledge the photographers wherever possible.

To see a photographers submitted galleries in their entirety, please see the Galleries section.

Photo by Scooter

Tree Planters Looking for Work

If you are looking for work now or in the 2009 peak season, you can use Tree-planter.com to help find a suitable company. Use the Tree Planting Companies link in the main navigation.

Adding Your Company Profile

Companies looking to be represented online for the 2010 season are asked to contact us for an information sheet.

info@tree-planter.com

Photo by Cameron MacD

Andrew Alastair Robinson planted seven years and a day in B.C. and Alberta, then finally learned how to relax – by writing a novel about it.  It’s underway already in serialized form on his blog.  Follow the progress of protagonist Tony and his buddies in the instant classic: “TREES”

LINK

Photo by Hugh Stimson

Here is what we know about foreign applicants and tree planting.

Photo by Jaya

WSCA forecasts provincial planting program to drop to 150 million seedlings in 2010.

Preparing for this year's critical WSCA silviculture sector strategic summit we have used the harvest billing system to predict the likely demand for sowing request for 2009 and the subsequent planting program for 2010. Our conclusion is that the steep decline in in industry and government reforestation work will continue into 2010 dropping to 150 million seedlings that year. This amounts to about a 40 per cent decline in the provincial planting program over the next two years with 2009 planting season estimated to be under 200 million seedlings. This year the number planted is estimated at 250 million. See our attached report for more of the details.