A Trip to the Russian Forest

First of all, I think I made some improvements to help those of you who had problems making comments.  Try it out!


I went on a field trip last Friday.  It was mandatory :).  Do adults go on field trips?  I guess I never thought about it before. 

We went to Tikhvin.  Tikhvin (Ти́хвин) is a small Russian town (55,000 people) located on the banks of the Tikhvinka River, on the east side of the Leningrad Oblast, about 200 kilometers east of St. Petersburg.  I learned that the word Tikhvin comes from "tikh" (road) and "vin" (market), so it's the "road to the market".  It's located at the intersection of trade routes which connected the Volga River with Lake Ladoga and the Baltic Sea.  It's mostly known for a monastary & convent that was built in 1560 by Tsar "Ivan the Terrible". 

I know, more than you ever wanted or needed to know.  But I travel to these places that I've never heard of, & I need to know SOMETHING about them.  Otherwise, I'll completely forget where I've been & why I was there.  So the engineer in me takes over & I start doing tons of research. 

And why did we go there??  Because other than some small industrial businesses, it's primary a logging town.  And our company recently purchased a harvesting company located in town, along with 180,000 hectares of forest.  So we took a field trip into the Russian woods!

It's worth commenting that a 200 km (120 mile) road trip in Russia takes a good 4 hours.  The roads are terrible, bumpy, and there is no concept of an interstate system. 

First we visited the terminal.  We harvest over 250,000 cubic meters of wood through this terminal every year.  Our main focus is pulpwood, but we also harvest sawlogs for the local mills, & firewood for the region.

 The terminal was actually holding a record-high volume of wood this day - close to 75,000 m3

Then we drove another 2 hours into the forest!  In the mud, in this old Russian van (no seatbelts & the windows were sealed shut).......

But I do have the say that the forest was beautiful.  All I could smell was bark & pine needles, and the sun was shining.  After living in a 5 MM+ person city for the past 3 years, you tend to forget what fresh air smells like. 

The "Grand Finale" of our trip was to go to one of the tracks of land that we are currently harvesting.  And yes, the harvester equipment is from John Deere

We met one of the harvesters.  These guys live a tough life - work 12 hours, sleep 12 hours, 1 day off every 2 weeks.  And because they are in the middle of nowhere, they sleep/cook/rest in this lovely trailer during their downtime.  Which also means they don't shower until they get their day off - yuk!

The harvester's name was Ivar, and he's from Estonia.  He was a nice guy, and let me sit in the harvester

I'm heading to Koryazhma later this week, so more obscure Russian town postings are on the way........