Manage the harvest yourself
Your harvest will only be a success if everything is organised correctly. There is a lot to do, and some steps need to be completed well before harvesting can begin.
Arrange yourself or engage a harvest manager?
If you only plan to harvest occasionally, using a harvest manager is likely to be the best option. If you are working towards harvesting regularly you may wish to take a more active role in overseeing the operation.
There's a lot to organise
If you are managing the harvest yourself, you will need to arrange several activities. These include:
- engaging appropriate contractors with suitable harvesting machinery
- financing the planning and set up costs
- applying for resource consent
- preparing harvest and environmental management plans
- constructing roads and skid sites
- marketing the logs
- customer relationship management
- wood-flow scheduling and reconciliation
- health and safety management
- invoicing
- contractor payments.
If you have not done this before it can be a lot of work, and difficult to do right.
Arranging harvesting of your forest and marketing of your logs is a specialised field. If you plan on doing it yourself you should have previous experience.