Forestry Now

Dermot McNally 0:00
John, thanks very much for taking the time to talk to me today.

John Sherlock
No problem. Maybe you'd start off by giving me a brief overview of what's actually happening in your own 49 acre forest there beside the firewood business. last February, as most people in Ireland were forests who were aware we had a huge storm for us. It meant that all the Sitka and Norway that we had was was totally flattened. And when I say flattened, all you're left with was a ring of trees just literally around the edge of the forest. So look at it. Was a big shock to us, because we had had 16 acres of ash. It got ash die back at year nine, we had taken it out, replanted. It was coming along lovely. We had replanted with with a mixture of stuff. We thought, well, now we're sailing on. Now the forest is set where we're going. And we were doing the forest under continuous cover. The whole thing then changed. The whole plan had to revert back to a clearfell situation and get it out so we were lucky in a way. We got we got our timber out, we got our timber sold. We got paid for it. I kept the pulp for our own firewood business, and I kept some of the pallet as well, because we used some of the palette for kindling and and we got the brush removed there towards the end of the summer, it's still on the roadside, and we're looking towards planting in January. We also had our small oak plantation. When the guys were there, we had the trees marked. So we got the chainsaw. Guys that were there to knock down the trees were marked for coming out, so they are actually still there to come out.

Dermot McNally 1:41
So you replanted your ash with 80% Sitka, and then a bit of broadleaf. Was that it?

John Sherlock 1:47
I planted it, I'd say, with 75% Sitka and, you know, Dermot, I just say to people, you know, when you do something first, we are all probably scant on knowledge. And I the fact that I did it again, I had a little bit more to know what I wanted to do. So I looked at the operations we had had, and I wanted to try and keep the Sitka that I planted in the fields that we could get in and out with machinery without impacting on the hardwoods. So we put in a slightly less Sitka in order to be able to put the hardwoods in, what I would say, corner fields and fields that wouldn't suit heavy equipment. And it actually has worked out lovely, because you sort of have your fields towards the road, have the hardwoods in it. We have cherry and some of them, and we have red oak and the others. We put red oak behind a group of houses. We've actually shaped them that we did the cherry last summer and the red oak the previous winter coming along. Lovely. It was a second a second chance. Do you know? And and the thing is, you're looking now at trees, 678, foot, nine, foot high. So that's what I just say to people that have ash. Get it out. Because you're just looking at something dying. It's like looking at a sick animal. German. You just get you move it on, and you get a new animal in, and look at a grown the same with the with the with the ash. Get it out. Have a new plantation. Have it grown again? There's nothing like looking at trees growing to lift your spirit.

Dermot McNally 3:20
Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. Time is money as well. And three years watching it die is three years that the new one can be grown. So your young Sitka, then it wasn't affected by the storm. It was too small, but your main block of Sitka Norway came out, and what are you going to replant that main block with? And are you going to continue with the plan to go CCF?

John Sherlock 3:39
I'm going to go with CCF. I'd love to put in some Douglas far, because we use a good bit of it here in our own Samuel in business. But I don't think the soil will lend itself to that. So we're going to have to do is we're going to put in a mixture that the soil will carry, and the fact that we put in a certain percentage of Sitka, my opinion, is that in time, that there'll be less sick and more of the other minor conifers and more of the hardwoods, so that forest will evolve into a more natural state, and I would hope at that stage then it would have more ground stability. Yeah.

Dermot McNally 4:12
Well, okay. Well, that that ties in with where you were before this on your bit of you mentioned cherry and red oak. They came in with the replanting of the ash, yeah. And so, how have they done in the soils? Because, you know, sometimes you think, Well, if you're if you can't plant Douglas Firkin yet, can you manage cherry and red oak? You know, how are they going? Yeah.

John Sherlock 4:35
Well, that was the better end of the farm that we planted, Dermot. Do you know we my father, originally planted the the latter end of it. And I used to always say to people, he said, all that ever fed was two horses. Do you know I remember for cattle in it, and used to get red water and all these mad Yorks from ticks. So you can imagine the type of land that was so then the m3 motorway came through the remaining part. To the farm the biggest block and divided it. So at that stage, then I decided I was going to plant the site the bit the far side of the motorway. And it was, it was good land. That's why initially, our forester was really anxious to put in the ash, because he could see it was really going to grow. So then when we went going forward, we did. We kept the best of it there for the cherry and the red oak. And it has just, it has just grown. It's really a super crop. Our our Chagas advisor, Kevin, when he heard I was putting red oak in, he says, You're going to have to be getting your pruning shears or your lopper out. He says, for that, because he said, Just those need mind. And, and we have, we've, we've done to a light shape and and a bit more of a formative shape and honor. And the same with the cherry. Cher is coming along, lovely, yeah. And I suppose the reason I went with that was, and again, it's all, it's all, it's everybody's opinion. And you know your thoughts and your opinions on forestry, and that's the one thing I like about forestry is everybody, as an owner, you can make decisions on your on your opinions, you know. So I looked at what timber was going to come out of it, and I thought, well, cherry is a good timber, and it's a highly valued as timber for furniture and stuff. And red oak, while it's not a true oak. It is an oak, and it's particularly it's quick grown, and it's used a good bit in the States for flooring and stuff like that. So I was thinking it could be my ash, if you know what I mean, there'd be a bit of growth in it, and there is good growth in it. So good, good.

Dermot McNally 6:36
Yeah. And you have the eye of a saw Miller as well, John, and that, I suppose that gives you the extra insight. So when you look at the formative shape and now the two shapings you've done on this young, nine year old broadleaf, can you see that there's going to be a bit of saw out there?

John Sherlock 6:51
Yeah, that's something that I as an owner, I think it's easy to it's a lot easier to convince somebody, especially in your hardwoods, to do a bit of shape. And on your hardwoods, if to see what that shape and results in. And if they see what the shape, if they don't do the shape and well, you know, people have an opinion at the minute, and it's just simply because we're a young industry, that I hear people saying, oh, it's such and such a hardwood is good for firewood. And I said, we never grew hardwood for firewood. We grew it for timber. We grew it for planks. Firewood is a waste coming off tenants. And the only reason people say that is because they haven't had any experience yet of selling any hardwoods for plank timber or beams or that. And that's what I say. We need to do that now, so that in the future, then, that even the tenants that come out could be used for something. I had a I was showing it there recently. I was down looking at the Oak that we took out. I had a 22 centimeter diameter oak came out because it was a wolf tree, but there was about two meters, over two and a half meters of it nice. So I'd probably make that into a beam. There's the sort of stuff and that that brings the value up completely. Yeah. You know, the finished

Dermot McNally 8:15
Yeah, it the other option was firewood, yeah, the other option was firewood. Yeah, yeah. Another question for you, John, when I was there, you did an open day at the forest at one stage, and I remember you had some Alder and maybe a bit of birch growing around the fringe of your me and conifer block at the time, if memory serves me right, did they survive the storm, and is there any potential in them from a timber point of view.

John Sherlock 8:40
So it's actually all Alder, believe it or not. Yeah, they survived the storm. They were just like that row that you were looking at. It was a double row of alder. And I think it was either that the man, the forester, in his wisdom, it was actually Aidan McKenna did it. He did a real good job. Now I have to say it, and at the time he put them in, I think, for a little bit of shelter, because he was probably thinking down the line, believe it or not, there were like, there were like, sentries at the edge of the forestry. At the edge forest, the only things that was left standing was the row of alder and the plantation of alder. Now we've, we've tin the alder twice. I actually was going to, we did mark to tin anytime the machines came in to work on the city. We did a little bit of work on the alder, because while the machine was there, it made economic sense to do it. The older are coming along. They're getting a bit a Gert on them. I would say, yes, there will be Saul Argo with them. And again, we're looking at, what are we going to use the alder far, it's not, it's not wonderful firewood, and some people like it for barbecuing or something like that. There is people look for it, but as a saw log, it has potential for saunas, for cladding, for the interior. Saunas, yeah, there's, it has. The same. And it's a long word, and I can't really finish it off. It's thermal, dynamic, thermal, something as regards heat retention, as are very similar to western red cedar. And western red cedar is phenomenally expensive and to buy. So what they've done is, and there's a couple of companies making saunas now in Ireland, and what they're doing is they're cladding the interior with alder. Now, obviously it wouldn't be good enough to make a barrel type sauna, because you'd have the outside of it exposed to the weather, but the end and the fact that it's going to be that for saunas you're using, maybe a for cladding, you're using 100 by 25 mil board. So your opportunities to get that type of of board out of alder, I think are there? I think we find a use for it, because we have a lot of it in this country. There's a lot of it planted,

Dermot McNally 10:55
yeah, a lot of it planted. And unfortunately, unless we find a use, it goes for firewood. This is the inevitability, yeah. So John, you've got a chance now with your new planting of your wind blow area, what broad leaves are you going to put in there then? So you've got the eye of a saw Miller. You know that you have to deal with a certain type of soil condition. What broad leaves are going to be? The Chosen Ones

John Sherlock 11:20
we're looking at Oak, if the ground would stick it, I'd like to stick in some beach, maybe a bit of hornbeam, a good view the minor conifers. If I could, I definitely will put in western red as a western red cedar. I under planted some of the Sitka as an experiment. Believe it or not, they were flying. They absolutely love that soil. So if we could get them in, they're a high value timber, and that's where we'd be going.

Dermot McNally 11:48
Is there deer in around that part of me,

John Sherlock 11:51
fingers crossed. There is no deer in this in our area, in the surrounding area, there has been deer. If we can dodge the bullet on the deer, it would be fantastic, because I know other people, and they're tormented

Dermot McNally 12:04
with you. Yeah, well, the species you're talking about putting in there all aren't wouldn't be

John Sherlock 12:09
helped with deer. There'd be like silage to them.

Dermot McNally 12:11
Okay, John, well, can we move on then to the northeast forestry group. You're the current secretary and a former chair. How many members are now in the group, and where has the group been most effective for owners that get involved

John Sherlock 12:24
at the minute, we've open 100 members, and believe it or not, we've had a huge surge in the last year because of the storm we it was formed into 1013 initially there was, there was about 20 or 30, and we've maintained numbers like that. And the storm really was a was an eye opener for us all, because it brought people that joined that we never knew were there, and they never knew the advantage of joining a forest owner group in that first of all, the way I look at it is I look at a lot of the members now with an artist forest group, as friends, as people, that when I hit a crisis like we had this year, we all ring and we talk. And the fact of talking alone, from a mental health point of view, and a worry and something like that, to know that it's somebody else in the same boat, to know that there's somebody else out there thinking the same thing, even just talking about it helps. But the other thing is that the experience of some other because we're all first generation forest owners, we're all on the one journey, and some of us a little bit further ahead, that's the advantage I see. We're able to we're able to find out what sort of money timber is making real prices. We're able to talk about harvest and availability. We were able to go, for example, we had a wind throw event down in the in a large forest, and one of our members there, and other leading like Peter Farley, and in his forest, very, very informative. We had everybody down there within two weeks of the event happening, we've moved from that, from trying to find people to, you know, liaison with other members about getting their timber sold. Then we looked at what looking forward to replanting. So we actually were down with none so hardy there three weeks ago. We had a bus with members. We all went down and went around the two sites had known so hard you were operate from. And you know, that was an education in itself, because we were able to talk to the guys, hand, you know, directly, and say, I was thinking of doing this. Would these three suit that soil? And they were able to give us a little bit more, because they're growing these plants, and it was really and everybody and fair juice to learn so hardly, because Laren tag took a day off to bring us around, you know, because our two locations are well spread out. And that was really, really informative as well. So these are the sort of things we do, along with running our KT. G projects. We've been running them since the started in 2019 this year was probably the best in that we were very lucky. We had a very good facilitator there, Jim Crowley, who had worked for creature and had done a lot of wind throw in, Donegal in his in his working career with so he was like another, what I'd call guru, that we were able to bounce our questions off. And, you know, who's great saying, Well, I was thinking of doing that and, and you'd see the look on Jim, and he go, and he he'd know he wasn't sort of grooving towards what you were thinking. But he'd say, well, right, yeah, well, you know. And he'd give you the options on what possibly could go pear shaped, you know. And the one thing was our membership coordinator and part time sec, or nearly full time secretary, along with me now. And White was saying, when the KTG finished, all the people who have participated, and want to know was, when was the next meeting, when was the next event? So they had learned something from it, and again, a lot of it was peer to peer learning.

Dermot McNally 16:09
The Northeast forestry group hit the headlines with the first group to be certified. Looking back on that certification of your forests, what would you take away from it, and what was the main benefit of getting certified? John, in retrospect,

John Sherlock 16:24
we looked at this certification back in 2015 we saw what was common eventually, and it will come as in the private timber is going to be outstripped culture supply, and unless we have certified timber, it can't be sold a certified timber. If a saw mill is selling timber AS certified, they're allowed to mix 30% uncertified timber with their certified timber, and that brings it out as as 100% certified as a mixed certificate. Now we looked at and we said, right, let's see what it's like for private forest owners to get certified. So we went to the department to department of agriculture, who, I must say, have been very supportive of the group. We went and we engaged with them, and then we decided that we would run with them as the raw material for the project. So we brought in other, more expert people to work with us, so we got certified. It was unfortunate then, after the first year that the funding sort of did dry up and wasn't continued. So 12 of us, the 12 Apostles, as I called us, that had spent the previous nine months having meetings. I'm looking out the window here in my yard. We actually had several meetings here at night during the summer, sitting around on pallets, going through what we needed and what we you know, the whole process. So it came to the end of the year, and we were going to have to get our audit done, and there was no money for coming. So I got them all together. We got them all we got them together, and we decided we'd self funded ourselves. So we did self fund the audit ourselves. We were very lucky. We got a forester to work with us pro bono. We kept the cert going. We We then worked with the IFO, the Irish forest owners, so the CERT is still active. The Department have rejoined the funding process, and we're up to a membership of over 20 now, all certified, and so we've got new members in so from the initial 12 who would have been highly motivated towards getting certified, we then have moved on to take on what we'd call your normal forest owner, who wouldn't have any experience certification or been certified. That's another lesson. It's not that there's a lot of work in it. There's just a bit of gathering on paperwork.

Dermot McNally 18:45
And John there's got there is going to come a day when the certification is required. But apart from gathering the paperwork and getting involved, what did you learn out of it? Or have you improved your own forest management processes?

John Sherlock 18:57
I think the benefit, apart from the actual selling of the timber is unbelievable, because you look at every aspect of your forest, for example, look, look at health and safety. So when you have somebody coming into your forest under certification, they're insured to have the certs they have it should be the way it should be in our forest, in all our forest, but because you're certified, you're ensuring that all of that is done prior to an operation, so you know that the standards of the work been done will will rise. The other thing too is you're aware of the fact that you're you're looking at water courses, which in the felon license you should be doing, but all of these things because documented, because you're doing a risk assessment, you're doing safety statements, everything like that is is itemized, and you have to watch it. The other thing, ecology, biodiversity, these are built in there their core, their core pillars of certification and without actually. Thinking about it, you're actually improving your biodiversity. You're looking after environment. You're looking at environmental constraints, a lot of which is part and parcel of day fell in license process, but you as a forest owner, are becoming aware of these things, and that's the thing. So up until now, your forests are desperate, and a good few of the certification guys, the forestry the foresters, look after the forest. And the way I look at it is we're all aware of these things. Now. We're more aware than we were it. We don't have to allow us, because we work is done by our foresters. We don't have to actually get into the nitty gritty, but we're all aware of it too.

Dermot McNally 20:41
It's almost like a training program, in a sense, for owners, and bringing you totally aware of everything that has to happen, has

John Sherlock 20:47
to happen, and stuff that you wouldn't think of. We had one of our members, and he was doing a bit of spot spraying. And when the auditor came, I was actually the our manager came to have a look at the site, and she knows those spraying around the gate. And she says, what's the story here? Oh, he said, I had a bit of spray left in the in the can, he says. And I said it spread the weeds around the gate. Well, that's not really what you you know, that's, that's another operation, and that could get into water courses. So that was a simple non conformity that we addressed. But what I'm saying is now he's aware of his of stuff like that that you wouldn't think about it. You just do it. Now you think about something before you do it.

Dermot McNally 21:32
I got an email from someone at the nefg about the future forest owners initiative. Yeah. Can you talk anything about that? John, I'm

John Sherlock 21:40
in my 60s. I'll be 64 now and next week. And a lot, a lot of the members look at me as one of the younger members. So you can imagine the age profile of our group. But the one thing about them, about the forest owners, in a group, they all seem to be Sprite, you know, floods. You know, there's none of them seem to be carrying a lot of weight. And I'd say, if you were involved with a forest only, you don't carry a lot of weight. But we're all looking at, where do we go from here? And especially now, if you look at my situation, where I'm replanting now, that'll not be my forest to see. And and I was walking through a forest down there of one of our members during the KTG, and it was the same age as mine, and I was walking through this lovely stand to sit you, and I was saying, well, I won't stand in a city in a plantation like that for another 22 years, if God is good to me and I'm still here. And I was thinking to me, father who planted our original city, he never actually lived to see it, which was a bit sad in a way, but that's life. So I was talking, I'd say, well, like the next generation. So I have a daughter and a son who will be involved in that forest, and we're looking at, what will we do? So my daughter is involved. She's on the committee in the Northeast Pharisee group. So we applied for funding to do a next generation project. We've done surveys. So basically, what we're looking at is, where's the gaps in knowledge in forestry? What do the next generation want? What do they think we should focus on for them as future forest owners? And it's all very well for John Sherrick and all the rest of the guys in their senior years to say we will do a next generation project, which are? We don't know what they want. And as you you know you and I were speaking earlier about the generational changes and workforce on jobs. So we need to see what the next generation want from the from the forests are going to own. Is it? Are they looking at timber sales? Are they look on it from it from an environmental point of view, or they look on it for from a resource of of recreation. So it's surprising, some of the stuff that has come in, and that is environmental, obviously, income is high on their list, but there's a lot of other stuff that has has cropped up. So from that, then we're hoping to move forward and form a nucleus of next generation forest owners, so that they would, then all these Sons Daughters of forest owners did directly communicate among themselves that they'd form a peer to peer group, and that they then would, would then come to us and be saying, well, this is what we want. So then we try and design something or get our group focused on bringing them people in to learn if they can pick up and join in and that that knowledge can be shared. And the issue is, if you look at it, most of our of that age group, they're flat out working paying for mortgages, child minders. So the method of education will have to be when they have time. You know, it'll have to fit into a busy life.

Dermot McNally 24:56
And John, maybe this is a good time to talk about the school's project.

John Sherlock 24:59
You. Yeah, within our saw Miller, we've done a couple of projects here, within our sawmill and project, we got funding there, again from the Department under the forestry promotion, we have done a small sawmill and initiative, but we got within that we had a bursary to give timber to some local schools within our Northeast forestry group area, and we supplied some of the schools with that timber. They loved it. And then we got involved, as you do, with the woodwork teachers. And then the woodwork teacher said, would be any chance we could bring the people who are using the timber out to look around the forest? Then they always came out around our forests. And then we said, but you know what, there's, there's, there's, there's potential here. So we applied last year, and we we started doing a Schools project. So basically, we had eight committed people of the group, you know, we threw it open the group, and we whittled it down to eight committed people. So we did was, we designed they had now, this is, this was an interesting thing as well about this project. We provided the project, provided the signs which one of our woodwork teachers did a fantastic job on. I couldn't believe it, because he has QR codes that if they're, if they're out there, they don't have to be looking and right scribbling, you know, they can look at the forest and get the information from the signs. So we said, right, we provide the signs, but you have to go off and get the schools, and you have to put in your path, and you have to go and they went off and did it. So it's one of these projects where the group was only providing a tiny percentage of the actual effort the forest owners were providing. The other sort of 38 had to go off and get their schools and get them lined up to come and do visits. They had to do their part. So we did an initial path. We worked out the length of the path, then we had all the signs for all the different areas. So then we had school tours. And so they we all had to get a school to come out. So we've had a school out on all our sites, and it was very, very successful when I get my forest re established, and obviously there is some of it still standing. We'll resume with the school projects, because there's a lot of schools interested in coming out, and we see it possibly as a, maybe an income stream for forest owners. I think there's huge scope there.

Dermot McNally 27:20
John was there any issue with the insurance? Was anyone thinking, Oh, am I going to let people into the forest here?

John Sherlock 27:27
Within our forest owner group, we have event insurance, so we worked it through that. And the schools have a certain amount of insurance as well. There's obviously protocols. You do your you do your paper, you do your risk assessment, you do your inspections, you do your meta statements, and you also would what we did was we had the school teachers round looking at the site before they came. And the other thing is, within the legislation or the rules of the schools, a teacher has to accompany them so and we did a health and safety talk before the before the event as well. Well, you have a responsibility that you know that they're going to be safe if you invite somebody, and you don't, you don't have stuff laying around a trees, a branch is going to poke their eyes out, or stuff like that.

Dermot McNally 28:16
And John, when you say creating pathways, can you explain how that happened? Because you know, when we go into certain age of forest, the devil on earth wouldn't get through them. So, so how did you get groups in into these forests?

John Sherlock 28:28
Yeah, well, so what we did was the criteria for the actual to have a Schools Project was you would have to have a semi mature forest anyway, you'd have had to have a proper Forest Road. You'd have to have parking. Now, they did come on a mini bus, but obviously the teachers and you'd have to have adequate parking. So we all had to look at our sites first, at the sites that were so obviously there was a lot of that sort of of prior to commitment. We then looked at what they had would be suitable? Would it be interesting? You can have a monoculture walk, but ideally you wanted variants of speech species. Some of us were blessed with inspection paths. We altered them. We actually crossed in our own forest on the walk. We crossed a deep enough ditch that was had been done during the grants, when my father cleaned the land years ago, drain the land. So I was looking at this as I'm going to have to make a little footbridge to go across it. That was another thing within the project. German was a footbridge. So one of the school teachers designed a footbridge. He did a plan for it, one that you could bring the components down the forest and screw it together. So that's actually we did a leaflet on on the whole schools project, or on the school walk project, and that's on it. So the design is there as well. So any other forest owner wants to have a little thing they can make the bridge to design, he's he even has the bolts and the screws and the whole lot. So, you know. Stuff like that I had wanted, because I'm blessed with lads working with me, and that I could go down the forest tonight. And there's two lads down there for two and a half days. They're getting it ready. So there is a bit of work involved in it, you know, yeah,

Dermot McNally 30:13
yeah, yeah, streaming pathways and getting me access paths in Yeah.

John Sherlock 30:18
And, you know, if there's bits of Hollows on that, maybe, just maybe throwing a bit of wood chip in them, or looking at the path and going around them, or taking stuff roots, or, you know, covering up roots with a bit of brash, or stuff like that.

Dermot McNally 30:32
John, before we move on to the firewood, then, is there anything else about the nefg that you want to mention? Because, I mean, you know, it occurs to me, in a way, I probably could have done just an interview on the nefg alone without talking about any of the other plates you're spending here.

John Sherlock 30:46
We're very lucky, in a way, that we have the people we have within a group. Because we have, we have all these people who, even though they're of us of a certain age, a lot of them weren't foresters before there were foresters. So you have, you have people like lecturers, you have ex school teachers, you have ex engineers. You have this huge availability of skills that can be called upon, and they're all willing to work. So within our group, if we want to do something we can, we can sit down and say, well, as long as we react to what people say. So at the minute, we have people who are thinning their hardwoods, and they're saying, Well, I can get people with chainsaws, but they can't get somebody to get anything out. I can't get stuff out, because our price of a forwarders to bring it in, you bring low orders. So we have an application in under the funding with it about to get a group forward or a small little scale forwarder for the group, but stuff like that. So the thing is, you listen to your members, you see what they need, and you see, can you help them? But at the same time, the fact that we have a good, strong group, you have people coming up with suggestions of initiatives, and that keeps people involved. And the group structure is fantastic. Now, it really is. It is and it evolves. It evolves from what some groups and with the group structure to our Ireland, some groups are active. Some aren't. Some would have, would have be engaged in commercial activity. It's just depends on the group. Do you know, but the peer to peer and like, there's not, there's not a day goes past, but there's somebody ringing, somebody like, either lads ringing me, did you get plant? And yet, of what's the story on your plants? What are you putting in then ring another lad a ladle or to sell a bit of timber with your ring, such and such. Do you know all of this sort of stuff? Dermer, you know networking? Yeah.

Dermot McNally 32:40
No, very good. And on the ktgs. Then, just to finish off, are the ktgs limited to someone who hasn't done a KTG or can you do more than one? If there's a different

John Sherlock 32:50
topic, if you haven't done one for three years, you can do it again this year, because we obviously were focusing as much as we could within the criteria the program were focusing on the winthrough Department of Agriculture allowed people who had done a previous routine, earlier than that, to engage in the KTG to the forest owner initially, when we did the KTG, when it structure was set up, if you couldn't attend it, a close family member or somebody involved in the in the forest management could attend. And there's obviously some traveling money given some expenses for traveling within the KTG to the forest owner. And somewhere along the line, it became that only the forest owner could attend. But three years later, I was looking at my daughter doing it, and if you look at it, damn it again. What we were talking about earlier, they're in their 30s. They need to get babysitters. They need to pay for pets to go to these outings. They need to make time. Well, they're entitled to that few bob to pay for a babysitter. So I think there is a commitment on them and their time to do it, and they're excluded. What I like about is it's a bottom up program. So when we all start the first meeting, we all ask and say, right, lads, what do you want to focus on this time? Right? We have the mandatory subjects to cover, but we have a little bit of leeway on what others, what other what we focus on, we've done one on certification this year. We did it on Winthrop. In fact, the one on certification was over subscribed as well. But within the KTG, if you're holding a KTG, you have to spend a bit of time. In other words, that if you're focused focusing it on certification, that you get people you know, people in, and we have got experts in who can talk about the certification process and all that. So you can't just hold a KTG and say, Should we do it on this subject? You have to think about what you can what you can deliver within that project. You know that that that actual seven modules, but they're a great learner. They're absolutely fantastic.

Dermot McNally 34:58
Yeah, yeah, no, I did one with Aiden. Jenna, yeah, really good. And, yeah, it strikes me that if I have a child who's 23 and wants to learn about forestry, and they're they don't have their own herd number, they don't have their own forest officially, they're kind of excluded, unless there's a bit of flexibility there.

John Sherlock 35:19
Yeah, and I'm sure Aidan said that as well, you know, I'm it's just it would widen the pool to know, and, you know, we're not talking and I don't think it was that there was any who Korean going on with the money. It could have been stated something like that, but I just by forest owners. I just think the money is very small. It's not as if they get, as if it's, they're going to retire on it. It's only a few bob.

Dermot McNally 35:47
Yeah, nobody's, nobody's going to that there in the 75 quit, there's just nobody, because they want to learn about forestry.

John Sherlock 35:55
That's what they're going and if you get the money, well and good. But what I'm saying the people, if you look at the next generation, if they chose to attend it, I think they are entitled to bloody money, probably more. They'll probably need it more than you or me, and they would tell you the truth, you know you.

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