Apparatus and method for harvesting woody plantations

A tree harvester for harvesting felled trees including:

• (a) a wheel mounted, longitudinally extending, main frame;
• (b) a prime mover associated with the main frame and operable to move the main frame along its longitudinal axis in a forward direction;
• (c) a tree chipper supported on the main frame and having a forwardly facing infeed port for receiving trees to be reduced to chips and having an discharge port for discharging such chips;
• (d) a chipper infeed cylinder rotatably mounted with respect to the main frame on a generally horizontal axis in position to lift stems of felled trees as the main frame moves forward and to carry them into the chipper infeed port;
• (e) means to rotate said cylinder in direction to carry trees into the chipper;
• (f) a pair of alignment disc support arms mounted with respect to the main frame, one on each side of the chipper infeed port, said arms extending generally horizontally and forwardly from the chipper and diverging outwardly from each other;
• (g) at least two upright partially overlapping, ground contacting, felled tree alignment discs rotatably mounted with respect to each of the disc support arms to be in facing relation to the discs on the other arm, a rearward portion of each forward disc being positioned in overlapping relation to a forward portion of its adjacent rearward disc and on a side of the rearward disc toward the longitudinal axis of movement of the main frame;
• (h) means to cause the discs to rotate in direction to move their upper portions in a forward direction when said main frame moves in a forward direction to cause stems of felled trees being harvested to tend to move toward the longitudinal axis of movement of the main frame as the felled trees are contacted by the discs;
• and
• (i) the discs and support arms being so positioned that the stems of the trees being harvested are directed to the chipper infeed cylinder in longitudinal alignment with the chipper infeed port and into said chipper infeed port.

A method of managing existing short rotation woody plantations in geographical areas where temperatures occur which are low enough to freeze growing wood fibers above and below ground, the method including the following steps:

• (a) when wood fibers in the tree stems above ground and in root systems at least immediately below ground are frozen, sever the tree stems above ground from their root systems at ground level using a shearing or slicing action;
• (b) fell the severed trees to tend to cause trees adjacent to each other to fall to have their tree stems all pointing the same way and in roughly mutual parallel relation to each other;
• (c) harvest aligned adjacent felled trees by feeding their butt ends into a tree stem infeed port of a movable tree chipper as the chipper moves toward the tree stems in direction longitudinally of the aligned tree stems;
• and
• (d) permit multiple tree stems to sprout from the ground level severed root systems and to grow until they form the next short rotation existing woody plantation.

The method of harvesting trees to reduce them to chips of wood fibers, including the following steps:

• (a) first felling trees whenever convenient, desirable, necessary or possible and arranging the felled trees in windrows with their tree stems all pointing generally in the same direction;
• (b) next as a separate step, when the felled trees are found to have a moisture to wood content within an acceptable predetermined range, feeding the butt ends of the windrowed trees into a tree stem infeed port of a movable tree chipper as the chipper moves along the windrow in direction longitudinally of the tree stems from tree stem butt toward tree tip;
• and
• (c) discharging the resulting wood chips from a chip discharge port of the chipper into a chip hopper moving with the chipper.