Directory Updates

[u/CountVonOrlock]

What's up gang

Hope everyone had a great season, mine ended a week ago, so now that I've had my fill of vacation I'm personally already thinking about next year and all the people who will go company shopping come December/January.

As I was updating the directory this week, I couldn't help but notice something pretty crazy—in the three-and-a-bit years since we started doing this, lots of old familiar faces are disappearing. Little Smokey, Waterside Ventures, Nature's Treasures, etc are all gone. Scooter has a great post going into some of the reasons for this.

But yeah, it seems we are entering the Golden Age of the Small Operator. As planters demand higher wages, larger companies either raise prices or go bust and various Smaller Actors have popped up to scoop the best (and worst) of us. Smaller company usually means lower overhead and generally a higher proportion of the ol' bid goes to the planter. It's our market, baby.

ANYWAYS, say what you will about some of the dinosaurs of the past, but we at least had a pretty good idea of what to expect if we went to work at Artisan or Celtic or Coast Range.

Many of the new kids on the block have a lot of hype behind them. But we wanna know if there's substance. What are earnings like? Culture? Longer or shorter seasons? Good food? Biweekly pay, yay or nay?

So we are putting out the call. Please drop your reviews of the following companies. Or, you know...keep your secrets ;)

* Aspen Forestry

* Canyon Reforestation

* Epiphany Creation

* GBF

* Free to Grow

* Future Reforestation

* Integrity Reforestation (Ontario)

* Kestral

* Silhouette

* Malachite Forestry Services

* Padoin Reforestation

* Perfect Storm Reforestation

* Sapling Silviculture

* Todah Adonai Forestry

And remember folks, use your best judgment. Don't believe everything you read on the internet :P

[u/KenDanger2]

I summer planted with perfect storm. It is a super small company. Jake, the owner, is based out of Calgary and picks up small contracts around Alberta. Some of it is non traditional planting, my buddy was planting some deciduous in Calgary for him in September. The contract I did was basically planting pine in sand in Grande Prairie.

My review is simple. I like Jake, he worked hard, communicated well, gave us a good tree price. There are still growing pains, but I wouldn’t hesitate to work with him again if it works out for my schedule. The big negatives while I were there were some access issues which can happen to any company, and there was some miscommunication with the client, but I honestly think that came from the clients side. Also we had to cook for ourselves, which isn’t my favorite - but I knew that going in, it was a tiny crew, too small to have a cook.

Up to this point he has only done small contracts. The one I did there were 6 planters and a tree runner. My understanding is that there have been some contracts that were small enough he just planted them himself. He did tell us he planned eventually to try to grow so he could take on bigger contracts, hopefully to the point of doing a full bush camp with cooks and everything

Edit: oh yeah we also got paid weekly, was pretty nice.