From station to station, kids learn about logging

Ron Hardin, a heavy equipment instructor at Shasta College in Redding, Calif., tells third-graders from Columbia Elementary School near Redding what a fire bulldozer is used for at logging sites. He also explains that, like them, his students have homework and take quizzes and tests.

Fourth-graders from Happy Valley Elementary School near Redding watch activity in an area loggers call the landing. It's an open area for processing trees that have been cut. A skidder brings logs to the landing, a de-limber cleans them and a log loader sorts them and puts them on a truck.

A log loader puts a log onto the back of a truck to be taken to a lumber mill.

A de-limber clears debris off a log so it can be trucked to a mill for processing.

A gaggle of third-graders screamed with excitement when Jim Antos of Redding, Calif.-based Creekside Logging felled a tree with his hand saw.

Jim Antos of Creekside Logging finishes making sure the log he just cut will fit on the truck later.

Dennis Garrison of Sierra Pacific Industries explains that a logger uses a tape measure to check the length of newly cut logs.

Dennis Garrison of Sierra Pacific Industries answers questions from schoolchildren, including whether loggers know which direction a tree will fall when they cut it. (They usually do.)

Third-graders from Columbia Elementary School near Redding walk along a logging road to the next station on their tour.

Fourth-generation logger Loren German tells third-graders from Columbia Elementary School near Redding about a feller buncher, which is also known as a hot saw. He also says that if the children want to work on such pieces of equipment, they should learn computers while they're young.

Loren German of Creekside Logging runs a hot saw while children stand behind a yellow tape for safety and watch.