BERLIN, N.H. (AP) – Winter is prime logging season in the Northeast because the ground is frozen and heavy machinery can get into the woods without doing much damage to the soil.

Logging usually grinds to a halt in early April, when the spring thaw brings “mud season” and towns start posting roads to limit heavy trucks.

But this winter, the ground never froze. Heavy rains in October and November, followed by unseasonably warm weather and more rain in December and January, have made it the worst winter for timberland owners, loggers and foresters that anyone can remember.

“I’ve talked to (logging) contractors who say they’ve only been able to get out one or two days a month,” Jasen Stock, executive director of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, said Monday.

As for the lumber and paper mills, “This is the time of year you’re supposed to be building inventory for mud season. Well, it’s all been mud season,” Stock said.

Logger Rocky Bunnell said December was terrible – and January was worse.

“I’m guessing right now that last month we lost a total of 12 days that we never even started any (equipment) up, and that’s not counting the days we were nonproductive,” he said. Even if the ground freezes this month, Bunnell expects it to thaw again in early March.

Logging contractors and many foresters get paid by the amount of wood they bring to market.

If they can’t cut, they make no money. For loggers, that means it’s hard to meet payments on their equipment and keep their crews busy.

Bunnell had to lay off one man temporarily and he’s given up on the job he was supposed to complete in Monroe this winter.

The landing where the trees are delimbed, cut to length, sorted and loaded onto trucks usually stays frozen because it’s exposed and the heavy machinery packs down the snow. But after Sunday’s rains, even the landing is springing leaks, forcing him to move on to another job in Victory, Vt.

“Water has bubbled. It’s coming right out of the ground,” he said. “If a vehicle goes up to that part of the landing, it will sink.”

Albert von Dohrmann, regional forest ranger for northern New Hampshire, said he has seen no increase in environmental violations this winter, which means the loggers are doing what they should: staying out of the woods altogether or moving their operations to higher and drier ground.

Peter Lammert, of the Maine Forest Service, said even when the loggers can cut, they’re having trouble getting their wood to the mills because many towns have posted weight limits on their roads already. Typically, that doesn’t happen until March.

“It’s disastrous. We’re supposed to have two months of winter and then mud time. I’ve been here 30 years and this is the earliest I can remember,” he said.

Bunnell said some mills are getting creative because they’re afraid they will run out of wood in a month or two.

“They’re saying, We’ll pay you to pile up your wood somewhere where you can get it in the springtime,”‘ he said.

Terry Noble, general manager of wood procurement at Fraser Papers Inc. of Toronto said the company’s pulp mill in Berlin already is open for wood shipments until 3 p.m. Saturdays, and it will open its yard all weekend if that will help loggers make up for lost time.

Roberta Borland, president of the Vermont Loggers Association Inc. said there’s an upside for loggers who can produce: They’re getting better wood prices. Also, half the loggers in Vermont do other work, such as snowplowing, when they can’t cut timber.

The mills have been “crying for wood all winter,” she said. “We basically look at it as it’s a really good, comfortable time for a logger right now and we like where the numbers are.”

Noble said the high prices are adding to Fraser Papers’ worries for all its mills in Maine, New Hampshire and New Brunswick.

“The price of wood has to come down for us and our (regional) competitors to survive on the brutal world market,” he said.