March – panning for gold

More processing of the coppiced wood, it feels like a slow process when you are only there once or twice a month. In addition to that, I also did a little work to let more light into the glade by felling a few small trees at the fenceline and ring-barking a mature birch at the south end of the glade. The intention is that as well as allowing more light it will also provide some standing deadwood for the wildlife. I’ve taken a similar approach with an oak at the edge of the glade, but in this case I am experimenting with partial ring-barking. I have left about 25% of the tree’s circumference not ringed with the intention that the tree will have mostly standing deadwood and present little shade, while avoiding completely killing the tree. It is an experiment and only time will tell how successful it is.

Silva Energy visited to survey what wood we could offer them for their new bioenergy business, so if all goes well there could be an income to offset some of the expense of woodland ownership. In an effort to generate enough cash to buy himself some dog biscuits, Che has learnt how to pan for gold; see photo below.

February 2009. For Bluebells Or Brambles?

A couple of visits this month and the coppicing is all done, we coppiced approx half an acre again this winter. Many of the felled trees have been processed, but there’s still a lot more logging and stacking to do. We can now see the trees for the wood, especially the oak standards in the coppiced area which last year were on the edge of the area, but are now standing more majestic in the open. The wood now has clear air across pretty much its full width, from the field boundary at the south, across the glade then over 2 seasons worth of coppicing to the track at the north. I will probably take out a few more trees at the south boundary to make it more open to the butterflies etc that will hopefully be making use of this space. In amongst the regrowing coppice that was felled a year ago there is a mass of brambles which should be full of flowers and blackberries later this year, so it’s an as yet unmade decision whether to attack the brambles and let more sun reach the ground (for the bluebells etc), or to leave the brambles for the benefits provided by its flowers and fruit. I may end up doing a bit of both. One thing that will be removed is the little patch of young rhododendron I spotted recently. Spring is definitely here and one of the signs is the ‘lambs tails’ on the hazel.

There have been no other thefts from the wood since the spade disappeared, which is promising. Although there were signs that someone had been in the glade, everything seamed to still be there. We are taking a risk leaving chairs etc in the bender, but don’t want to end up with paranoia spoiling enjoyment of the wood and having to lock everything away each time we leave.

January 2009. Dam it!

A couple of visits this month and we’ve almost finished coppicing this season’s area. But apart from taking off some of the smaller branches the felled trees haven’t been processed yet, so even when we finished felling there’ll be quite a lot of work left to do logging up and stacking. This time last year it was frustrating the number of trees I was getting hung up, but this winter there has only been one that needed winching out. There were others hung up but they were small enough to drag by hand. In fact that was partly by plan; when trees were most likely to get hung up then I have been taking out all the smaller ones 1st to create more space and reduce the risk of hanging up a larger one (yep, bloody obvious when you think about it).

As well as the coppicing jobs, there has been activity down in the gill with Tom and Sam (and me too) building a small dam below what will be the new tree camp. The 1st session was just roughly putting a couple of logs across and rocks beneath, but when we visited a couple of weeks later the river had helped by filling in the gaps with twigs, leaves and silt. The stream is flowing well and as full as we’ve ever seen it. The only downer this month was our 1st unwelcome visitor activity, as the spade we had been using by the dam ‘disappeared’. We thought it would be safe as it was away from the path but we were wrong, this now raises concern about how trusting we can be with other things we leave in the wood.

Nov/Dec 08. Two Years in and Planting

Only one visit to the wood in November due to other commitments, including a business trip to India. Both the business trip and the wood visit involved tree planting. The India trip was to audit a couple of lubricant blending plants and at the end of one visit I was honoured by planting a tree on the site. While back in Kent the county council’s free tree scheme had given us 25 trees to plant in the wood. We planted three hazels to extend their range in the gill, a beech in each of the north corners and a couple at the north edge of the glade, and 18 mixed blackthorn and hawthorn along the edge of the track. The beeches are planted to provide some great characterful trees in one or two hundred years time, while the others will have a more immediate impact including the wonderful show of white spring flowers from the thorns and the winter haws and sloes providing an additional food source.

December saw three visits to the wood with the focus on coppicing this seasons area. Progress has been quite satisfying with only one tree getting sufficiently hung up to need winching (that’s good for me!). Having owned the wood for two years now, there is still something new and this month I discovered that one of the coppice stools is of oak, the only one in our wood as far as I know. As well as helping out with a few wood jobs, Tom also spent some time on the tree camp in the glade, adding some extra rails and improvising a drum kit.

Back to Work

With leaves and chestnuts falling around us, we started this winter’s coppicing. The plan is to do half an acre next to last winter’s coppiced area, this will then be open between the glade we are expanding and the ride/track until the new growth fills in again. I still need to pull my finger out regarding what to do with the wood that is felled, including much of last years which is still stacked up waiting to go off for firewood (did have someone collect some, but we never really got it organised properly). To open up the glade a little more a couple of oaks have been cut, one very young one coppiced and the other (30 years old, I counted the rings) pollarded at only about 4’ because it felt unsafe chainsawing above that. A length of this one has been cut, split and roughly hewn into a paddle for the coracle. I thought it would be nice to have something made from this oak, but not sure a paddle was the right choice because it’s bloody heavy. Hopefully it will be light enough once the wood has seasoned and I’ve shaved more off it. The only flowers we saw were ragwort, but there are still some interesting fungi around.

A Busy September, but not in the woods

Only one visit this month as other things have been keeping us busy. I collected a boot load of firewood, but will need a few more loads to see us through this winter. Decision on the glade's oaks is that the large one at the edge will be ring barked, there was a young one (about 10 years) which I felled this month but it was growing from an older stool which has some fresh growth, the other oak in the glade will be pollarded. There are a lot more funghi now and a few unripe chestnuts on the ground. The rhododendron that was pulled up is still alive as there was lump of soil left on its roots, it has some fresh growth so it will be heading for a bonfire. I built a coracle this month but still need to make a proper seat for it and also carve a paddle, which I'll do once I've collected some suitable timber from the wood. Computer hassle means that all the photos got wiped, I've got backups for most, but September's are lost so nothing to post up here.

August; Into Autumn

The signs of autumn are more noticeable with chestnuts falling in soft spined cases along with green acorns and hazel nuts. The area that was coppiced last winter has shown good growth over the summer with both the chestnut and brambles doing well (hopefully the brambles will become less vigorous as the chestnuts shade them out over the next few years). There are more fungi now ‘fruiting’, the most common seems to be earthballs which are browny yellow as they mature towards sporing (I originally thought all fungi that shape were puffballs until I bothered to look in a book, I then discovered that these were earthballs which are poisonous unlike puffballs which are edible). On a charred stump (where we had a bonfire last winter) there is a fungus that looks a bit like white popcorn (but I couldn’t find it in my fungi book). There were a few butterflies fluttering about in the glade and also in the area we coppiced, plus a couple of hawker dragonflies too. The summer has also seen plenty of growth of the bracken in the glade, so I gave that another bashing; the difference from last year is noticeable as the diversity of plants is already increasing. The glade is still a bit too shaded now the trees leaves are full and this autumn’s work will include widening it to allow more light in next summer. I am also considering ring barking a mature oak on the edge of the glade; this will have the double benefit of making the glade sunnier (better for flowers and butterflies, etc) but also provide a decent contribution of standing deadwood which is a habitat feature that is rare in this woodland.