The last week...

IMPORTED POST FROM OLD BLOG. ORIGINAL DATE: 26/12/2007

Wow, that was a busy week! We moved house, were filmed by the BBC and spent a few days working in the wood as well!

It all actually started on the Saturday night, which wasn't spent in the pub, but in the lounge doing routine maintenance on the chainsaw and sharpening the chain:


For chain sharpening I've devised a method of clamping the chainsaw to a table:


My friend Rich came down to help us move house, but he came earlier on the Sunday to come and do some stuff in the wood first:


We did the usual range of tree-felling activities and a tour of the wood, while Tracy got a fire going - these have become obligatory with the cold weather!


After the house move on Monday, which would have been a lot harder without Rich's help, Tuesday's job was being filmed by the BBC for an article they're doing on people buying woodland. It should be shown on BBC1 breakfast news this Friday (28th Dec) several times between 6am and 9am, and no News24 as well. Of course, if there's some major event in the world, the article may get postponed... Oh, and for those who don't make it out of bed in time but would still like to see it, I hope to upload a clip a few days later. Here's a few pics from the filming:






After the filming we finished off moving house (we had 5 days overlap), including moving Pete and Tom (our cockatiels), who are delighted with the large lounge they can now fly round in, and their view of ducks, geese and seagulls on and around the river outside the window. The other good thing about the new house, especially at this time of year is the sunrises you can see out of the back windows:




With all the moving over by Friday, the keys handed back for the old place and the new place in some kind of order, Saturday was our first full day back at the wood, and it was a frosty one:






With the almost complete lack of wind, the smoke from our fire kind of hung around for the day:


OK, and now for some assorted pictures of the coppicing. First, me trying to get a tree un-stuck from another one without causing too much damage:


What happens when you fell a large dead tree:





We're keeping the dead trees for our own use, as they're ready dried and so make excellent firewood. Here's what's left of one of them:


We've tried out using a froe to split the logs, which works well for small ones as you can line it up right before hitting it. We need to buy a maul for splitting the big ones though.




Here's Tracy's "patch", before:



After she's felled the smaller stems by hand and I've come in with the chainsaw and made a mess by knocking over all the larger ones:


And when it's all been cleared up and sorted:


Some other parts of the wood are really opening up now:



And just to compare to the beginning, here's a picture from the start:

and how it is now:


Mike