A tidy kitchen and clear ride

IMPORTED POST FROM OLD BLOG. ORIGINAL DATE: 26/07/2007

As promised by Tracy, here's a picture of our tidied kitchen:



Fortunately the improvements to the roof held off Monday's rain, so hopefully that's a problem fixed for now, until we get round to building something more substantial...

Here's a few pictures from clearing the ride. We're doing this clearing to let more light in, for several reasons:
- it helps the ride stay dry and so avoids it turning to mud.
- it allows more plants on the woodland floor to grow up.
- it lets more light get to any yound trees that we don't cut back.
- it improves the habitat, increasing biodiversity - this is due to the "edge effect", see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture#Increase_edge
We're mostly cutting down silver birch, and pruning any overhanging chestnut.

Me cutting down a small sliver birch:


The new view of the sky (it was almost 100% covered before):


The results, which we will dry and use as firewood (I don't think birch is useful for construction):


A nice surprise was that when felling one of the birches, a little bit of chestnut came down from the top, and we got to see the first of this autmn's nuts starting to grow:


It's actually quite hard cutting trees down, as you feel sorry for them, especially when you count the rings afterwards and realise that what took you 5 minutes to fell had taken 15 years to grow... We just have to remember that we're sacrificing some trees for the good of other trees and a whole range of wildlife, as well as accomplishing our longer term goals of bringing the woodland into a sustainable scheme of management.

Oh, and for anyone who's read this far down, here's the quote of the week from Tracy:

 I had £60 at the start of the week, and now I've only got £7. I must have bought something.

 And the verdict on the second curry house was good, though still not quite as good as our old one in Wheatley... well, I guess you can't have everything!

Mike