Sunday, 30 November 2008

Wet day in the woods

We were in the woods yesterday, despite the rain. We cycled up on the electric bikes, as we like to avoid driving up and down the track, if possible, when it's muddy. Of course, there are times that we have to drive up and, and the same applies to other owners in the wood, but every time we go on bike that's one less trip and a bit less damage.

While I was waiting for a friend to arrive I had a look at a stream in one of the other patches in the woods, that a friend of mine has just finished purchasing. With the rain in the past couple of days it was in full flow:

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Friday, 28 November 2008

Dealing with a hung up tree and a broken branch

One of the most popular posts on our blog has been "What NOT to do with a hung up tree"

So, when I got a tree hung up on Thursday I thought I'd take some pictures of getting it down. Of course, it's better not to get it hung up in the first place, but sometimes it's unavoidable, and we all make mistakes from time to time as well.

Here's the hung up tree:

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Monday, 24 November 2008

Odds and ends

It was raining today :-(

Tracy had some stuff to get done in Rye, so I went up to the wood on my own. I'm not entirely comfortable working alone felling trees alongside the public footpath, as it's good to have a second person as a lookout for walkers, so I did some odd jobs that had been waiting. Like sharpening one of the saw chains that had got blunt last Friday. We rotate a group of three chains on each saw, so when one gets blunt you can just swap to another, as long as you remember to come back and sharpen it when you have time! It also has the advantage of wearing out all the chains at the same time that the drive sprocket needs changing, then you can start again with a new set and sprocket.

Anyway, the other thing that needing doing was gathering together the bits of birch that were left in various places around the area we cut last winter and converting them to firewood. Not especially exciting, but quite satisfying work to do.

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Friday, 21 November 2008

Back to the coppicing...

My busy period at work has drawn to a close for now, so we were up at the wood today. Also, I'm only working two days a week for the next four weeks, so we'll have lots more opportunities to get up there.

We got straight back into coppicing along the footpath, and with the clearing of small stuff completed a few weeks ago we made good progress. Here's a before and after shot of the area I was working:

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Sunday, 16 November 2008

A walk around a different wood

This afternoon we went to visit our friends Rod and Heather in their wood, about 10 miles from us. We went on the electric bikes, being cheaper than going by car and also enjoyable, riding through the countryside.

It's always interesting visiting other woods, as you often get ideas and learn about things you never see in your own wood. Every wood is different, in terms of fauna & flora, geography, hydrography, history and especially what the owner plans to do with it. There are many ways to manage a wood. Some people focus on producing timber, some on firewood and logs, some on biodiversity and others on keeping game. All are valid, and not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Rod and Heather's wood looks somewhat like ours at certain points:

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Saturday, 15 November 2008

Visiting other woods

We went on a brief visit to some nearby woods today, with Tracy in her role as SWOG co-ordinator, as Steve from Butterfly Conservation was doing a visit. First though we had a load of firewood to deliver locally:

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