Access, access, access...

If there's one thing that's important in managing a woodland it's access. If you can't get your products out of the wood, then there's not much incentive to produce them, and the woodland may become neglected. So, today's job was all about improving access to the wood we cut last winter.

Here's where the public footpath crosses from the track in the wayleave to the corner of our wood, where the stile is:
We have a right of way through here and along the footpath to get to our wood, but at the moment you would struggle to get a vehicle through. So, I got to work with the chainsaw cutting back the trees at the edges, while Tracy cleared the brash to the sides. I also used the saw to cut any stumps off low to the ground and round off their edges, to prevent damage to tyres.
before long we had the trailer in there and loaded with logs (the fence by the stile can be unhitched):
after which I backed the Defender in (reversing in low ratio is great!), and towed the trailer out:
Hopefully walkers on the path will appreciate it not becoming too overgrown as well.

We'd been working in the same area yesterday, with Tracy cutting up and splitting some logs that had been there drying over the summer:
I'd also been filling racks of lengths of birch and chestnut, to cut up later on:
One other job we did yesterday was preparing some 6ft poles for a customer to use at their allotment. Rather than measuring each pole individually, you normally measure one, and then hold it next to other poles and cut them to the same length. This time though, I came up with a neat idea to make this easier. I often use an off-cut with a "V" cut in it to raise a log off the ground for sawing - this time I made one with two "V"s, one for the measured pole, and the other for the pole being cut:
Then the poles are exactly parallel, and it was easy to cut accurately to length.

That's all for now. We're up in the wood again later in the week...
Mike