A change in the weather

This week the wet and windy weather finally stopped, giving way to sunshine and the risk of frost - much better for working in the wood!
This also meant mist some mornings, but that clears away soon enough.
The birds seem to prefer the sunny days - we see the Robin a lot more, and the local Blackbird is getting braver, visiting us where we have lunch.
I spent the early part of the week working in a ditch
Actually, a muddy ditch, and I put a layer of branches in the bottom to stop me sinking:
Anyway, it's all cleared out now, apart from a few small trees which we'll have to get our neighbour to fell from his side of the fence.

I finally got to use my new double pulley this week:
With this, and the two single pulleys, we can now set up a rope that goes round a corner and then onto a 4:1 pulley system, making it very easy to pull over the leaning trees at the edge of the wood. These are the first two we used it on:
The ones remaining at the right are more problematic, as three stems have twisted together - we're going to take some advice from more experienced foresters to find out what to do to get them down safely. You can see the twisted stems in the photo below, along with the logs from one of the two trees we felled:
Meanwhile, Tracy was busy working on one of the larger chestnut stools:
Yes - I did manage to photograph the tree half way to the ground!

It's hard to believe that these trees have grown to this size in just 16 years, but they have - we counted the rings.
We do feel like we're making some progress now, with a space opening up down the hill where Tracy's working, and quite a difference in some of the dense areas alongside the neighbouring barn:
Let's hope the weather holds for the coming week, when we'll be up in the wood for three of the five days...

Mike