Over the past few days we've cracked on with the coppicing, with some help from friends to speed us along, and as a result we've now finished coppicing all the trees we plan to in the central area where we're working. There's still a few edge trees to deal with, but the bulk of the work is now done, and if we had to stop now, it would be OK.
The week started quite foggy, and was pretty cold too.
In fact, it was could enough that for a couple of days we decided to only work for 3-4 hours at a time in the wood, as it was sub-zero and windy too! On one of these days we collected some year-old logs from our wood, and also picked on some 8ft stakes I've been making. We'll use these to build a firewood shelter at home, similar to the one in the wood.
Today we went up to tackle these last few trees in the middle area:
As we had Carl and Holly there to help, things sped along nicely.
Before long we were at the last tree in the middle area, and I left Carl to do the necessary:
As I said, there's still some edge trees to deal with. In the afternoon we went to clear this area out:
This was hard work, as I was back in the ditch, just like a year ago...
but before long it was looking clearer:
There's several edge trees to come down here. The nearest tree is a Cherry, which will stay, while the Hazel and Sycamore further up the hill will come down. The two big Sycamore at the top are larger than I've trained to fell, and as they're near our neighbour's barn, I'm going to arrange for someone we know to fell them, and we'll deal with them once they're on the ground.
I'd like to thin some of the Holly on the other side as well, time permitting:
Here's a few views of the area we've been working in:
It's going to be exciting to see it all coming back to life in just a few months...
Mike
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