The start of this year's coppicing

We made a start on this year's coppicing! The first job was to cut back the side of the track passing through the wayleave, so we can get the car in:

This is the area we're cutting, starting at the corner where the footpath meets the wayleave, and running alongside the wayleave in a strip:

Here's the same shot after the first day's work, which was mainly spent clearing back small stuff at the edge of the footpath and building a couple of racks to store the cut wood in:

I did manage to make a small start filling them though, one of Birch:

and one of Sweet Chestnut:

There's a bit more light getting in already!

One interesting thing I found was an old tree stump which we'd left when coppicing the footpath edge here 8 years ago. It had become detached from the roots, so I'm taking it home to clean up as it looks nice:

Back for more progress on the coppicing soon...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Digging a new culvert

Not content with repairing an old culvert, we've also been busy digging a new one. Here's the track before we started, with the pipe laid on top:

The water comes from a spring up the hill from the track:

The first step was to dig a trench for the pipe:

This time, as we didn't have any convenient lumps of concrete, we've driven several chestnut stakes into the ground either side of the pipe where the car wheels will cross it, to provide some extra support:

Having covered the pipe back over, we dug a sump on the uphill side:

And an outflow on the downhill side:

Here it is immediately after completion and being driven over once:

Just a couple of weeks later, the track is transformed!

We also put in some big logs on either side to act as 'kerbs' to retain the soil:

One other interesting point - I noticed a lot of wasps while I was working on this, and found they were heading into this hole:

Which on closer examination had a nest in it!

I'll be starting coppicing in a few weeks, and hope to have a bit more time to update the blog after that...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.