Spring in the woods and making charcoal

The woodland is looking amazing now, with the Spring flowers finally showing themselves. We had several friends come and visit us in the woods on the bank holiday, so a charcoal top up was needed for BBQ cooking - this time we made a short video showing how this simple method of making charcoal in a kiln works, using an oil drum and a smaller barrel:

We had plenty of time to see the displays of flowers. In the darker parts of the wood there are still mostly Wood Anemones, though with some Bluebells mixed in:

There's the first signs of shade as well, now that the leaves are appearing on the trees:

The sunnier parts of the wood are looking good with Bluebells, especially over in Sweep Wood:

The coppice is growing quickly again there as well:

Over in Smock Wood, the ride I cut a couple of years ago is looking great:

What's particularly interesting there is that there are a lot of Violets, which weren't in evidence there a few years ago, so I guess that's a positive result from cutting the ride:

The bit of the wayleave that I cut last winter is coming on well too:

As usual the wayleave is full of wildlife again...

And finally... this year we are hoping that we'll actually get some fruit, as the bees should be out at the same time as the blossom, unlike last year...

Mike

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Moving targets

We were up at the wood on Saturday, and I spent some time photographing flies, just to see what I could achieve with the new camera. I was pleased with the results:
Of course, there's plenty to attract flies and other wildlife these days, such as the honeysuckle and brambles in flower:The coppice stools are still growing well, some are now a metre (3 feet) tall:
We also had a charcoal burn going - I like the heat haze you get over the kiln:
and our friends Justin and Emma came to visit, just to relax and whittle some sticks.
We had a customer too (J. Martin Rustic Garden Furniture), coming to buy chestnut poles for making garden furniture, taking away a nice truck load:
We had a job to do as well - a coppice stool had fallen over in Grist Wood, across the public footpath into our wood. As Roy and Patricia aren't up that often we offered to clear it up for them, and got to work:
We've left the stool tidied up, and the logs stacked in Grist Wood:
Mike

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Charcoal results, and selling logs

Well, it worked! Here's the proof:
When we had a look in the kiln most of the wood around the edge had burned up:
I carefully tipped the drum over and slid out the smaller one with the charcoal in it:
Certainly made enough for a BBQ next weekend, and it'll be nice to cook on fuel made from our own sustainably grown wood, with zero transport distance, rather than imported charcoal made from a faraway rainforest...

The big job today though was meeting our latest customer. They turned up with a tractor and trailer, and took two 3-tonne loads away:
It'll be used to heat a nearby pub and a couple of homes in the coming winter. There's one more load to go some time in the next week or so.

Back to growing things.... grass has started to sprout in the rides inside the wood!
and the pond is almost luminous, it's so green:
lots of bubbles again, trapped by the film on the surface of the pond:
The film is thick enough for insects to walk on, and loads of flies have moved in. That's good, they can be food for dragonflies and other things.
There's also a plant growing under the water - not sure yet if this is by accident, or if it really is an aquatic plant that got here somehow, perhaps on the foot of a deer or boar?
I'm in London a lot this week, so no more posts till Sunday now, when there will be lots of news from camping up there with my mates (hope the weather holds...)

Mike

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Charcoal kiln test, and stuff that's growing

In an earlier post I was making a traditional charcoal kiln, but I also had a second oil drum, and today made that into a different kind of kiln I'd been told about.

Step 1: cut the top off an oil drum, and make slots in the side near the bottom (I did four, equally spaced):
Step 2: burn out any remaining oil (this wasn't smoky this time, as there was plenty of air getting in through the slots at the base)
Step 3: cut the top off a smaller drum, and pack it tightly with dry wood. I'm using a 20 litre veg oil drum for now, but I hope to get something larger, as I won't get an awful lot of charcoal out of this one: Step 4: put the small drum inside the big one, open end down, and make a fire around it. You can see several "hot spots" from the air being drawn in rapidly through the slots:
Step 5: Let it all cool down, and get your charcoal out of the small drum - I've not done this yet, it's cooling down right now, so I'll find out in the morning if it worked....

It should work better than a normal oil drum kiln (whole drum full of wood, lit and then sealed once the smoke turns blue), because the wood in the small drum will be heated and the volatile gases driven off, leaving the charcoal behind. There'll be no oxygen in the small drum, so the charcoal should not get burned up at all. Another advantage is that the fire in the larger drum can be made of twigs that aren't suitable for making charcoal, and the highly flammable volatiles driven off from the wood in the small drum will help feed the fire.

Tracy wasn't there with me today, so while the kiln was burning, I set about sharpening my chainsaw - this is much more pleasurable in the wood, rather than at the kitchen table! I mounted the saw on our chopping bock, using a neat little clamp:
I also took the opportunity to tidy up the camp fire area, arranging the log benches and rebuilding the stove:
I cleared an area for a tent too - I've got four mates visiting next weekend and we're going to camp there, hopefully cooking with my own sustainable produced charcoal!

And finally, here's some pictures of stuff that's growing. First, the biggest fungi I've seen in a long time. No idea what it is (so we won't be eating it...), but it was growing on the base of an ash tree in Sweep Wood:
Then the pond, which is decidedly green:
When you look closely, there are actually a lot of bubbles on the surface. Not sure if these are methane from decomposing matter in the pond, or oxygen from photosynthesis. Next time I'll take a match to find out! ;-) There's also a few random plants taking root on the banks of the pond - there's plenty of light there as we coppiced some of the nearby chestnut. We're really excited to see the pond slowly coming to life, as we have done absolutely nothing to introduce any species - this is all happening by itself.
Out in the wayleave, beside our entrance, the grass seed we put down on the track is beginning to yield results:
And in the wood, one of the oak stumps has decided to try and grow again. The only problem is that every single shoot is getting nibbled - I assume by rabbits or squirrels. Perhaps we could try using some closely spaced sticks to make a kind of fence to keep the rabbits off, though I'm not sure how well it would work...We're up again tomorrow, early in the morning, as we have some customers coming with a tractor and trailer to collect several tonnes of chestnut logs for using in their stoves - one of which is in a local pub.

Mike

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