Felling Hornbeam and a Dusting of Snow

It's getting a bit colder here now, and there was actually a dusting of snow in the woods when I was there yesterday:

Of course, this is nothing compared to what was there 10 years ago! And it's also a far cry from the jungle we faced here back in September:

The main job during November was felling this row of Hornbeam, which included multiple stems on a couple of stools - presumably a seriously overgrown hedge from many years ago. They border a garden, and we were wary that they might fall the wrong way in a storm, so we felt it was best to coppice them. Maybe we'll get a nice hedge here in future...

We used the Tirfor winch on most of them, which you can see here, attached as far up the tree as I could get it using a ladder:

Here's a view from the other end of the steel rope, courtesy of my friend Ben, who was helping that day. As you can see, we had the rope running through a pully to offset the winch a bit.

Trees like this always take up much more space on the ground than you'd think they would, but at least Hornbeam is easier to clear up than Holly!

Over the course of a couple of days we progressed along the row, with help from Kitty and Dominic as well as Ben, until we reached the final stem. This was one of the taller ones, and also leaned in the wrong direction and over a neighbour's garage!

So, the winch was of course used again, and this time with a pulley attached to the tree to increase the effective power of the winch:

After a bit of work with the chainsaw and the winch it was safely down, with no damage to the fence behind it:

Although much of the Hornbeam will be used for firewood (and it is really good firewood!), the butts of a couple of the stems have gone to Dengate's Farm Still, as David Dengate is busy turning bowls, and after some seasoning that's what these lumps will be used for. The image below shows two sections split in half to reduce cracking while they dry. It also made it possible to move them, as they were far too heavy to lift on my own in once piece!

We still have three more big trees to come down (Holly, Sweet Chestnut and Sycamore) and some more coppice to cut, so there'll be more news to follow in due course....

Mike

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Spring trees

It's not just flowers, butterflies and birds, the trees are waking up now as well. Birch always seems to be first off the mark:

But Hawthorn is catching up fast:

Hornbeam is a bit slower, but is now coming out, with the characteristic pink around its new leaves:

Hazel seems to be in different stages, for example the stools that were coppiced a year ago are just opening their buds:

while the more mature specimens are coming into leaf:

Sweet Chestnut is much slower that the others, but is starting to come out now:

But having talked about the trees, I really should mention the Wood Anemones again, which are building up to their peak now:

There should be some interesting developments in the patch of woodland next to ours soon. There's been some fairly major coppicing operations going on there for a few years now, so there's a big area with 0-3 years regrowth in it now. It looks quite drastic as it's a much larger area than we cut each year, but this is what the ecosystem here is used to, and depends on, so I'm expecting it will look great in the coming years:

Finally, the wild boar have once again decided that our 'pond' is a great mud bath:

Though they don't seem to be looking after the dam which is needed to keep it there:

It's mean to be wet today, as it's a Bank Holiday, but we do need the rain...

Mike

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All the trees are growing!

My parents are visiting, and yesterday we took a walk in Sweep Wood to see how it's getting on after our two winters coppicing there. And it's looking great!

All the trees we cut last winter are growing again now, here's Sweet Chestnut, Hornbeam and Alder:

The year-old trees are doing well too, here's some Ash back in leaf:

And of course, until the trees grow back to close the canopy, everything on the ground is going crazy:

Compare this to a similar bit of the wood a few years ago:

Quite a difference, eh?

Here's another one from a few years ago:

but this area doesn't look so different yet for ground flora, as we only just cut it - it'll need another year's growth to change visibly.

The bluebells have just started to pass their peak in this part of the wood now, so here's a few photos, as there may not be many more.

The ride between Sweep Wood and Chestnut Coppice is looking pretty good too:

and not far from there is some Hawthorn in bloom - a bit later than the ones you might have seen in hedgerows, as it's shaded to some extent. But once again, there's a coppicing benefit here, as this is a tree that didn't flower at all until we cut along that ride:

One final exciting thing we saw, which bodes well for the summer, was hundreds of caterpillars on our crab apple tree. I'm no good at identifying them, so any help appreciated! They did an amazing job of looking like twigs:

Though when they do it on the edge of a leaf it's probably a bit less effective as camouflage:

Anyway, that's all for now. We walked some of the High Weald Landscape Trail today, so there'll be pics from that in due course...

Mike

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More Bluebells in the wood!

We went to the woods again yesterday, and saw that the Bluebells are steadily increasing in numbers.

Experimenting with the camera again here - which do you prefer, background more or less blurred? The one with it less blurred used a smaller aperture (higher F number) and slower shutter speed, giving a greater depth of field so more of the Bluebells are in focus:

The trees have come on a long way in just a week. Here's how the Hornbeam looks now:

And here's some Sweet Chestnut:

Also, here's a coppiced Sweet Chestnut just putting out its first shoots to recover from being cut a few months ago:

The Crab Apple near our camp is starting to flower:

and the Hawthorn is greening up nicely:

This is a tree (Alder, perhaps?) we cut some years ago, but it's been chewed by rabbits. It's still going to have another go at growing though:

Just for comparison, so you can see the increasing greenery, here's a photo from a week ago and one from yesterday:

We also saw our first Orange Tip butterfly yesterday:

Of course, we couldn't visit the wood without doing a job of some sort. This time we took up a trailer load of pallets we'd collected from a local shop, to make a floor for our new firewood store:

Tracy's been busy back at home too, planting out seeds:

and preparing a plot for them to go into later:

That's all for now. Hopefully the next post will have some pics of newborn lambs... more on that later!

Mike

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