Wet day in the woods

We were in the woods yesterday, despite the rain. We cycled up on the electric bikes, as we like to avoid driving up and down the track, if possible, when it's muddy. Of course, there are times that we have to drive up and, and the same applies to other owners in the wood, but every time we go on bike that's one less trip and a bit less damage.

While I was waiting for a friend to arrive I had a look at a stream in one of the other patches in the woods, that a friend of mine has just finished purchasing. With the rain in the past couple of days it was in full flow:

and further upstream it had spread to leave a wider wet area:
I'm somewhat envious - it would be nice to have a stream this big in our wood too!

On the wayleave it's easy to see the animal tracks now that the leaves have died back and the ground is wet. Here's one that's used by deer and boar:
When Ian arrived we had a walk around the wood, talking about the different things we're doing. He's just getting into forestry work, so we had a lot to chat about. We felled a few trees, giving Ian a chance to see some new techniques - though I took pains to remind him that I'm not a qualified instructor and he still needs to go on a training course! Here we are looking at how to remove a small tree that I'd deliberately hung up:
By the way, I wrote a post yesterday on dealing with hung up trees.

Before we went home Tracy built a small fire to dry one of her shoes, which had managed to collect rain despite being under the shelter!
Her shoe ended up smelling of smoke, but it probably made the bike ride home a little more comfortable.

We're up there again tomorrow, partly to work, but also because we have a class of five-year-olds visiting from a local school!

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Dealing with a hung up tree and a broken branch

One of the most popular posts on our blog has been "What NOT to do with a hung up tree"

So, when I got a tree hung up on Thursday I thought I'd take some pictures of getting it down. Of course, it's better not to get it hung up in the first place, but sometimes it's unavoidable, and we all make mistakes from time to time as well.

Here's the hung up tree:
The first thing to do is to use the cant hook on a felling lever to roll the tree. In some cases this can bring the tree down straight away, although in this case it didn't. It did get it off the stump though, which I also wanted to do. Remember to always roll the tree away from you, and bend your legs to lift the lever - reposition the lever as required during the rolling.Once the tree is on the ground, the next thing to do is move the butt backwards. In this case the long felling lever gave enough leverage. You put it under the butt, then lift and turn to move it backwards:
In an older post I used a long pole to give more leverage, and also a winch when that wasn't sufficient.

After a couple of minutes pushing the butt back the tree was safely on the ground:
and then easily snedded and logged:
We were left with one other problem though - a branch in an oak tree that had been broken when the birch came down. As it was alongside a path I didn't want to leave it. It was too tall to reach with our pole saw, so I attached a rope to it:
Then I retreated to a safe distance with the rope, and gave it a few tugs:
bringing the branch down easily, to be left for bugs to live in:
One final thing - we try to avoid killing honeysuckle while felling, as it is a vital food plant for the White Admiral butterfly. However, sometimes I wish we got rid of it all...
This is why you have to clear an area around the base of a tree you're going to fell, and also your escape route!

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

What NOT to do with a hung up tree

On my chainsaw training I learnt that there are several things you don't do with a hung up tree:

• walk under it
• climb up it
• cut bits off the bottom of it
• fell the tree it's leaning on
• leave it unattended

You can see how we dealt with a hung up tree in another post here, using a winch and a pole.

So you can imagine my horror watching this video I came across on YouTube, which I must stress, did NOT happen in our wood, and I don't know the people involved, who thankfully didn't get hurt:

The original video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ2lIUW5bKw

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.