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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Winching windblown trees

This week I carried on removing last winter's windblow. I'd already removed the easy trees, leaving these ones to be pulled out. I attached a sling to each one in turn, then hooked the winch cable into it:

At the other end was my Tirfor T516, attached to a tree with another sling:

Without too much effort, each tree was winched into a position where it could easily be cut up with the chainsaw:

A couple of them had an upturned root plate in the way, so I used this little trick I learned some years ago, propping a forked branch under the winch cable to lift the tree as well as pulling it backwards:

By the end of the day they were all out of the way:

There's still a few logs for me to clear up though...

Plenty to get on with next week, and it looks like the weather will hold!

Mike

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Clearing up storm damage while avoiding a hornets' nest!

Meet the European Hornet...

We had to work around a nest of them today, as they were in the storm-damaged oak tree I mentioned in yesterday's blog post. You can just see a couple of them going into the crack in the tree that was probably what weakened it and resulted in the storm damage.

Fortunately they look much more scary (being an inch long and noisy!) then they are, and are actually quite timid and if they do sting it's no worse than a normal wasp sting (see Wikipedia).

Here's how the oak tree looked after the storm:

It took us a while, but after some chainsawing and winch work, we got the broken section down on the ground:

To get it down we looped a 4-tonne sling round the branch near where it attached to the tree - this effectively doubles its strength to 8 tonnes, see the table on this page. We attached a 10-tonne pulley to the sling using an 8-tonne bow shackle - using a pulley doubles the power of the winch:

Through the pulley was a 20 metre 15-tonne steel rope, with one end anchored to a tree with another sling and bow shackle:

The other end was attached to the steel rope that went through our Tirfor T516 winch - this can pull 1.6 tonnes, so all the other components in use are stronger, eliminating the chance of unexpected failures.

That's an awful lot of gear to push through the woods on a wheelbarrow, but it got the job done with us stood at a safe distance from the tree! We even managed to avoid damaging the hornets' nest, so they can carry on living in the trunk of the tree and the cracked bit of the branch which is now on the ground.

We cleared up some coppice stools that had been blown over too, and there are still a few more of these to do before we've finished clearing up from the St Jude's Day storm which hit the UK on 28 Oct 2013.

Mike

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Tirfor winch vs large broken oak branch

When we got to the woods today, we saw that a large branch had mysteriously broken in an oak tree but was still attached, presenting a potential danger. So as soon as Jon & family arrived, we put him to work!

Here's the video, showing how the Tirfor winch is set up, using endless slings to attach to trees and, of course, the branch coming down:

After all that hard work it was time for a BBQ, though it looks like Tracy is getting smoked as well here...

Tilly had a good time too, as Jon let her off the lead for the first time ever - here she is returning to him when called, with Mia chasing her!

Looking forward to the next time!

Mike

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Cutting a new woodland ride

Over the past week I've been working in my friend Alex's wood, cutting trees to make a new ride - he originally had no rides at all through the 7.5 acres of land. We actually made a bit of a start a year ago, going from this:

to this:

Moving inside the wood, Alex and I spent a few hours last weekend and made this progress on the other side of the (currently dry) stream:

By the end of the week it look like this from that viewpoint:

and a bit further in:

and further in still:

What's left is the section bounded by the trees marked with yellow paint, the other side of which is a small clearing we created a couple of years ago:

Coming back from that end, this is the view:

At the end of the week I flattened off some of the stumps - this really blunts the chain on the saw (due to inevitably hitting dirt), so is best done just before you go home to sharpen it!

I had to clear up some windblown chestnut as part of this work, but it was still actually alive and so I got some good logs to use next year for building a bridge over the stream, and the tree itself may well recover to some extent.

There were also a couple of more problematic trees, like this chestnut:

which had been growing through this gap:

and was only brought down by using the tirfor winch and ploughing a long furrow in the ground!

Anyway, it was all OK in the end. I'll be back there soon to finish the job... Once it's done, there'll be a nice ride to walk/drive into the wood, and it should also help improve the biodiversity by letting in patches of sunlight - I've already seen increased insect life in some parts of it.

Mike

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Felling three large Sycamore - video

This really is the last job this winter... These trees were bigger than I've trained to fell, and as they were also near our neighbour's barn we paid our friend Tim to come and fell them.

We had a bit of a mix up on who was bringing what kit, so a bit of improvisation was required, but Tim's great at that kind of thing. We used our Tirfor 516 winch on one of the trees, in conjunction with wedges and a sledgehammer. The others came down more easily, just with chainsaw and the wedges.

Here's the video of it all. You'll see I had to make a fairly sharp exit after operating the winch, although once the tree was down I saw I could have remained where I was, but it's not the kind of risk you take!

Here's a few still pictures to go with it:

As you can see, they were pretty big trees, and we need to go back later to finish clearing them up. They had rotten parts at their centres, so it was definitely good to get them down, given the proximity to the barn. We'll probably get several cubic metres of logs out of them, so they'll be put to good use.

Mike

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