The start of a new clearing

As I've said before, we're coppicing along the edges of the rides and footpaths in and around our wood, to widen them and let more light in, so benefiting wildlife like butterflies, other insects, and the creatures that feed on them. So what happens where the ride from inside our wood meets the footpath at the edge of it? Well, we're shaping it to be a small clearing. Here's the progress so far:

first a photo from last week:
then one from the end of today:
Don't worry - I've not blocked the public footpath, the ride on the left goes into our own wood, while the footpath goes right, and you can still walk round the log pile anyway.

The sky is opening up above the rides, just waiting for that springtime sun to come in...
It may look like I missed a few small trees just where the rides start to diverge, but there's a reason:
The clearing-to-be is filled with honeysuckle! This will be great for White Admiral butterflies, if they decide to venture down the newly widened rides next summer... There's more in other spots around the junction too:
As always, we're working hard to preserve it during the felling, and leave standing dead wood and the occasional live tree where it is growing.

Tracy's also got some preservation work to do, starting with felling this group of birch trees:
The reason? There's a young self-seeded oak next to them, that will benefit from the light that will be let in: She didn't actually get to fell those birch today though, as other trees needed to be felled first to make a space for them to fall into. She did cut 15 other ones down though!

A couple of interesting odds and ends now. First, another piece of woodland archaeology, in this case what looks like a fuel or oil tank of some sort - there's a filler cap on the end of the cylinder, which is itself made of metal gauze. I guess coppicers in years gone by didn't bother taking machinery home when it broke...
And second, what is probably the last large mushroom of this year, still frozen this morning:
That's all for now, we're working in the wood again on Thursday and Friday.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

First hard frost in the wood

Sunday was cold! When we got to the wood at 1pm, to collect firewood and meet a friend, we found the track in the wayleave was still frozen solid, which makes it ideal for driving on without causing any wear and tear. There were some frozen puddles near our entrance:
It stayed around zero for the whole day, and in the shade there were patches of frost throughout the afternoon
Sean, who we were meeting there today as he was in the area, showed us a neat tool he had, which looked like a billhook on a longer handle. It's called a "bush hook" apparently.
It did a good job of sharpening stakes, and Sean said he also used it for splitting smaller logs and hacking brambles.
We left with the moon rising above the trees
and the sunset behind the pylons
Although the pylons look a bit ugly, we put up with them because without them there would be no wayleave, along with all the wildlife that lives in it.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Meeting of the coppicers

Friday was the day we met on the path! The stretch I've been coppicing joined up with Tracy's, meeting under the holly tree. The last tree to come down in Tracy's stretch was this one:
You can see the holly tree in the distance, and beyond that the newly opened ride, with just dead wood left standing (where possible). There's about 100m coppiced now.

We also had a fire going on the edge of the cant we cut last winter, burning up the brash left over from last weekend and the school visit.
This had the added advantage of providing a ready source of hot embers to get the fire for lunch going.You can't beat a hot lunch while working in the wood in cold weather, and even better cooking it on wood instead of fossil fuel. One trick we've picked up when cooking curry, as we did on Friday, is to add the rice straight into it with some water. OK, it means your food is ready mixed, but it means you only need one pot cooking instead of two.

On Thursday we'd also tried cleaving some of the freshly felled birch in 2m lengths, it worked quite nicely:The idea is that by splitting it long it will stack easily while drying, and then I can saw it up in the rack we stack it in, as I did with the chestnut recently.

Now the first straight of the footpath is coppiced, Tracy's continuing on from where she was while I've jumped ahead so as to be a safe distance while felling. The area I've moved to is where the public path meets the ride that passes through our wood:
As with any part of the wood, it has some unique properties that must be taken account of, such as some young oaks. They don't look like much, be we will be taking care not to damage them during felling so that they get the chance to have a few years head start on the coppice regrowing. Here's one that's a few inches across:
and here's another much younger (the small one nearest to the camera):
It's good to see this natural regeneration going on, I just hope they don't get eaten by squirrels, as happened in one of our friend's woods.

Another interesting thing in this area is the large amount of moss on some of the coppice stools. There's at least four types on this one stool!
We'll be cutting these high to allow the moss to continue to grow.

Here's the progress from the first couple of hours at my new spot, just clearing brash and breaking in, creating a space to fell the larger trees into:

It's been dry for a few days now, so we're planning to take the trailer up and collect some more firewood for our customers tomorrow.

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Well-trained cockatiels

This has taken a few weeks, but we finally have our cockatiels trained to go to bed! They're out of the cage all day, but sleep in it at night. We used to have a complicated procedure of getting them into a small cage and through the front door of the big cage, but look how good they are now!


Weather permitting we'll be working in the wood tomorrow...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

School visit

Falling trees, fires, mud, holes and a class of four to five year olds? No problem! :-)

The school visit was a great success, Tracy and the other adults took the class on a walk round the wood to see all kinds of stuff, including me coppicing, then they all came back to the camp to play at making dens and helping get a fire going using some bellows. After lunch they toasted marshmallows on the fire, which went down well!

In the afternoon they helped me fell a tree! We did this by roping an easy-to-fell chestnut to an oak (two tree lengths away) as a an anchor, and then letting the kids do the pulling on the rope after I'd done the felling cuts. All heavily supervised of course! Here's the video:

The neat thing is that after felling the tree I used it to make a bench for them - we'll deliver it to their school shortly.I'm looking forward to seeing the drawings and writing that the kids will no doubt be doing about their visit to the woods!

Before they arrived I did a couple of hours coppicing along the footpath, I'm just about up to the holly tree (which is staying), and on the other side I'll meet up with Tracy's work area:
I also saw something interesting in the cant we cut last winter - honeysuckle making its way up the new growth on a coppice stool. I guess it can keep up with the chestnut to some extent, so maybe we'll have a paradise for the White Admiral butterfly soon?
Right, off to the desk job for a couple of days, then back in the wood on Thursday and Friday...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.