Fiona's wood

As members of the Small Woodland Owner's Group (SWOG) we are able to meet loads of interesting people and been able to visit other woodlands. Last week we went to see Fiona.
She has a wonderful woodland full of interesting things!

Stunning dead wood!
A V1 flying bomb from WW2
and loads more. You can see more pictures of her wood on the small woodland owners blog.

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We've been a bit busy,,,

Sorry it's all gone a bit quiet here. Tracy's away at a wood fair in Yorkshire for work, and I've bought a new hard drive so have been reinstalling software on my laptop.

For those with a technical interest, I've installed Mandriva Linux, and within that I'm using VirtualBox to create a virtual machine that runs Windows XP. This basically means Windows is running inside Linux, but is fooled into thinking it has a whole computer to itself. It's handy for running the one or two applications I have that are only available for Windows (e.g. camera software), and means I can finally go back to using Linux after seven or eight years away from it! :-)

I'll admit to still having a basic Windows setup on another partition on the hard drive, just in case something in this transition doesn't go according to plan...

Mike

p.s. if the above seems a bit incongruous coming from someone who uses a chainsaw in the woods, remember my old job involved doing this kind of stuff...

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Follow our blog on facebook

I'm experimenting with having our blog posts fed into Facebook. If you happen to be a Facebook user, you can sign up as a "follower" of our blog here:
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/peplers_in_rye/

This should allow you to see new posts as they are published and add comments. If you don't like what the application does you can always remove it later.

Mike

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Making kindling, and some other odds and ends

On Friday we visited our friend Fiona at her wood, and she told me a neat way to make kindling (or in this case, fuel for our woodgas stove and kelly kettle). As soon as we were in our wood, I tried it out.

You start by tying something round the log you intend to split up. I used a piece of rope with a slip-knot in it, but Fiona suggested a piece of bike inner tube - next time I get a puncture I'll try this.Then, use your froe and wooden mallet to put a split down the middle:
Turn it 90 degrees and repeat:
Then carry on making parallel splits, according to the thickness of kindling you want:
Turn 90 degrees again and repeat:and finally, take the rope off:
Neat eh?

We used some immediately to cook lunch, and I also discovered that the kelly kettle fits neatly on top of the woodgas stove, allowing you to make a hot drink after cooking without lighting another fire:
Also, because the kettle creates a good updraught, you can even unplug the fan in the woodgas stove, producing an interesting effect when you look down from the top:
We rearranged our little camp yesterday to benefit from more of the shade from the oaks, and also make it easier to get things in and out of the shelter. We took the opportunity to rebuild the fireplace and make a table beside it with a spare concrete slab I'd picked up near home recently:
While we were sat there having lunch, look what slithered by:
We'd better keep an eye out, this is the first time we've seen an adder this close to our camp - I guess they like the hot ground there on sunny days!

The heat had also brought out a huge range of insects, such as crickets and dragonflies:
and butterflies too - here's my first photo of a White Admiral this summer, and one of a Speckled Wood too:
We took a walk up into Sweep Wood (my parents' patch), and clipped back branches that were reaching into the public footpath. Along the way we saw a fungus which I'd happened to take a photo of nine days earlier. Here's the first photo:
and here's the later one, after just nine days!
We also noticed that there's a lot of honeysuckle out in Sweep Wood, it'll be nice in a year or two when the butterflies can get to it, after we've coppiced there...
Finally, we found a tree that was very interesting, mainly because it has fruit on it! I think they're plums, but we'll see how they develop over the coming weeks:
Mike

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Trail camera: A fox and a butterfly

We finally have some interesting wildlife on our trail camera! Here's a video of a fox having a sniff around our pond:

Here's a more bizarre one. What I think happened is a butterfly landed on the camera, triggering the motion sensor, and then proceeded to crawl over the lens while it was recording. Given the colours visible, and what I know is flying around the pond right now, I think it was a White Admiral.


Mike

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