Tracy had some stuff to get done in Rye, so I went up to the wood on my own. I'm not entirely comfortable working alone felling trees alongside the public footpath, as it's good to have a second person as a lookout for walkers, so I did some odd jobs that had been waiting. Like sharpening one of the saw chains that had got blunt last Friday. We rotate a group of three chains on each saw, so when one gets blunt you can just swap to another, as long as you remember to come back and sharpen it when you have time! It also has the advantage of wearing out all the chains at the same time that the drive sprocket needs changing, then you can start again with a new set and sprocket.
Anyway, the other thing that needing doing was gathering together the bits of birch that were left in various places around the area we cut last winter and converting them to firewood. Not especially exciting, but quite satisfying work to do.
I've stacked the logs under the drying shelter for now to keep the rain off them.
Fortunately the sun came out later, and I got some pictures of what's going on in the wood.
It's looking kind of desolate now the leaves have gone.
and the oaks are looking positively skeletal:
I noticed something interesting out on the wayleave. On a small oak tree were some "oak apples", which are formed by gall wasps. Earlier in the year these were shades of green, but now they've turned brown and you can see a hole where the wasp dug its way out:
I cut one open, revealing the hollow centre where the insect developed:
That's all for now, we're back in the wood on Thursday...Mike
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