Saturday, 30 October 2010

Autumn has arrived in the woods

There's been a definite change in the woods this week, with the leaves changing colour and falling, letting more light in:

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It's very different to a few months ago, and soon we'll probably be looking forward to spring... Hopefully we'll have a a bit of snow first though!

As we were walking over to our coppicing site, we spotted boar prints in the track, which is strange, as normally they follow their own tracks in the wood. It seems to be really hard to take a picture that shows their prints properly, I guess it'd need to be in 3D! Anyway, here's my best attempt, which just about shows the little toe print at the side of the foot towards the back:
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The other large mammal in the wood was a horse, leaning in over the fence to get at the dead hedge we'd built from Hornbeam brash:
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It wasn't afraid to dig in to find those last few leaves!
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Here's the progress so far. After the two full log racks are two new ones we're filling. We think that once they're filled that might be a year's worth of home heating, leaving the surplus to sell or put to other uses.
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After this winter we'll have a much better idea of exactly how much wood we need to get us through a year, and then we can cut the right amount of coppice for our own needs and a bit more for friends we supply.

Mike

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