We've made a lot of progress in the last few days, and we think we're about a third of the way through what we need to complete this winter, which is good, considering we're still in October. Some of the trees have been pretty chunky, like the Ash below, which means our racks of logs are filling up fast.
We've done some more work on the Hornbeam pollards at the edge of the wood as well. We've got permission to fell stems into the adjacent field when necessary, providing we take account of the horses that are in there at the moment. There's some hefty stems to fell, like this pair which I brought down together:
Hornbeam is extremely dense, so the logs from these stems weigh a lot! But they'll be useful for fuelling our stove in two years' time. It's hard to split though, but fortunately I've got a way of doing this. I chucked the logs back over the fence, and we used the brash to build up a bit of a dead hedge:
However, the horses have decided they like Hornbeam leaves, so I think the top of the "hedge" will get eaten!
Here's a couple of arty pictures I took, of sunbeams coming through the smoke from our brash fire:
I also couldn't resist getting some close-up pictures of a spider that was on top of one of the stakes we'd used to make the log racks:
And yes, I did encourage the spider to stay on the top until I had some good pictures! I moved it to a safe place afterwards though...
Here's the current view from our reference photo point, followed by the same view before we started:
We're definitely making progress!
Finally, here's what happened to some of the Ash that we felled last year and passed on to a friend who's an expert woodworker:
Nice eh?
Mike
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