Friday, 21 December 2012

Coppicing at the End of the World

As some people thought today  (21 Dec 2012) would be the end of the world, I thought I may as well go and coppice some trees. I guess it didn't end while I was in the woods?

Carrying on the the maintenance theme of this winter, I thought I'd coppice some of the wayleave, as it's grown a lot since we bought the woodland. It needs to be kept down for the wildlife - it's a really great spot for butterflies, etc. National Grid will cut it all eventually, but I got bored of waiting... There's also the advantages of getting some logs out of it and making it easier for people to drive along it without scratching their cars on overhanging trees.

Here's how it looked in 2008:

DSC_3507 Wayleave

and here's a shot from this week looking the other way at that curve in the track:
DSC_5432 coppicing

To make life easier, I parked the car and trailer just up from where I was felling, and took the ends off the trailer, so it was easy to load up logs for immediate transport:
DSC_5444 coppicing

Here's a couple of views of the area after spending a few hours working on it:
DSC_5445 coppicing

DSC_5446 coppicing

I've left all the brash piled up, as there's plenty of space and it'll make a nice wildlife habitat:
DSC_5438 coppicing

Having moved the logs to a storage place, I also took the opportunity to collect some logs for use at home, where we've got through half of our firewood store now. The store at the wood is now slowly emptying...
DSC_5440 logs in a store

I think we might burn a bit less this winter as I've done some draughtproofing - more on that later...

Mike

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