Snow in the woods Jan 2013

With the snow over the last few days, I did of course have to make a trip to the wood to see how it was looking! I'd been busy at a Recycle Swap Shop earlier on Saturday, and as I had the trailer with me for that, I collected some Holly we'd felled into the garden of a woodland neighbour and headed into the woods with it...

There's a moderate amount of snow, but not as much as last winter:

I got the Holly moved onto the stack of green wood, and split up the big lumps - looking forward to burning these heavy logs in a couple of years!

Not sure we're going to get any more snow in the coming week or so, but there's still all of February...

Mike

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In the woods before sunrise

I've been waiting ages for it to be frosty enough to drive into the woods and collect logs without making mud, so when I woke up yesterday and saw from our weather monitor that it was -6C in the garden, I got dressed immediately, de-iced the car and set off for the woods, arriving well before sunrise:

The ground was rock hard from the frost:

Just over half an hour later, I was ready to head back home again:

But as the sun was now just glinting through the trees...

I paused to get some photos of the finished drainage ditch. Last time I posted pictures of it, it was just a pipe in a ditch that was slowly filling with water. Well, on a subsequent visit I was pleased to see the ditch had filled to the point of draining out of the low end:

So I'd extended the end of it:

allowing it to drain out:

A lot of digging later, it finally looked like it did yesterday:

Here's the outflow:

And here's a ditch on the uphill side to collect water - we'll extend this further when we have time:

Anyway, it held up nicely with the car and trailer of logs going over it, so hopefully that's the job done, and the mud can now start to dry out, once it's thawed.

Mike

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LightStorm SL1 ultracapacitor torches in stock!

I'm down to the last few of the CL1 torches I have been selling, and they are out of production now, so contact me if you want one! However, I've got the alternative SL1 torch in stock as well now, take a look at the details here.

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Digging in the mud

2012 was the wettest year on record for England, and one of the effects in our woodland is mud, in this case in the wayleave in front of our entrance:

It's caused by water draining through the very point we have to drive over most often. This hasn't been a problem until this year, but now we're having to do something about it. So I bought a drainage pipe:

and made a start today on digging a trench for it to go in across the track, uphill from the muddy area:

The ditch needs to be a bit longer on the far side, and there'll need to be a trench parallel to the track on that side too, to funnel the water draining from there through the pipe. It won't deliver results overnight, but it should start making a difference over the coming weeks....

I cut up some logs while I was there too:

We've still got a fair amount left that's just over two years old now, and it's ripe for burning, so we've been selling a few loads to one-off customers, and restocking our firewood store back at home.

Today I found that I was in a part of the log pile where a bit of water had got between the tarps, so some of the logs had got a bit damp. Not wanting to give these to a customer, or use them myself, I've piled them up at the side:

It's annoying, having gone to the work of preparing and moving the logs, but at least they'll make a nice pile of wood for bugs to live in, so that's some compensation.

If I could have one wish for the next couple of months, it would be for some frost, to get rid of the mud!

Mike

UPDATE: more pics of the finished drainage system here.

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New Year sunset 2013

After the seemingly endless rain of 2012, it was great for the first day of 2013 to be wall-to-wall sunshine! We went for a walk down to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve at sunset and got a few pics on the walk to the sea...

We also made it to the wood briefly, just one photo from there, but an important one: a Blue Tit. We've not seen them in the woods at the feeder this winter, and were wondering why, but this one was over in Sweep Wood. Not sure if there are fewer of them, or if they are just in different parts of the wood for some reason...

Happy New Year!

Mike

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