Autumn arriving in the woods

Well, it's been a busy summer, and autumn has caught up with us all of a sudden, making me realise I haven't posted here for a while! So let's start with the kind of views that only come with that early-morning autumn mist:

The leaves are beginning to turn on the trees now, and I took this photo about a week ago, so things have moved on since then:

Fungi have been sprouting up everywhere, such as these Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria):

But let's rewind a couple of months. The electric chainsaw (a Husqvarna 536Li XP)  has been doing a great job over the summer, almost entirely charged from our solar panels at home:

At one of the shows I was running a Truncator stall at, I cut up all these on just three battery charges:

So, the firewood store at home is now full, ready for winter - which *may* be a bit colder than average due to the 11-year solar cycle heading into a minimum and a possible El Nino.

Summer has also been a time for extracting wood that was cut in winter 2016/17, getting it out before the undergrowth gets too thick. The Stein Arbor Trolley does a great job here, enabling us to move logs out from places where we couldn't get the car and trailer in to - one of the best bits of kit we've bought for the woods!

From the trolley the logs end up on the trailer:

And then eventually to a stack where they'll be accessible over the winter, no matter what the weather. It does mean double-handling the wood, and we try to minimise this by going straight from the arbor trolley into the Truncator and then home when possible, but experience has shown that if we don't get the left-over wood out into an accessible place while the weather is good, we regret it later...

We've also been collecting up some larger pieces of chestnut from the past couple of years' felling:

This is all being stacked near our camp area, and the plan is to use some of it to build a composting toilet in the near future:

Speaking of which, I've bought a fancy Veritas transfer scribe to help in building the toilet, it's used for marking up logs to make round wood joints. I need a bit of practice with it first though!

Also over the summer, a friend asked for a variety of sizes of 'mushroom stools', as a variation on the four-legged stools that I normally make. These are now sitting in the 'forest school' area of a nursery.

I also felt it was time to make an improved table/workbench in our camp area, so put this together from an old split piece of chestnut. It's higher and a lot bigger than the older table (which you can see to the left), and I drilled holes for the legs this time, rather than using the chainsaw to bore them.

You get a decent width from a single log by using the two halves side-by-side:

The halves are held together by two dovetail joints underneath, made using the electric chainsaw:

Over in Sweep Wood, where we cut some coppice last winter, the Alder has regrown at a phenomenal rate:

Alder seedlings are also springing up wherever there are gaps:

The Hazel, on the other hand, has been chewed by rabbits and is struggling... I think this is a good reason for me to have a hawk to eat the rabbits, but Tracy's not convinced yet...

First-year Foxgloves are also in evidence here, which bodes well for a nice display when they reach their second year and flower:

This whole area is usually wet, and the region leading into the culvert clearly retained enough moisture even over the dry summer we've had, as it's got a profusion of plants:

Finally, I wanted to come back to Autumn, with the Ivy coming into flower. While people sometimes don't like it growing on trees, it is actually very important for providing late flowers for insects, so it's good to leave it be if it's not causing an immediate hazard.

We're now getting into coppicing again, so my next update will show how the electric chainsaw is getting on for actual tree felling...

Mike

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Fox cubs, flowers and insects - summer in the woods

A couple of weeks ago I was wandering down the wayleave, photographing butterflies and flowers, when something made me stop and go back a few steps to look along a path. I'm glad I did, as this was what I saw:

After this initial look of alarm, the first fox cub trotted along

and the second one followed, not really paying me much attention

I know we see urban foxes all over the place, but I don't see them in the woods so often, so it was nice to see these two young ones. Hopefully they will take their food in the woods, and not stray into nearby farms...

Despite the hot weather and at least a month without rain, the woodland is looking great, while everyone's lawns are turning brown. I guess that's the difference between a functioning ecosystem and a typical garden!

Most of the insects don't seem to mind the heat, here's a White Admiral and Meadow Brown butterfly, followed by what I'm going to call 'dragonflies' in the absence of any expertise identifying them!

The flowers are all looking good too, here's a selection of what's sprouting up along the wayleave:

The Sweet Chestnut trees are flowering too:

And Hazel nuts are growing, though the squirrels will get these before we do I expect:

Where we were coppicing last winter, the regrowth has got going:

The Alder is much quicker off the mark than the Sweet Chestnut though:

Next door to that coupe is one we cut two years earlier, which has some nice foxgloves now, some in their first year of growth:

and others in their second year and flowering:

Finally, I've got a new toy - a Husqvarna 536LiXP battery chainsaw!

It's been doing well so far, half a battery charge is enough to process this trailer of logs:

I'll do a proper review on the chainsaw when I've been using it for a while...

Mike

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Spring in the woods

As Spring shifts to Summer, here's a few pics from the last couple of months. Spring started cold, and when it did warm up, everything happened in a hurry - we had a great display of Bluebells:

We did of course have a good carpet of Wood Anemone first:

And shady patches started to appear as the trees overhead came into leaf:

The birds have been busy too, this nesting box we put up has been used:

And right next to it another bird built a nest, under the edge of the roof of our firewood store:

As well as the usual work of cutting logs ready for next winter, I also finally got round to winching out two nearly-dead coppice stumps that have always been in the way when turning the car and trailer round. It wasn't easy, but not a lot can resist a tirfor winch with a pulley and a mattock:

With the holes now filled, getting in and out will be a lot easier:

Now for a summer of camping trips! :-)

Mike

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