Starting 2021 in the woods

2021 has been fairly wet so far around here, but we did get some sunny days and made the most of them in the woods.

Although Spring is some way off, especially with a snowy week about to hit our part of the UK, the plants in the woods know that change is coming. Dog's Mercury is getting going:

Lords and Ladies plants are pushing up leaves that are gradually unfurling:

And the Bluebells are poking out of the ground again:

While we've been coppicing we've saved quite a few chunks of wood like this to pass on to Dengate's Farm Shop, where David is drying them and then turning them into beautiful wooden bowls.

Here's David with a bowl made from some Ash we passed on to him a few months ago:

We have of course been coppicing too - we went back to the top of the hill to fell a few small trees we'd left earlier, which needed a rope to stop them falling into the yard next door:

And yes, I ended up working in a water-filled ditch again...

Further down the hill, here's a few views of how things look now, we're not far from the end of this winter's work:

Just beyond the point where we'll be stopping this year's cutting are a couple of trees that we didn't fell last time round, and they've grown on nicely. First is an Ash:

And then a Sweet Chestnut:

Both are taller than the surrounding coppice now, and I hope to leave them to grow into large trees. Here's the Chestnut just over 10 years ago, when it was looking much more slender:

And finally, a friend was asking how to make stakes using a chainsaw, so I made this short video to show how it's done:

That's all for now!

Mike