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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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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A peaceful evening in the wood

Well, it was just me and Tracy this evening in the wood - Cath and my parents had gone to the beach. It's amazing how much everything is growing up there now. The chestnut:
the bluebells:
and the oaks:
I didn't just take pictures though, we carried on with the track repairs. Here's yesterday:
and here's today, with some of the water drained out, and birch laid in:
and here it is at the end of this evening, with alternating layers of birch and soil in the rut to the right. You can see the trench to the right of the track where we got the soil from - this leads into the culvert, so should help dry out the track a little as it is uphill from it. There's still a lot to do, and to be honest a lot of the track will wait until we get a digger in - it's just the worst bits we want to tackle now.
We built the fire up a little, mainly so the embers are still warm tomorrow to make lighting it quick!
though it was nice to keep warm, as we stayed until after sunset:
As we left we could hear pheasants screeching and an owl calling. We tried rolling down the wayleave with the lights and engine off to see if we saw anything interesting. We didn't, but it was a strange experience rolling along without all the usual noises!

Up there again tomorrow afternoon - the weather looks good for the whole weekend!

Oh, and for those interested in cameras, the above photos were all taken with my new SLR, and the later one of the track was in the shade, well after sunset at ISO800. it's amazing how much less noise there is with a digital SLR - I wouldn't even attempt that shot with my other camera.

Mike

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Track repairs

With all but one oak butt out of the wood, we thought it was time to start on some track repairs. As my family are visiting and it was a nice sunny evening, we all went up to the wood, along with a friend of my Mum's who's also in town.
First up was draining the water from the ruts left near the culvert:
In the winter we'd dug a channel to take the water out - now it's deeper:
but that only drains the rut on the downhill side (left in the picture below):
so a channel has been dug to link the two. (It's my Dad in the dazzling jacket...)
Quite a flow was gurgling into the coluvert by the time we were done:
We'll check back tomorrow and see where the water level is.

The other thing we started on was laying birch twigs into ruts and covering them with soil:
The idea is that the twigs help bind the mud together so that when a tractor next goes over it, the mud doesn't squidge out of the way so much. A crude composite material I suppose? Anyway, we'll see how it goes...

The weather's looking good for Saturday, maybe OK for Sunday and MOnday, so hopefully we'll be in the wood every day over the long weekend, especially as my brother and his family are arriving too. Monday will hopefully be the big day, as we've invited people up from church as well and will have a fire and BBQ.

Mike

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