Nearing the end of a busy 6 months - news from the woods and Dungeness

Well, things have certainly been busy since July, while I've been working as a Ranger at Dungeness as well as doing my desk job. I've only got a few more weeks to go on the contract at Dungeness now, I'll certainly miss the work and my colleagues when I stop, though I'll appreciate getting some time back in my life. Fortunately there's nothing to stop me still visiting there and staying in touch with people, as it's not far away. There's been some amazing views there over the past few months, e.g. sunset looking from the Point towards Hastings:

 

Storm clouds over the English Channel:

 

Expansive skies and acres of shingle:

 

Views from the 'Boardwalk', one of a range of features to make it easier for visitors to appreciate the site:

 

 

There's been some stormy days too, I took these pics just a few days ago:

 

 

There's also been any number of stuck vehicles to deal with, from relatively simple ones like this camper van:

 

To more challenging ones like a bin lorry weighing over 30 tonnes!

 

 

The moral of the story is to pay attention to the signs at Dungeness, and only park in the official car parks!

I've not only been at Dungeness in my Ranger role though, I've also worked at a range of other sites that RMCP manages, and on some of these I've been able to put my chainsaw experience to good use, for example felling some large willow trees at Romney Warren:

 

 

These were being removed to get more light into a series of ponds, to improve them as a habitat for newts. That does mean all the willow brash has to be burned up, as we don't want it putting down roots and shading the pond again...

 

I've also done some interesting work in a very boggy woodland the other side of Ashford, felling trees and then winching them over to create new pools. The amazing thing was that while we were still in the process of winching these stumps out of the ground, there were hoverflies laying eggs around the edges of the pools!

 

I've even been trained in how to check on cattle being used for conservation grazing, not something I'd ever expected to do, as I'm not really keen on being around large mammals!

 

And in this era of deadly airborne viruses, it's been nice to be able to have team meetings outdoors around a fire at the end of a day's work:

 

One benefit of doing the Ranger work was that I got a 1-day chainsaw refresher training day, to update my skills on CS32 - felling medium size oak trees. Here's one of my fellow students on the training day, taking down an oak while the rest of us observed:

 

Back in Rye, everyone was delighted to be able to join in with Rye Fawkes again, after the 2020 event was cancelled due to the area being in lockdown.

 

 

Despite the extra working days, I've still managed to get a bit of time in the woods, and used the arbor trolley to get some logs from last winter's coppicing down the hill and into the trailer:

 

 

 

There's been a bit of leisure time too, sitting by the fire in the woods and meeting up with friends.

 

And just last week I was pleased to be able to get some nice pics of these Coal Tits and Blue Tits arriving and departing the bird feeder:

 

 

 

 

I've also had the trail camera back up again, and there's a few interesting bird videos as a result, including a Buzzard, a Jay and a Greater Spotted Woodpecker:

 

 

That's all for now, we'll be back in the woods over Christmas so there should be some more photos to come after that...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Final days of 2020 in the woods

December 2020 brought colder and murkier weather, but it was still good to get up to the woods, especially as pretty much everything else around is closed as we're in Tier 4 restrictions here due to the (mis)management of the pandemic.

The weather did also allow for some atmospheric photos. I tried processing this one two different ways in Lightroom:

You may remember in my last post I talked about the Hornbeam we'd been felling. Well, I'd not got round to splitting it, so that occupied quite a bit of my time in December. It's a tough wood to split, especially in long lengths, so I tend to use a chainsaw to put a slot in one end and then drive steel wedges in with a sledgehammer:

As well as the coppicing, we've also done a few firewood loads for customers:

We spent Christmas Day in the woods - not just because we were in Tier 4, it would have been our first choice anyway! Fortunately we had a nice sunny day:

It was of course chilly, but a fire dealt with that

and we cooked dinner using the rocket stove made by Greenway Grameen in India.

We got straight back to work after Christmas, felling the final stem of a large Holly tree that was overhanging a neighbour's barn. I'm pleased to report that our battery electric chainsaw, a Husqvarna 540iXP, had no problems dealing with it:

We had one more larger tree that was also near the barn, a Sweet Chestnut, and as with all the others we used the Tirfor winch to safely fell it, as shown in this video:

Before long we had it in pieces, some of which will be used to make outdoor furniture for the Community Garden in Rye.

There's still more to do, and we've both spent time staring up at trees wondering where to start!

Once some more coppice is cut, these Holly trees on the border with a neighbour's garden will need to come down, as behind them is a larger Sycamore that will have to be felled. That's a few weeks away yet though...

Finally, on New Year's Eve I went to work in a friend's woodland nearby, and we had a great day for it!

The main job was dismantling some windblown coppice stools, and a bit of winching too.

That brought the 'interesting' year of 2020 to an end. More coppicing and other woodland activity to come in 2021, and hopefully better news on the pandemic front...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Christmas in the woods

At the weekend we were invited over to the woodland belonging to our friends Rod and Heather for a Christmas gathering. It was pretty chilly, but Rod had prepared a roaring fire for us to gather around:

He'd also provided alternative festive seating... yes, it really was strong enough to sit on!

Heather had laid a table out with food and drink, and even decorated a tree!

The local wildlife arrived...

...and promptly decided that the human food looked more interesting than the bird food!

We had various other birds visit, but the light was a bit poor to get many photos, though I did manage this one of a Greater Spotted Woodpecker at a distance:

All in all a fun afternoon, and thanks for the mince pies and mulled wine!

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Super-charged fire pit video!

Almost a year ago we improved our fire pit in the woods by burying a bigger air supply pipe under it:

Well, since then I've been experimenting, and now it's supercharged using a fan from a computer and a 12V car battery, here's a short video to demonstrate:

After making this video we used the fire, along with both woodgas stoves, to cook three varieties of chilli for a group of nearly 30 cyclists (including Tracy's boss) who were on a 300 mile charity bike ride!

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

A sunny Sunday in the woods

We both had an enjoyable and productive day in the woods today, expanding the clear area we're working on in Sweep Wood. At the start of the day trees were still hanging up a bit:

But by the afternoon there was enough space to fell 40 foot trees into:

Sometimes it feels like we're making slow progress, but this is because we're processing every tree as we fell it, cleaning up Hazel stems, converting suitable chestnut into stakes for log stacks to be built over the coming weeks:

and splitting logs that are destined for our wood burner, so that they can start seasoning immediately:

The log stack that was built on Friday is nearly full already!

As we had a fire going to dispose of excess brash, we took up a sweetcorn cob to try a method of cooking Tracy had read about recently. What you do is soak the whole cob in water for half an hour, the chuck it in the fire. We actually rested it on a forked bit of green Hazel, turning it occasionally:

Once the husk starts to blacken, you take it out, and inside is perfectly cooked sweetcorn!

Anyway, here's another update on the view, comparing before we started:

to the end of today:

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.