A frosty day in the woods

Saturday was a proper frosty day in the woods!

It was nice to have some cold weather to work in, I missed it last winter!

I put a few hours in today, coppicing some trees next to where some blew down last winter, then splitting/striping and stacking the logs. I thought I'd do before and after photos - only a few trees missing in the second one, but you can see the growth in the log pile...

I wonder if we'll get snow this year? It already feels more likely than last year did...

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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Winter in the woods

At last! The ground is frozen rock hard, and I can drive in and out with the trailer full of logs without making everything muddy... It also looks great, and we've got the bird feeder filled up again, so lots of photo opportunities:

In the wayleave, the sun doesn't reach much of the ground during December and January, so the frost builds up during cold spells:

Some nice views looking in through our entrance from the wayleave too:

Anyway, back to the bird photos. We keep a bird feeder topped up during the cold weather. I don't know how much difference it really makes in the long run, but it's nice to see which birds are around and get a few pictures. Interestingly, there have only been two types of birds coming to the feeder so far: Robins and Marsh Tits. The Robins tend to pick up seeds from the ground rather than using the feeder itself:

Though this of course means they need to keep an eye out for danger, which I guess is why this one is trying to make itself as tall as it can:

The Marsh Tits are easier to photograph than the Robins, as they sit in the young coppice nearby for a bit before coming to the feeder:

I managed to get a few of them in flight too, though this required sitting still a short distance away for quite a while, and I got pretty cold!

What's odd is that there are no Blue Tits or Great Tits so far this winter, I'm not sure why...

Mike

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Frosty morning in the woods

Last weekend I went to the woods early on a morning, and found that for the first time this winter it was actually properly frosty there, with the ground rock hard! Although I was there to do a job, here's a few photos...

Another couple of photos that might be of interest are from the bottom of the hill in Sweep Wood. Here's one from a year ago, just after we finished coppicing - note how bare the ground is:

Here's the same place a couple of weeks ago:

And this is in January, with green leaves still showing after last summer's growth! I think it's going to look great this summer....

And finally, another sunrise timelapse, taken yesterday morning. I still want to do a couple more over the winter, as I'm in the process of figuring out the best camera settings to account for the huge change in light levels through the sequence.

Mike

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Coppicing in a neighbouring wood

Yesterday was cold - again!
The pond at the bottom of the wayleave has grass poking through it (it doesn't have water in it for much of the year), but that's now frozen:
We had Dudley, who I know through PowerSwitch, and his friend Laura visiting. After hot drinks we went for a walk around the wood, and went into one of the neighbouring woods where the owners have arranged for Tim and Sal to do some coppicing.
They were splitting the chestnut to help it dry, just as I'd been (it was Tim that gave me the idea for the firewood processing method), but I saw Sal doing it with a maul instead of wedges:
I'm going to have to give this a go, as it looks much quicker.

Tracy, Dudley and Laura stood warming themselves around the chainsaw - though I think they might have been better off round the fire... ;-)
And finally, does anyone know what this is, because we don't: Mike

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Ice, birds and coppicing

This morning it was cold. It's been cold for a few days. All the water we'd left at the wood was frozen. But, this is great for coppicing - the ground is firm, there's good light, it's not raining and it's not too hot. The cant we cut last winter doesn't get much sunlight at this time of year, and the frost has been accumulating:The ground was easily hard enough to drive all the way in and collect a load of logs to deliver at the end of the day, a rare treat for winter:
and the pond had partially frozen (the fact it has a spring probably keeps it a bit warmer):
We headed over to the path between the junction and the pond, where we're working at present:
As we entered the new clearing there, we realised we were surrounded by small birds that seemed to have moved in overnight. The birds we saw or heard included blue tits, great tits, goldcrests and nuthatches. Best of all, the tits were jumping around inside the dead hedge, just as we'd hoped. It's hard to see, but there's a great tit in the middle of this picture (inside the dead hedge), behind the twigs:
I got some other pictures too, but not of great quality (should have had spot-metering on, but didn't...). Here they are anyway though. First, a blue tit in an oak (it flew up there from the dead hedge to watch us when we arrived):
and then several of a juvenile goldcrest (they get their proper colours when they mature)
Anyway, we eventually got to coppicingLoads of people walked along the path today, which, although it stopped us working, was nice as we enjoyed chatting with them all as they passed through. We also had John, the retired local forester, come to visit - I've got some copies of old forestry photos he brought, I'll post them later. We're hoping to have him visit again soon and show us some of the techniques he used years ago, which we expect will be very useful for us.

The work's progressing nicely, there's not too much left to do between the junction and the pond now:
Some days it feels like we're making slow progress, but we have to remind ourselves that we're converting some of the wood to final products as we go along, and also stacking firewood logs ready for cutting in the summer.

There's a lot of light coming in now:
Can't wait to see what it'll be like when the sun gets higher in the sky...

Mike

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