Cutting an overgrown Holly hedge, and making some new place mats

For the last few Saturdays we've been working where Sweep Wood borders a neighbour's garden. There are border trees there which probably used to be a hedge at some point in the past, but are very overgrown now. Our neighbour would like a view from their house across the wood, we need to cut the trees at some point anyway, and right now their garden is just empty soil as it's being redone. So we've taken the opportunity for fell some trees into the garden, rather than into the regrowing coppice from our work there in 2009/10.

Here's a pic from a week ago, when we'd cleared a gap and started to move brash back over the fence to make a dead hedge:

We've had lots of brash to cut up, as Holly always seems to be very bushy!

There's some fairly chunky stems in there:

And we're getting plenty of nice heavy logs out of them!

At the end of last Saturday we'd created a view like this:

Today we went to carry on with the trees at the left...

Again, plenty of decent Holly logs in there, which will be great in a year or two for keeping the fire in overnight - Holly is very dense and so burns slowly.

If you were wondering why I'd felled the one above so high, it's because it had ancient barbed wire embedded in it, and I didn't want to blunt the chain on my chainsaw by hitting it!

There's now a decent gap in the overgrown hedge there:

Though at either end are a few trees we'd still like to deal with before Spring arrives:

Here's the pile of logs we have to move at some point - I already did one trailer load when it was snowing a few weeks ago.

One last thing - what do you think Tracy is carrying here?

Answer - our new set of placemats!

They're slices cut from a Holly tree that had some kind of fungal infection. We found this once before, in a Sycamore, and the mats we made are still in use at home. Just in the time it took to get home, the Holly had already changed colour, taking on a more greenish hue:

Tomorrow we'll coat them with PVA glue to stop them drying too fast and splitting, and then store them in the shed for a year or so. Then they'll be ready to bring indoors and use!

Mike

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Back to the top...

Having progressed far enough down the hill with our coppicing for this winter, we've returned to the top of the hill to deal with some of the edge trees that we're going to thin out. First though we went to collect a load of firewood for a neighbour and top up the bird feeder.

We found the bird feeder on the ground - probably the work of a squirrel! Anyway, we fixed it back up and within minutes there were several birds back in the area:
Back in Sweep Wood there were also a lot of birds, and there seem to be some complex interactions between them - at one point there was a sparrow, a robin, a chaffinch and a blackbird all within a metre of each other. Not sure who was threatening who, though clearly the blackbird has a size advantage. Here's the chaffinch:
and a female and male blackbird (there were two pairs hopping around):
Anyway, on with the work. Here's a before and after shot:
The holly was quite awkward (again), it all needed roping and I had to go into the neighbours garden (with their permission) to recover some of the branches.
The brash will be used to cover the stools of trees we've coppiced, to make it harder for rabbits to get at the shoots as they regrow in the spring. There's a lot of logs too, but we've not decided what to do with them yet.
We're helping some friends move house tomorrow, and then we're not back in the woods until Friday - our normal jobs need us back...

Mike

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New things growing and some visitors...

We identified the fungus we found last week, and our friend Tim confirmed it - Chicken of the Woods (or Sulphur Polypore):
We've not tried eating any, but it is supposed to be edible. Perhaps we'll give it a go... we hear it's quite expensive to buy!

Another interesting thing growing is the big holly tree in the public footpath. Here's a picture of it during the coppicing work last winter:
As you can see, it now has a lot of light getting to its lower branches as well as the top. As a result, it is now flowering!
I assume it's been flowering at the top every year, but this is the first time we've seen it flowering near ground level. And if you're wondering why the leaves aren't spiky, it's because it has polymorphic leaves - only those lower down (and therefore at risk of being eaten) grow spiky.

The big event this week so far was a visit from some of my work colleagues from the Ashden Awards and their families:
They all had a good time, and there's a write-up on the Ashden Awards blog, with some more pictures.

Last of all, on Monday we did a bit more processing of firewood:
This isn't ready to sell yet as it needs some more seasoning. Here's a birch log that had been striped along one side only:
It's hard to tell in the photo, but you can just about see that near the stripe made on the top by the chainsaw the wood is drier (paler colour). This is why it's important to stripe birch if you're not going to split it (this log in particular has been split now, by some of the Ashden Awards people!).

We're off to the woods again this evening, this time for a friend's birthday, so I think a fire, marshmallows and a few beers are in order...

Mike

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A peaceful day in the wood

We got in a couple of hours at the wood today, between stopping work early and sunset. For a change we didn't take the chainsaw, and had a peaceful time burning brash and felling small trees with loppers and bowsaw. It was beautiful weather to be up there, though some parts of the UK are in blizzard conditions right now!

Our wood today:

Northumberland today (image from BBC):

A while back I wrote a post on pollarding, and showed how we were leaving longer stumps on some of the coppice stools. Well, here's a picture of an old stool where the stumps have been left long - this is what we're trying to achieve, though it will take many years to get like this:

Walking along the footpath at the eastern edge of our wood we stopped at this holly tree, which is actually growing on the other side of the path, in Grist Wood:
The interesting thing about holly is it has polymorphic leaves. Near the ground, where animals might eat them, they are spiky:
while higher up they are not:
and yes, before you ask, the leaves are definitely from the same tree! :-)

We had a quick walk round our wood, and also Sweep Wood, just to check for any wind damage, but all was OK. We did find some fresh boar activity though. In Chestnut Coppice we could see patches of disturbed leaves where some light browsing had been going on, and in Sweep Wood there was a freshly dug hole, which you can see just behind the straight pale trunk on the right:
and clearly wasn't there in the photo I took a week ago:
Here's a close-up of the hole:

We also had our second sighting of something strange growing on a dead branch. I think it's a lichen of some sort:

Tomorrow we're in the wood all day coppicing, and we're expecting to see our neighbour Colin too, who'll hopefully get some good photos for his blog.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Pete and Tom have a new rope on their cage, which allows them to go underneath the platform. Here they are trying it out, after they've got over their initial terror of a new thing appearing:

And here they are saying their prayers before dinner, though they aren't closing their eyes properly!
Mike

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