Cath in the woods

This is a guest post by my sister Cath, who was helping us in the woods today...
We travelled to the wood in the land rover. It made me and Tracy laugh because it was bouncing around on the bumps.
It even blurred the pictures sometimes!
First, I loaded logs into the trailer with Tracy, for Mike to sell to a customer later on.
While I did that, Mike and Dad fixed the pond. It started like this:
They built a dam from logs:
Then they dug out the pond, and put the mud on the dam:
Here it is finished - now it needs to rain!After filling the trailer, Tracy and I set up some tree guards for small oak trees:
We used old milk bottles to make the guards:
The guards will stop rabbits and deer from eating the little trees.

Then it was lunchtime.
After lunch we went to Mum and Dad's bit of the wood, where Mike and Tracy are going to work this autumn. We did coppicing, cutting down trees so that they will grow back again next year.
Tracy's friend Penny helped as well:
Dad cut the stems on this Hazel:
then Mike helped finish it with the chainsaw:
Mike also had to chainsaw an Ash tree that fell over last year, to bring it down to the ground:
While Mike was doing this he found part of an old bike!
The last job was to collect some poles for making stakes. Tracy and I collected them and sawed them to make the right length:
Mike sharpened them with the chainsaw:
and I helped carry them up the hill:
I was pleased to have worked hard in the wood, and I'm looking forward to going there again on Wednesday. Finally, a quick message to Emma, Katie, Pippa and the staff: "Look forward to seeing you on Thursday"

Cath

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Coppicing this week

We had Monday and Thursday working in the wood this week, again focusing on the footpath. Here's an example of the progress we've made, with a picture from the start of the week: and at the end of today:
Here's the view from inside, before:
and after, with much more light coming in.
With the birch already felled and logged, it's been pretty easy where I've been working to get some chestnut down. I cleared a section near the stile:and was then able to set up some racks to store the chestnut logs:
After today these are now filling up, with large non-straight logs for fuel, and small straighter logs for other uses, such as stakes and garden furniture:
There's a third pile too, of all the smaller twisty bits and offcuts, probably just for us to use in the wood for cooking on, or anything else that comes to mind. If they don't get use they can just rot (slowly, being chestnut) and provide food for fungi and beetles.
Tracy's also been busy, working further along the path. You can see a pool of light in the distance, looking from where I've been working:
She's been felling birch so far at that end, and has a few nice piles of logs building up, and more light coming down to the ground.
Once we get along to this point with the chestnut we should be able to make fast progress, as with the birch out of the way they won't get hung up very often.

One highlight of the day was a cooked lunch, consisting of chilli con carne reheated in our adapted fondue burner:
and rice cooked on a wood fire in the cast iron BBQ:
Tracy took a quick trip to the pond at the end of the day. The plant growing in it is continuing to spread:
but a new one (which we will try and ID) has joined it:
Our next trip to the wood is on Saturday, as we have a journalist and photographer from BBC Countryfile magazine coming to visit us. Apparently they're doing an article on why people are buying woodland.... we'll be sure to give them some interesting answers ;-)

Mike

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Bank holiday weekend - Saturday

We did a lot in the wood over the weekend, so I thought I should break it up into different days...

On Saturday Heather and Rod,who own another woodland nearby, came to visit. They've produced an excellent diary of what they're done in their wood over the past two years, cataloguing all the flora and fauna - it would put this blog to shame if they got it online! We went for a wander round the wood with them, and were very pleased to see this tiny frog at the pond, he was only about an inch long:
We also saw a couple of chestnut stools with these strange roots coming out near the ground. I'll have to find out what's going on, and if it's normal:
Heather was expert at spotting fungi, and also knew the names of most of them. I can't remember them, but here's the pictures anyway:
After they'd gone, we did a few little jobs, focusing on chainsaw stuff so that we didn't make any noise on the Sunday and Monday, to avoid disturbing the neighbours. Tracy cut up some of the trees we'd left full length in case they were needed on Monday - we had a customer come to collect poles for garden furniture. Meanwhile, I cut up some dead logs for charcoal making - we've said we'll supply fuel for a BBQ on Friday:
And finally I cut some logs ready for splitting and storing in the drier:
Sunday's post will be on the way soon, including making blackberry jam in the wood...

Mike

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