Spider webs, a broken chain and a coppicing milestone

Last week I reached a milestone! I've now cut enough wood for winter 2015/16! I'll still cut some more, so there's a bit spare in case of hard winters or friends wanting to buy an occasional load in a couple of years' time, but it's good to know the minimum is now done.

But perhaps more interesting is how the spider webs look now that there's dew in the mornings!

These trees were full of them! Now I see why there are so many running around after I've felled a tree - I guess they are all suddenly looking for a new home...

I had a little mishap as well - a chainsaw chain snapped, the first time I've seen this happen. It wasn't dangerous - there's a couple of bits on the saw to deal with this happening and I use a short bar when coppicing so there's not much chain anyway. It just made a metallic noise and ended up on the floor in front of me...

Anyway, here's a couple of views of the area I've been coppicing:

And here's our 2015/16 home heating:

Mike

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BBC Countryfile magazine

Yesterday we were interviewed by Miriam O'Reilly for the BBC Countryfile magazine, as they're doing an article on people buying woodland and working it. It all went well, she asked lots of good questions and we look forward to seeing the article. A photographer, Adrian Arbib, came with her, and he stopped for a while afterwards to chat with us as he was particularly interested in what we were doing. We had a good chat about the current events in energy and finance, and why owning a wood was a good idea because of them.

I didn't take many photos as we were busy, but here's a great one of a spider web with dew on it first thing:
After they'd gone we did a bit of work, mainly splitting some of the birch we'd already felled and stacking it to dry. I did the big bits with the maul (splitting axe), while Tracy did some smaller bits with the froe and mallet.
We sharpened our chainsaws too (always much nicer to do this outdoors), as we're going on a coppice harvesting course all this week, to learn some new techniques. I hope to do a few posts covering what we're learned. We're doing the course with David Rossney of Esus Forestry, who trained us both in chainsaw use and tree felling.

Mike

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Timber and stuff

We were up at the wood at 8:30am this morning to get a few jobs done, as we had friends visiting later in the day. Saw some cool spider webs in the wayleave:
and this butterfly, which we've not identified yet, but have asked an expert - feel free to leave a comment if you know what it is!

More follows in the rest of the post, including our planted trees growing, the timber produced from our oak, piles of sawdust and the wayleave nicely flattened.
We also saw this moth(?) as well, no idea on this one at all:
The planted chestnuts are doing wonderfully:
and the self-seeded oaks are going to need some taller shelters soon:
The big change though is in the oak butts in the wayleave. There's now a huge
pile of sawdust:
and a pile of planks and paling:
plus a few farm gate posts:
the resulting slabwood has been added to the pile for firewood:
I guess Tim must have been busy yesterday!

I'd not noticed this before, but one of the oaks had grown really strangely:
Tracy took the opportunity to try out the tractor cab:
perhaps she'll want one of her own soon?

The track we repaired a couple of days ago seems to have settled in nicely, and is no worse off for having the tractor go over it to get the final butt out:
Best of all, the area further out into the wayleave that was all churned up is now flat!
Just need to wait for the grass to grow back now. If we need to we might seed it once there's some rain...

Mike

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