Wood Anemone in flower

Spring is well and truly here - there are Wood Anemones in flower!

The woodland as a whole is looking much greener than it was just a week or two ago. This picture is over in Alex's wood, where I was helping my friend Rich (the woodland manager) finish off the last of the road edge trees.

Rich has been busy experimenting with a new way of stacking logs, using lengths at right-angles to make air gaps between the logs. He's going to see if this speeds up the seasoning of the wood, but it also had the advantage of removing the need for stakes at the ends of the stack:

Mike

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Family visit to the woods

This week my parents and my sister Cath were in town for a couple of nights, and as it was sunny one of the days, we went for a visit to the woods, and my Dad took some photos...
It was the first time they'd seen the regrowth at the top of Sweep Wood, with the Ash, Elder and Chestnut doing exceptionally well:
There's a whole range of plants growing up there, and the insects are loving the thistles, including this Large White and Meadow Brown:
There's a few garden escapees as well, and I think this is the first time I've seen a tomato plant growing wild!
Our walk in the woods continued on, investigating animal borrows:
and trying out the new bridge over the stream:
We came across what I think was an egg from a Wood Pigeon:
Then we were back at the camp, where there were some logs we'd left lying around after splitting, as we heard Cath was keen to do some work up there! So we set her on them...
as a result, the store is now nearly full!
Mike

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Logs! Lots of logs!

It's been a busy couple of days for me in the wood. Tracy's still teaching this week, so I've been on my own, hauling logs around.

but there's definitely signs of progress:

You'll notice I've stacked logs at the end of the rows in alternate directions - this stops them spilling out sideways.

The really hard work has been fixing the track up though, but it's coming on nicely:

I've also put in a footpath sign at the junction, as since we moved the pile of logs from the end of our ride, we've had numerous lost walkers coming through the wood.


There's still a lot more to do - we need to be able to drive all the way to where we were felling last winter before the end of August!

Mike

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Last day with the Peplers

Wednesday was the last full day my parents and sister were here, and we spent it in the woods. The first job was to fill the trailer with a load of logs, and my Dad expertly reversed the land rover and trailer up the track through the woods.
We think next time we'll try coming in forwards though, and turning round somewhere, as that should be quicker.

This is the first time we've cut up one of the racks of logs we built from last year's coppicing. We secured the logs with a ratchet strap as usual:
Then it was time for me to fit a 28" chainsaw bar, in place of the 15" bar I use for coppicing:
Now that's a proper chainsaw!
Everyone got their ear protectors on...
and then it was time to start cutting:
Unfortunately the posts on this rack had splayed out a little, so I had to work hard to get the saw to cut through the whole width - I've made an adjustment to the design of this year's racks as a result.
Before long we had a trailer full of logs: Then it was back out of the wood again, this time with nearly a tonne of logs behind us:
After lunch we went over to the area in Sweep Wood (my parents' patch) where we'll be coppicing this autumn. Dad and I started building some racks ready to store logs in (one of them we relocated from the stack of logs we'd just cut up).
They're right at the top of the wood, near some houses - it's strange to be so close to civilisation while working in the wood!

Meanwhile Tracy felled some small trees to clear a path for the proper felling when it starts, and my Mum and Cath did some too:
We finished up by cooking dinner, and I chucked a few logs into the woodgas stove to make a mini campfire for us.Mike

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Butterlies and log stacks

Yesterday I popped up the wood on my own for a few hours before the forecast rain arrived. My main intention was to stack some logs in a rack to accelerate their drying and have them ready to process later in the year. But first I was distracted by some butterflies, like this Peacock:
I waited a minute and it opened it's wings fully, letting me get an even better picture:
There were also still a lot of Painted Ladies around, both in the wayleave and in clearings inside the wood:
I also spotted a butterfly I've not seen before, or at least not identified. It's a Ringlet. Not rare, but still nice to see:
Anyway, I eventually got down to some work, building a rack to put some birch logs in. The smaller logs went straight into the rack after striping, and the bigger ones are waiting on the path to be split:
The striping is important, as it breaks the waterproof bark of the birch, allowing it to dry out quickly. You just skim the chainsaw (carefully!) along the sides of the log, leaving them like this:
The bigger logs can be split with the maul and wedges, though birch doesn't cleave as neatly as chestnut. Still, I didn't do a bad job on some of the logs:
They'll all now dry out very rapidly, and there's still room in the rack for some more:
One last thing - we had thunderstorms here on Thursday night, and it was pretty windy too. As a result this branch came down between the public footpath and our main ride:It's not in a dangerous place though, so we'll leave it for the moment and see if it can become a bit of dead wood habitat.

Mike

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