It’s the start
of a new week and what better way to start then by putting up a new post.
Hopefully the start of brighter things this week too as last week wasn’t the
best and I had a few problems to iron out (I guess I’m more sensitive to car accidents
than most). Also why I’ve been a bit lax on the blogging of late but I don’t
suppose you want to read about my woes!
We foresters
have been working hard in the woods clearing trees in preparation for planting
up as part of a grant scheme. Starting a few weeks back now, the first task was
to clear the area and fell a roughly square / rectangular area. Paul and Debbie
had a tough job that week coppicing the trees and cutting clearing the brash.
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| Paul contemplating his next tree |
Once
the majority of the felling was complete the next task was to clear the fallen
timber out of the way. What, you may ask was I doing during this time? Dragging
brash of course! As you can imagine, once Paul and Debbie have worked their
magic and the tree is on the ground there’s still the rest of the branches and
limbs to cut up and sort before we can tackle the main trunk.
Once a tree has
been felled and de-limbed (see, technical term that!), it’s muggings here who
usually has to drag the umpteen quantities of branches out of the way. To be
fair I actually enjoy it and often I’m assisting Paul or Debbie clearing up,
but hey, we have to be dramatic sometimes!
Since we’ve been
working to clear a certain area the brash went to the edges of the defined area
or in some cases piled around any oak’s we were leaving. The theory is that at
some point we’ll enclose the whole area with a fence to keep those pesky deer
out. If you’re not convinced about the damage the deer (and rabbits… and
squirrels… and voles etc) jump over to our sister blog and have a read for
yourselves! Those deer!
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| Me with brash! |
With
one half of the clearing, well… clear, we took the opportunity to plant up with
some remaining hazel we had left over from the new hedge. At least I think
that’s where they came from, blast my memory! One thing we all learnt in that
week or two was to make sure that the trees were planted properly. I mean,
really heeled in and make sure they don’t pull out again properly! Like Paul
says, do the tug test! Certainly after the problems we had after the hedge
planting, I think we were all keen to make sure it was done correctly.
Planting up with
hazel was a relatively simple task: Just plop your spade it, wiggle back and
forth to make a hole, drop in your plant and finally heel back over. Hard work
actually after we did about 200 of them in the first stint! With all the trees
planted in that half we used large tree guards and a cane for support, to
protect them from the wild fauna.
With the first
half planted up, the next task involved clearing the dead wood to the side for
cutting up and dragging out the felled timber for cutting and eventually
stacking. The dead or seasoned wood we cut into logs to supply the farm café
since they have a new wood burner to keep the punters warm. The only problem we
have at the moment is that they get through a hell of a lot of it in a week!
The dragging out
of the timber was initially done with our trusty tractor and winch until
someone managed to stall it while in the woods one Tuesday, not sure who that
was, cough, cough, splutter! Hey it was going ok until the timber hit that
hidden stump, so technically it wasn’t my fault! Fortunately Paul managed to
get it working again a few days later and we continued dragging out and cutting
up.
Towards the end,
Simon also got John into the woods to pull out the smaller lengths and to
finish clearing up. John is a horse incidentally not some elderly volunteer we
thought we’d drag into the woods! Yup, a big ol’ Dutch Draft who pulls out most
of our timber ready to be carted away at some later stage. The good thing is
you can’t stall a horse! Although you do have to be a bit careful sometimes.
For John’s latest efforts (along with Justin) in working, check out the movie
clip on this link: John working.
At
the start of the project we still had the landrover and since the weather
hasn’t been the best in recent weeks we’ve been taking the long way round and
coming into the woods from across a ditch. This was fine until someone slipped
into it one day when going for tea break. Yes it was me again; you can’t keep a
good clown down! Unfortunately this was after we put in a bridge!
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| Bridge over the river why |
Without the
landrover last week it was quite a trek with John down the tracks and across
the field. Boy was I tired at the end of that day! Anyway, with the area clear it
was time to finish planting up with newly arrived hazel. Of course to cut down
on the cost of buying in tree guards we had a new task to undertake this time:
Making the tree guards!
Basically they
consisted of a plastic mesh that we cut to size (35cm circumference) and then
held together with cable ties. After much experimentation we settled on one tie
in the centre of the guard to hold it together, with two loose ties on either
end to tighten up later when they’re in place. Fairly simple task in the end I
agree but a bit daunting when there’s 200 – 300 guards to make! Like the saying
goes though, many hands make light work.
By the end of
the week, we had pretty much finished the planting up and aside from collecting
the timber and one or two other ends to tie up, it was done.
Photos supplied by Debbie. Except the last
one I nicked from Simon’s blog, sorry boss!
