Yesterday’s visit was with the intention of doing some serious hard work again. I’m keen to start felling in my sycamore plantation. The area is very neglected and overcrowded. The trees are very tall and slim as they have fought their way upwards, competing for that all important resource – light. So I would say about one third of it need to be felled eventually. This will consist of the weak, sickly and badly formed trees. But I also want to start introducing a more mixed variety of new trees to at diversity. The adjoining plot along the eastern edge is only lightly stocked, so that part of my wood, gets lots of light. So to take advantage of that, I will start by taking down some of my trees along that edge to enlarge my existing small open area and in places, create smallish “scallops” of clear glades that will fill with morning light from the east and encourage new ground cover and allow me to plant new native saplings of oak, ash, hawthorn and hazel etc. The photo shows the area before I started. It’s the pointed end of a triangular area that was previously clear felled and quite open. You can see I have already planted some saplings but I want to give them more light and enlarge this open area for more new ones. The trees in the middle of the picture are the ones to fell and they would fall to the right into next door’s plot.

This is the area before I started felling. point here.

So armed with my chainsaw I set to and felled five medium sized sycamore trees. The challenge was to drop them in a fairly confined space, avoiding crushing my new saplings. The blue rope represents the border between me and the next door plot. This plot remains unsold and is overrun with brambles so I wasn’t going to damage anything important if I dropped them into this area. The alternative would be to fell them back into my woods which would go against their natural lean and they would certainly get “hung up” in other trees and need freeing. If I could drop them all pretty much in the same spot, that would limit any damage and I am proud to say that even with my limited experience at felling, I managed to do that. Here you can see where the first one came down after I have cut it into manageable logs for stacking. The other four fell pretty much in the same line. In the photo they look small in diameter but they are very tall, so there’s still a lot of weight of timber to deal with.

First tree down and cut up.

The logs were stacked nearby for seasoning and the brash piled in a heap to be dealt with later. I will use that to create a brash hedge along my border.

Finished log pile and brash.

Coffee break was my usual brew up on my hobo stove. The sun glinted through the trees and smoke creating a lovely atmospheric scene.

A little bit of foraging between work told me it is a good year for berries, lots of blackberries and elder berries are ripe now. I was too tired to pick any though.

elderberries

The birch polypore fungi is emerging on the dead birch trees right now. I found these fantastic specimens.

Birch Polypore

A tidy up of the felling area, little collateral damage and the end of a satisfying day.

Tidied and clearer now

There’s not a lot to tell about my last visit. My pal Mark has been meaning to visit the woods and on Sunday we finally managed it. A lovely morning to start off. He’s not big into woodlands but as a very good friend, paid his dues and came to have a look at what I’ve been raving about for the last year. I gave him a walk around and a talked about it, we foraged for fuel and made a fire and had a brew of coffee. Lunch time we fried up some sausage and eggs and made a sandwich. Just a nice campfire experience. Before he left, I took him to the big old crab apple tree which was loaded with apples last time. Quite a few had fallen so we collected them in a trug for me to make crab apple jelly. When I got then home and weighed them, there were about 13 pounds.

One collection of fallen crab apples

The process of making them is simple though not quick. Wash and roughly shop them into quarters. Add 1 pint water for every 2 pounds weight of apples and boil/simmer until they turn to pulp (about 10 minutes). Pour the pulp into a jelly bag (fine muslin cloth) and suspend it over a clean container overnight to collect the juice. Discard the pulp (don’t squeeze it). It took me three sessions to boil 12 pounds apples. Then for every pint of liquid, add 1 pound sugar (in fact I reduced it to 3/4 pound/pint). Boil rapidly until it reaches setting point. That was the hard bit to judge and I probably over boiled it as it is very, very jelly-like now.

Boiling the crab apple juice and sugar

Let it cool a little, clean your jam jars and warm them with hot water before putting the jelly into them. The colour of the finished product is a beautiful wine colour.

The finished jelly bottled up.

So that’s all for today, I’m hoping to go again soon and get some work done. Raring to go.

I was keen to get some serious work done on the brambles. Three aims – to cut some paths into the lower half of the woods, tidy up the ride (track) edges and to clear some of the planted sycamore area which is covered with it. First job was to have a walk-around and a really close look to see where I wanted my paths. The lower half of the wood is my best bit. It’s the closest part to look like a natural wood. It has many different tree species of different sizes and ages but it’s hard to walk around. Not just because of brambles but also fallen deadwood etc. I wanted a path that cuts across from one side to the other, about half way down and maybe another one that joins it in the middle, so I can move around more easily and also show visitors a bit more of it without getting snagged up. Because of the density overhead, the brambles weren’t too big a problem here. I marked the paths with some garden canes with coloured tops so I can remember where they are and keep them trimmed until they get established as regular paths.

There’s a big gnarly old crab apple tree that is laden with apples right now. I wanted to be able to access it, so one of the new paths runs alongside it. I fixed a bird nest box there last winter and it looks like it has been occupied. The tell-tale signs are the paint around the entrance hole has been worn away. The birds like to clean up the hole a bit when building their nest. The tree also has a big rambling honeysuckle growing up it. The rope-like loop you can see on the photo is that – completely natural. The peeling bark of honeysuckle makes a fantastic tinder for lighting your fire.

Old crab apple tree with honeysuckle and my bird nest box

Most of the afternoon was spent in the sycamore area with the brushcutter. This is a heavy duty strimmer type machine which really slashes through the think stems of bramble. It won’t kill them at this stage, they’ll re-emerge next spring but this first cut is just to severe them at ground level and clear some of the huge mass of vegetation so I can walk about. Further cutting will be easier and lighter work and hopefully weaken the plants. At present, you cannot walk through it at all. Last winter I cut a wide path through the centre of it, so I went back over that too. The time I spent on it made me feel I’d covered a biggish area but when I stepped back and took in the whole scene, it is just a tiny patch. Lots of work to do still.

In between bramble bashing sessions, I managed to have some time just to observe the woods. It really is a magical place for me – just exploring, standing and watching nature. I spotted a tree creeper busy working it’s way up the trees looking for food, a robin nearby was singing it’s heart out, two giant black slugs where entwined enjoying a bit of baby-making (hope they like brambles). Can’t wait to get back there on Sunday when I’m meeting a pal to show him around and just chill out for a while. Below, a few photos taken whilst exploring.

A few Rowan berries on my newly planted tree.

Seeds on one of my newly planted birch trees

Some kind of weevil on a blade of grass

Wouldn’t like to be a fly around this massive web

Simon in full flow entertaining Phil with his campfire tales – some crazy story involving fire no doubt! Ha.

My two mates telling stories of a misspent youth

Not an awful lot to tell you in terms of work and woodland management – we didn’t do any! I met these two reprobates on a bushcraft course that Phil was running. Simon is a self-employed blacksmith. We all seemed to hit it off together and have stayed in touch and been planning to meet up at my wood for a while. We finally managed it a few days ago. I took them for a tour of my piece and a longer tour around some of the other areas. I learned a few interesting things, how you can use the leaves of horse chestnut as soap and how to attract woodpeckers by rapidly tapping a coin on a tree to mimic a rival bird. We made a fire, had a brew and some lunch and sat around swapping stories of our miss-spent childhood days, having a good old laugh. Phil joked that we haven’t really grown up. We still like doing the things we enjoyed as kids, lighting a fire, building a den, messing about with sticks and knives etc.

I gave that some thought and arrived at this conclusion. When we are very young, we know little. So we are just who we are, fascinated by the world immediately around us, exploring, playing, learning about our environment and how we fit into it. We find out which insects and plants hurt us, what plants smell nice and even what some taste like. We mess about in pools and streams, in the woods and the fields. Our world doesn’t extend far from where we are right there and then. We are centred. Then society and the man-made world pulls us away from that place. It fills our heads with all sorts of distractions, school, work, mortgages and child rearing and we lose track of ourselves and our connection with nature and our planet – our ancestral home. Some people continue to live their lives in this way. But if you’re lucky, you might realise that you have travelled too far from your true self – that innocent enquiring child you once were. You might take up an interest in nature in some way – bird-watching, hiking, bush-craft, woodlands or fishing or whatever and those that do, soon find their centre again. The activity seems to bring you right back to where you are, right here and now and the lost child comes out to play. Yes I sound like some sort of new age nutter but it’s not the nature and the woodland that made me that way, it’s the previous lack of it. So I think we have grown up. We’ve found our true selves again. Try it, go out and play again.