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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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