I picked my eldest daughter up yesterday and headed for the woods for a Dad and Daughter day. She’s been a few times before but not at this time of year. She likes to get stuck in and help with jobs, not frightened to get her hands dirty or spiked with brambles. The day started out bright but it was due to deteriorate later. I wasn’t too focussed on work, wanting to enjoy the company and show her around. She’s always had an interest in small living things. As a young child she loved looking into rock pools and once built a small bug home at the bottom of the garden out of pebbles sticks and leaves. I love showing people around the woods and pointing out some of the easily overlooked features that are not obvious to the casual observer.

There’s a real autumnal feel there now though most of the trees are still pretty green. It will all change in a few weeks. We did a bit of bramble pulling, log stacking and brash clearing. These tasks seem dull and laborious but can be quite cathartic. Working your muscles doing “real” work, engaging with the land and nature produces a calm satisfaction. We talked about the feelings we both get there, of somehow belonging to the woods rather than the other way around. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. You don’t get the same depth of belonging when casually walking through a public wood. I think the connection comes when you work in it and even more so when you start to know it quite well.

I’d spotted some neighbours’ car earlier so we had a walk around to theirs to say hello. They remarked that there were lots of fungi around this year. I haven’t seen much in mine but their patch is predominantly coniferous – larch and Corsican pine, whereas mine is broadleaf. The top layer of soils are not the same due to the different leaf litters so that may account for it. This little fungi was only a couple of centimetres in size and growing on a stump. The colour is amazing and it looks almost like a sea anemone.

These tiny bracket fungi can be seen in my woods growing on dead wood. This is a hazel stake used to support a tree guard.

As the afternoon progressed, it became very windy. Quite unnerving working beneath sixty feet high lanky trees that are flapping about. Time to head home.

I arrived nice and early yesterday to a warm and peaceful woodland. Armed with chainsaw I intended doing lots of work. I’d been awake since about 4 am with an airport run to do, so was feeling quite tired. After a quick scout around I made a coffee and just sat, enjoying the tranquility of the place and planning my work. I wondered how many people were lucky to be doing that right now. So much to do now the summer is over but I shall try to stick to my plan of concentrating on the areas I’ve already done work on, keeping them free of bramble etc. So I spent an hour pulling it up in the hazel copse before setting to with chainsaw to start cutting up the large sycamore that was felled in spring. I’m going to leave a big piece of it to slowly rot but I sliced a few pieces off it and split some down for stool seats. Due to hidden knots I only managed to get a couple of suitable pieces. I spent some time cutting up dead branches into firewood.

I texted one of the woodland neighbours to see if he was likely to be here and was pleased when he replied that he was coming. I headed over to his place early afternoon to look for him. His camp is very well hidden and it took some time to locate him. We spent a good hour chatting about woodlands, bushcraft, camping and the joy of collecting pebbles off beaches with our children. On the way back I met another neighbour briefly who was busy burning some woodland litter. They have a lot of laurel which they are trying to eradicate. It’s an invasive species and tends to toxify the soil around it. It contains cyanide and should not be burnt until completely dried out.

I was looking for some nice fungi to photgraph but surprisingly found little in my plaot. I did find this beautiful array of birch polypore though. It has a nice smooth, dry rubbery texture and is one of my favourites.

By the time I got back it was mid afternoon and I decided to fell a couple of small sycamore. It didn’t go well. My chainsaw was struggling to cut and the tree also got hung up in another one. I threw a rope over it and with some hefty sideways pulling it came down. I was very tired and that’s a good time to stop and packed up for an early finish.

The party’s over – the one we call summer has quietly slipped by and autumn is here. Workwise, I’ve been taking things a bit easy the last few months but the arrival of October reminds me that I need to get busy again and do some hard graft. There’s still plenty of green growth and activity around and because we have such mild seasons now, it’s all too easy to think that we have plenty of time to do the felling etc before spring, so the next couple of months can slip by too if we’re not on the ball.

Yesterday I set myelf the task of clearing up the hazel coppice area. Brambles have taken a hold again and I decided that precious time spent clearing them, might be better spent by keeping a few small areas as clear as possible, rather than trying to tackle too much and doing it badly.

The sun was just hitting the tops of the trees and I watched as numerous crows were circling and cawing loudly at each other. A flurry of small birds heeded the warning and scurried into the cover of the brash and dense trees. My connection with the woods was made again and I was ready to work. Much pulling, moaning and a bit of swearing followed for an hour or so. As usual I had understimated the task and instead of clearing the whole coppice area, I managed about a quarter of it. Here’s the evidence.

Time for coffee and some photography. There’s not as much fungi around as I expected but I did find some nice examples. This one is birch polypore also called razor strop fungi. It grows on decaying birch and has healing properties, strips can be cut to make natural sticking plasters (band aids if you live in the USA) and it’s a favourite with bushcrafters.

These tiny ones I can’t identify, they are incredibly delicate and fairies use them as umbrellas.

I have never seen these before, they were growing on dead birch. They are no bigger than a pea and an incredible salmon-pink in colour. Initial research suggests they might be cinnabar polypore in their very early stages.

The other main job was to create a small secure area in a well lit place, to act as a nursery for saplings. There is a dark area that was used to rear pheasants, and now that they have gone, there is lots of regeneration happening but I have plans to do some heavy felling there which might damage them. They are also vulnerable to deer browsing. The coppice area (first photo) is fantastically light and ideal for a nursery. I cleared the area between two hazel bushes (which also need deer protection) and enclosed a decent sized piece with netting. I transplanted about 15 saplings from the dark area (still lots more) which included hazel, beech, oak, hawthorn and wild cherry. When the felling is complete I can move them back or use them in other areas.

Time to get the chainsaw out soon.