Out on the road by 7am and on my way to the woods yesterday. It was very cold and frosty but I was rewarded with an amazing sky view just before the sun rose. A thin sliver of new moon was on the horizon, the sky turning from deep azure blue to fiery red. I was in the woods by the time it was light. It was good to walk about the crispy, frosty woodland floor and see it as day dawned.

I took the chainsaw and finished off cutting the large hazel that we coppiced last visit, then cut the large stuff into logs. Time for a nice fire and a brew and there was never a better day to enjoy the heat and spiritual comfort of a fire. I decided to cut a few small sycamore trees. The area I have started to open out for re-planting needs more thinning so while I had the chainsaw it made sense to take a few of the smaller ones down.

My woodland friend called around and we chatted about our plans and had a walkabout and he watched as I cut a couple of trees down. I did pretty well with my aiming and took about five down, dropping them just where I wanted. The last and biggest one got hung up though. It was too big to try to push sideways so I tried a technique of undercutting it a few feet off the ground. It’s dangerous as the top part will drop suddenly as you cut through and you have to judge it and get out of the way quick. The idea is that it will pull itself out as it drops. But often it doesn’t and just embeds itself back in the ground. I had a second attempt, same again. At this point, tired and getting near the end of the day, it was a good time to call it a day and I just left it. More fun for next time.