Yesterday was the Winter Solstice – the so-called shortest day of the year. It’s a day I am always pleased to see because it means that soon the afternoons will stay light longer and we are on the run up to Spring and new life emerging. Ironically it’s also the official start of Winter which makes no sense to me.

I was meeting a pal to spend the day with, no work to do, just enjoying the woods and a catch-up. No his name isn’t Bertie, that’s the name I have given to my little robin. During a conversation with my daughter, she said I should give it a name and as she works at a childrens’ nursery, I thought about getting the kids to come up with some suitable names. To me the bird seems like a male so I discounted all the girls names and picked Bertie out of the rest. I was hoping to get him to take food from my pal Phil’s hand but despite several attempts, he just didn’t have the confidence to. Later, when on my own, Bertie came to me and landed three times for food. I guess he’s a one-man robin.

Recently I had a blacksmithing session with another mate Simon. We made a cooking tripod to go over the camp fire and a firesteel for using with a piece of flint. You create sparks by hitting a glancing blow to the sharp edge of the flint with the straight portion of the steel. When one lands on a piece of charred cloth it will smoulder which is then popped into a tinder ball and used to start a fire. I wanted to initiate both items and light a fire to cook lunch on. Here’s the equipment and Phil blowing the tinder bundle into a flame.

The new tripod in action, kettle on for a nice mug of coffee from a cafetiere. Who says we have to rough it in the woods?

Lunch was a simple but tasty affair, sausage sarnies with onions and ketchup. Pork for Phil and veggie ones for me. Phil took charge of the cooking. Words aren’t enough to describe the wholesome pleasure of lighting a fire in the woods and cooking over it, then sharing the meal with a mate.

The day was mostly just chatting and enjoying the woods in winter and that’ll do nicely for me. A last walk around and we found this weird fungi growing on some dead oak logs. I think it ‘s Bulgaria Inquinans (Black Bulgar fungi). Hope you all have a good Christmas.

We’ve had rain, rain and more rain for weeks now, so it was refreshing to have a cold, dry frosty morning to visit the woods. Dawn was just breaking as I left home and as I drove, I watched the sky turning from a vaguely greyish purple, to dark crimson, fiery burnt orange and lemon yellow before the sun finally flashed through. It was a very cold morning. The instant I stepped out of the car, my friendly robin appeared and flew directly toward me, as if about to land on my head. Having second thoughts it dropped to my feet hopping around me. I quickly got some dried mealworms and offered them on my hand. It had little hesitation in landing but stood just looking at them then flew off. Plan B – pull some crumbs off my piece of home made fruit cake. Back onto my hand, grabbed a crumb and took it to eat under some bramble. Who could blame it for preferring cake over some dry maggots? It continued to visit me throughout the day and has become a special friend to me now.

My main jobs for the day were to start felling again. The sycamore plantation still needs lots of thinning, just like gardening and growing your rows of vegetables, the weak and badly shaped ones need to come out to lessen the competition and favour the bigger stronger ones. The tree in the middle of the photo has been bugging me. You can see the top has snapped off and another large limb lower down and on the right had come off. It was like that when I bought the woods. I decided to ring bark it rather than fell it so that it would die off and provide a nice big veteran deadwood tree for wildlife to take over. You can see the dark collar where I did this four years ago. Despite taking deeper cuts, it would not die but was now posing a danger. If the centre was rotting, it could eventually topple and as it was close to my car pull-in area, it really needed to come down.

I was going to leave it until I had some help as it poses a tricky operation. But impatience (and possibly a little stupidity) and enthusiasm to make a significant difference, I decided to tackle it. It was quite a big heavy tree, about 15-18 inches diameter at the base and with a lean. The usual wedge cut at the front, then straight through back cut was too risky. The weight of it on the lean can cause it to “barber chair” where it splits while cutting, then pivots sending the base flying upward. I won’t go into all the details of how I did it but it took quite a while, lot’s of stopping and starting and reassessing it before some heavy thumps at the wedges finally caused it to come down. My cuts were not perfect but it fell just where I wanted and in a slow majestic way, concluding with an earth shaking thump and a wave of relief fro me. It had started to send new shoots from the base after I ring barked it and I’m sure it will do so again but with more vigour. So, far from having killed the tree, I have probably rejuvenated it. I’ll show you the results in a couple of years time!

I continued thinning and took four more small ones down. The last one got hung up but fortunately my good neighbours were around and gave me a hand to dislodge it. I was starting to get tired and that’s the time to stop. I took time to have a slow walk and take a few wintry photos. A satisfying day.