What fantastic weather for a trip to the woods with my daughter yesterday after the gales we had the day before. Cold but sunny and very still and peaceful. There was plenty of small dead fall but that’s all. My shelter had filled up with dead leaves but everything was intact. A testimony to the building skills of my mate and I. We filled the bird feeders, had a walk around then coffee and cake. then it was time to get busy with some work.
My eldest daughter had asked if she could spend a day at the woods – it must be about three years since the last. Covid has sort of erased two years of our lives for much socialising and mixing so it was especially nice to pick her up, show her around the woods again and have some quality time together. I wanted to get some more sycamore thinning done before the bluebells and anemones come through and also thought it would be an interesting experience for her to witness some trees being felled. I picked a thinnish “easy” looking one and it fell perfectly as planned. The look of awe on her face signalled to me that she felt the exciting yet scary moment when the tree keels over and hits the ground with a thump – and that was just a small one. We felled two more – not so perfect, they got hung up but a sideways swing with a rope soon dislodged them. We cut them up ready for moving with my daughter operating the log roller which lifts one end off the ground to make chainsawing easier. I jokingly offered her the chainsaw saying “Now you know how to do it, go pick a tree”.
We broke for lunch, a lovely veggie and pasta soup and cheese sandwich she had made the day before. This is the only photo I took all day. She didn’t really want me to publish it because she said it didn’t look very appetising but believe me it was fantastic.
We had a walk over to a neighbour’s plot where he was felling some huge larch trees and we had a bit of a catch up, then back to mine to collect some firewood logs to take home. The day had gone in a flash. we paid our dues to the beauty and healing properties of the woods and headed home again. What a lovely day.
These tiny fungi growing on a dead twig are only about 5mm in size.
Yesterday it was mild and windy when I left home but as I neared the woods it had completely changed. Clear and cold and completely still. The sunrise is noticeably earlier now, Venus was bright on the horizon and I was looking forward to another great day at the woods. One of my woodland mates was waiting at the gate and we headed into my little patch. As usual we spend a lot of time chatting and laughing about life. Another mate had planned to come too but sadly he’s not very well at the moment.
The main task was to clear up the trees I felled last week. Full of sap still, they are very heavy but we worked well as a team and got the job done in an hour. It takes it’s toll on my aging body but strangely I enjoy it. The fact that I still have the strength to lift and move these heavy things, despite the aches and pains, is somehow satisfying and life affirming. Good honest physical work is good for body and soul.
My pal has acquired a couple of rams skulls – one for me and one for another friend who for some reason was wanting one. Mine will look great fixed at the top of my shelter support pole here, once he’s finished larking about with it.
There was a dead, narrow oak tree where my old shelter stood and I wanted it down for safety and to utilize the remaining tall stump as a leg support for a pole lathe eventually. It really needed two people to get it down without damaging the new shelter. We sawed it by hand and got it down OK. The top part is rotten but the bottom half is sound and dead straight so should be useful for something once I can figure out what!
We wrapped up the day with a short walk over to another neighbouring plot not knowing they were actually there working as well. Haven’t seen them for about a year so it was great to catch up and have a few laughs too. I love meeting other woodland folks, swapping stories and ideas, knowing that you can talk about it as long as you want without risk of them getting bored of it. We are a special tribe.
It was a dreary, cold and foggy day yesterday but I got straight into some tree felling and soon warmed up. I took down six more weak sycamore trees, cut them into various log lengths and started the heavy task of shifting them to stack somewhere. Already the bluebell tips are lurking under the dead leaves and it won’t be long before they are readily visible, so the next few weeks are crucial to drop a few more trees and clear up.
Intriguing title eh? Well my woodland neighbours decided to take down a huge beech tree to open up an area and create a small light-filled glade. They enlisted the help of an experienced mate but unfortunately it didn’t fall quite where they planned and got very badly hung up on another large beech tree. These trees are about twenty metres high and about two metres circumference at the base and must weight several tons. They came back yesterday to have a go at releasing it. Here’s what it looked like.
It looked impossible to shift but between us we managed it. Their pal had a winch which he attached to the base and tethered at right angles to another large beech. He had a heavy-duty jack which he placed under the base. A combination of lifting and side winching eventually started it moving sideways and outwards. There was a loud crack as the supporting branch snapped and the whole thing came crashing down with an enormous loud thump and cloud of dead twigs and debris. It was scary and exciting to witness. I know how relieved everyone felt to know it was down safely and nobody died!
I took a break from working and watched a little woodmouse scurrying around and venturing onto my little fireplace where I leave birdseed for the robin. The mouse has discovered this source of easy food and often pops it’s head out to check for danger, then grabs a piece and disappears to eat it. It’s always a thrill to see these little lives close up.
The day was pretty much about hard work and here’s one of my log piles ready for splitting and stacking for firewood. It’s a sight that always gives me a sense of satisfaction. Still plenty more to shift which I hope to tackle next week.
An odd title? Well I have this thing about “The New Year”. People celebrate it as if it’s a new car or a new pair of shoes, bound to be better than the old ones but in reality, it’s just the next day in a long series of chance experiences. Optimism is a good thing but I’m sorry to say that life experience has shown me that it’s really a game of roulette. You win some, you lose some. The last two years have been pretty crap for most people due to covid19 (unless you are a manufacturer of face masks, hand sanitiser or lateral flow kits). Isn’t it ironic that the kits that we so much rely on are made in China? Enough of the cynicism, I really hope that things are going to improve but right now it’s not looking like a great start to 2022.
What is great though is spending time in nature and that helps us to focus on the here and now and forget the bigger and uglier aspects. Yesterday I headed off to my woods intending to start tree felling. It’s a long term plan to thin out the overcrowded sycamore plantation. One of my faults is to underestimate the time it takes me to do anything. I thought I might get ten small trees down – in reality it was three.
When I left home it was very windy, not good for felling but it was calm when I arrived at the woods. I figured the wind might follow me later that day, so set about with chainsaw straight away. At the start of the felling season I try to rebuild confidence by tackling the smaller trees. Actually they are more difficult because they tend to get hung up more easily but they look less daunting. Having said that, they are only smaller in diameter, still a good 15-20 metres tall. As predicted, every one got hung up and had to be wrestled out of the neighbouring trees.
My operations were cut short though – the new chain jammed in the bar (the long thing that it runs around). It’s been trapped a few times over the years and I suspect I need a new one. I filled my time clearing as much as I could lift from the pieces I had managed to cut and stacking them ready for processing into firewood. I took a couple of nice straight-grained pieces home to carve some spoons and shrink pots. I like to make a few products to keep or give away from the wood – a sort of homage to the life of the tree I have just dispatched.
Cutting a tree down never comes easy to my conscience. I am doing it for the right reasons – to remove the weak and sickly trees to give more light and nutrients to the bigger healthier ones. It’s standard forestry practice but the more sensitive of us still realise it’s a life being taken. Sometimes the stump will send up new shoots. Some will soon die off but others thrive and form a coppiced stump which can then grow on and be cut again in years to come. Some species coppice better than others and some don’t at all. Sycamore is a very vigorous tree and given enough light will do well. Hazel is a classic coppice species and this photo is a stump that was cut right back about 5 years ago and has now produced these lovely straight rods which can be cut again in a couple of years and will make lovely material for various craft products.
My neighbours came and started some felling in their cherry plantation. Inevitably one got hung up and wedged between a large forked tree. That’s probably the hardest to tackle by yourself and can’t simply be shaken free, so I lent a hand and after much head scratching, pulling and wrestling, we eventually got it down. It’s always a relief when the last piece hits the floor!
My daughter gave me a wood gasifier stove for Christmas. It works differently to the simple metal box types where you light a fire of twigs and have to continually drop more in to keep it going. This one you stack fairly tightly with twigs or in this case, kindling I prepared at home. You wedge pieces of thin bark between to light it (took some doing) but then the hollow casing draws air up and out of the holes at the top, and creates a more stable, efficient and useable flame, almost like a gas ring. It lasted about fifteen minutes, enough time to heat my tin of veggie curry and brew a coffee.
The forecast for the day was great, the wind did arrive and eventually by mid-afternoon so did rain. I’d done as many jobs as I could, so simply retired to the shelter listening to the raindrops on the metal roof and just enjoyed the peaceful woodland scene for half an hour before heading for home – tired but happy. Bye for now.
