We have been through a spell of very unsettled weather this last week, it is almost like a very warm April ie periods of sunshine and then showers of rain. Every day has been a mixture of heavy overcast skies interspersed with some sunny periods and then a short shower of rain sometimes quite heavy. Makes it difficult to plan for outside jobs particularly if you have a lot of set up of tools etc. The marked difference from say a couple of weeks in the daylight is dramatic, when it has been overcast it has been really gloomy. It makes perfect sense of the expression “feeling under the weather”, you do feel to be weighed down somehow by the dark clouds. I guess this just goes to emphasise/reinforce the positive feeling of those moments when the sun does burst through; the whole landscape becomes brightly lit once again and the features become more sharply defined rather like an image coming back into proper focus.
Despite the unreliability of the weather there has been a lot of activity harvesting the crops in the fields around Pop’s Wood. The field of rape seed at the top of the wood has been collected with only the bottom couple of inches of ghostly stalks remaining, this leaves the deer exposed once more as they wander between the neighbouring woods. It will be interesting to see what the farmer plants as the next crop in the field.
During the process of clearing up the fallen turkey oak after it was blown over by Storm Doris, I cut off the thinner diameter branches and stacked them in discrete piles. This created room to be able to get to the main branches and trunk and also made the site safer to work in with the chain saw. You want to have a good firm foothold and also have a clear exit worked out when using any mechanical devices.
The huge oak “banjoed” quite a number of other trees as it crashed to the floor. Amongst the tangled wreckage were branches from neighbouring beech, cherry, ash, hazel and elder trees. As I cleared up these branches I was very careful to separate out each of the different trees and create different piles for each species. This has paid dividends later as I now know which branches are from which tree and can process logs into firewood and be confident when I sell them as being a single species batch ie they are all oak or beech etc.
Yesterday I tackled one of the six piles, here are the before and after shots:
All sawn up using a hand saw so no further noise or exhaust fumes to breathe in. Also no need to wear the safety trousers which in summer are like personalised “sauna pants”.
I quite like having random piles of branches laying around the woodland, they appear very natural and have a pleasing complexity. However I also like the finished stacked pile which is in itself a thing of beauty and a lot more practical for further processing into sell-able bundles.
The remaining branches that are not thick enough for firewood will be sawn up and used to make charcoal so nothing should be wasted.
More next time……
Tim Burr 