h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Went walking in the wood with a woodsman today. Learnt about windrows, phoenix trees, whipping bracken and how to check hazel stools for dormice. There won’t be any, well very unlikely, but got to check. And about the possibilities of charcoal burning and the market for charcoal, logs, hurdles, poles and rods. That’s tempting. And about using sycamore to decoy squirrels away from young oaks but to fell them before they’re of an age to seed. About pollarding willow and the heartwood needed for standing dead trees. Which birches haven’t and oaks have. About gaging the density of the canopy by looking at the health of the hazel and alder below. He was a craftsman of woodland. No hardline rules, like must clear a minimum of x square metres, or leave y metres between standards, or cut down to z inches every w years. No, look at the individual trees, the plant life on the woodland floor, the growth of the understory and young saplings growing to replace aging standards to see what needs to be done. It must be good to know trees as he does. I should like to get to know this wood of ours as well as that.

You've quite a project going. I look forward to updates as the years pass. It would be lovely to have a proper wood to walk through. I want to let my back yard go native as much as possible, but am having problems with design. It's one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to retirement.

That sounds wonderful LL Waz. I hope the weather was better than it was here, though when out like you were it never used to bother me.

Is the wood truly yours? If so I envy you, so much to learn and so much history If only they could talk.

Websailor

He sounds like he's given a lifetime of love and devotion to the trees that he tends.

I hope the same passion rubs-off a little onto yourself.

A lovely journal - thanks for sharing.

An enthusiastic forrester is a joy to be with. They not only know the trees, but the birds and wildlife and see so much more than us normal mortals.

I am getting to know this wood. Area A, the section we coppiced last year is pretty familiar now we've been right over it cutting every hazel , alder and willow down six to nine inches. sawn all the thicker stuff into lengths or logs, stacked them, picked up all the thinner stuff and laid it out in windrows. This autumn we've covered a lot of it again to collect logs or take out brambles, and I've crawled over it to photograph plants, butterflies and fungi. It has quite a steep bank, a streambed where marsh thistles are coming up that runs with water after the rain and a tremendous number of foxgloves have appeared at the top.

B, that we're half way through coppicing this year is becoming more familiar. It has sweet chestnuts, a large holly and a young elm but fewer big oaks. It's flatter and wetter and the half nearest the track has no big standard trees at all. What it does have is some very big neglected coppiced willow. There's one with a dozen high trunks all splaying out from the stool at ten o'clock or two o'clock angles which will be half a days' work on its own to coppice. One young sweet chestnut has been left as there were a couple of chestnuts big enough to roast under it unlike any others found this year so it maybe good for nuts. We also left a clump of rowan with a couple of hazels in the corner for variety next year among all the new growth. They say witches make their homes in rowan and don't appreciate them being cut down, but that had nothing to do with it. Of course not.

There's a long trunk of willow that has fallen and is sprouting willow whips along its length, it might be a good source of willow to try making baskets with. The basket making day at the Wildlife Trust was great fun and my log basket effort wasn't bad. This year the coppicing has been less hectic with help from a friend so fingers-crossed there'll be time to try making hurdles again, and baskets.

Learning from last year's mistakes, this year there are gaps in the windrows so people don't have to climb over them and the log piles are all near the fence and as near the gate as possible - for reasons that should have been blatantly obvious last year.