An Idiot's guide to Ancient Woodland management

[Woodsman1967]

That certainly is some serious wide ridening you've been doing there , should create some wonderful micro climates and habitats . ☺️

 

Not sure how I feel about large scale out of season (summer) felling though , what about nesting birds ?

[the village idiot]

16 minutes ago, Gary Prentice said:

Hurley sticks?

?

[the village idiot]

7 minutes ago, Woodsman1967 said:

That certainly is some serious wide ridening you've been doing there , should create some wonderful micro climates and habitats . ☺️

 

Not sure how I feel about large scale out of season (summer) felling though , what about nesting birds ?

Thanks Woodsman, Yes we are very excited about the rides.

 

Pretty much all of the birds have done their thing by late summer. Also most of the nesting activity takes place in the coppice regen areas in other parts of the Wood.

 

Timing decisions often involve a balancing act of issues. By extracting the timber when the ground is at it's hardest limits the negative impact on the soil (compaction, rutting)

[Mullany]

2 hours ago, the village idiot said:

Hi Paul, I'm glad you are enjoying the thread.

 

Is there a market in small plots of Woodland in Sweden or are they all hoovered up by big forestry companies?

 

Thanks for the kind words. I hadn't really considered writing anything for any sort of publication. I have to fight a very strong urge to descend into silliness whenever I write something. It's a tendency that probably wouldn't translate too well in a more 'mainstream' arena.

 

It's much more fun chatting with you guys as there's a lot more freedom to be daft.?

Large areas of woodland are ran by big companies but a significant amount is owned by private individuals or families from a farming background.

Most of it is monocultures of spruce or pine although this diversifys the further south you go. Quite a few people also grow birch commercially for firewood

There are a few gems around where I live which are remnants of an old oak forest which used to extend north from Stockholm. Much of these are now nature reserves and are either left to their own devices or are managed to ensure the oak is dominant, usually accompanied by hazel and ash. 

Some of the oak forest is effectively lost in the vast conifer plantations and is only found when an area is surveyed or harvested.  

You also get fair bit of wet ground dominated by potentially and often quite large alders.

I need to keep my eye out and see if any tenders come up for looking after or restoring some of the more interesting bits of woodland but quite often they are bunched in with much larger maintenance contract which tend to go to the big national companies. 

Its always a struggle with the silliness but life would be boring without it.

Cheers

Paul

[the village idiot]

12 minutes ago, Mullany said:

I need to keep my eye out and see if any tenders come up for looking after or restoring some of the more interesting bits of woodland

If you find any of these would you be able to bung some pictures up? Either on this thread if it's an old wooded site, or on another/new thread if that's more suitable.

 

It would be really interesting to see what is going on in the forests of the rest of Europe. 

[the village idiot]

TOP O' THE MORNIN' TO YA.

 

Woodworks and Gary were quite right when they identified the strange load of logs on John's forwarding trailer as Hurley stick blanks.

 

When planning the thinning of the Ash stand I noticed on Arbtalk that there were a couple of companies based in Ireland looking for Ash over here suitable for making Hurling sticks out of.

 

 

I don't know if you are all aware of the sport of Hurling, but it is basically a turbo charged version of hockey played by Irish psychopaths.

 

The sticks are traditionally made from Ash as it is strong but with a certain amount of flex. The swollen base of the stick is cut from the buttresses of maiden Ash stems (single grown, not coppice).

 

There were quite a lot of suitable looking stems in the stand to be thinned so I got in touch with Liam and his son Richard (Hurley makers in Ireland) who sent their UK agent Liz out to have a look.

 

Liam had actually won 2 'All Ireland Hurling Championships' with Kilkenny, and got goal of the season in 1992 when he guided the ball through an opponent's legs, flicked it up in the air 25 yards out from the goal and whacked it straight in the top corner! He has since confided that he had no idea where the goal was at the time, his smash could have gone anywhere. His glorious goal of the year was a pure fluke!

 

Agent Liz was happy with the form of the trees (not silly big, with a few buttresses on each) and arranged for Liam and Richard to come over. In the meantime I set about marking up any likely looking trees that were due to come out in the thinning. I had to Ask John, who had agreed to do the thinning, to cut 150 of the Ash stems at 1.4mtrs above the ground. Not a particularly easy task as Ash can be unpredictable at the best of times, and judging what is going to happen whilst firing sawdust into your own face is no picnic.

 

John was not phased though and by the time he had finished all his cutting we were left with 150 short posts dotted around amongst the remaining trees and stumps.

 

 

Liam and Richard arrived after the main felling but before the extraction to cut down the 150 stems. There is an art to this process so they travel over to do it themselves. First Richard would remove the bark and soil from around the buttresses with a flat tipped metal pole.

 

 

 

Next, Liam would do an angled plunge cut around the full base of the tree, cutting very close to (and sometimes into) the ground.

 

 

He had a large saw with a very long bar and had to sharpen the chain back up after each one of the 150 stems!

 

The blanks were then pushed over, hopefully to reveal no butt rot. Nobody wants butt rot!

 

 

After all the cutting had been completed Liam came to an arrangement with John to carry the Hurley blanks out whilst he extracted his own timber from the thinning.

 

 

 

Liam and Richard returned to Ireland and arranged for a bulker lorry which John loaded up with his 360. The blanks then headed off over the Irish sea for further processing.

 

 

 

All in all it was a great experience. The hurley blanks were worth £230 per cubic mtr so we got a good return, especially compared to firewood, and all I (as the client) had to do was spray a bit of orange paint on some trees.

 

These 'niche' markets are worth exploring sometimes as you can add significant monetary value on to what is usually a low value resource.

 

Here are the happy workers. (L-R) Liam McCarthy, John Shipp, Richard McCarthy.

 

 

 

[the village idiot]

PIMP MY RIDE.

 

It was around about the time of this Ash job that my not so trusty little tractor Antonio finally coughed his last puff of black smoke.

 

You may remember him from a few pages back. He was only 27 horsepower and really not up to a lot of the jobs I needed him to do. Small loads were fine, but with anything heavier he really struggled.

 

 

 

 

I had by this time started to make a bit of money from firewood and charcoal sales so decided it would be very wise to invest in a new machine.

 

Bye Bye Antonio, Hello Sally!

 

 

 

 

Sally is not a big girl, she is not significantly larger than Antonio was but she has 22 more horsepower which makes a huge amount of difference whilst still being very light on her feet. Aside from the chainsaws, she is by far our most important piece of kit and she helps us out with a huge variety of jobs. Two of which are pictured below:

 

 

 

 

The sticking out of elbows is essential to make this particular operation run smoothly.

 

A bit more detail on Sally in the next post.

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by the village idiot

[the village idiot]

Sally falls into the category of tractors commonly referred to as Alpines. They are much more common on the continent where their very low centre of gravity and compact size make them suitable for use on steep sloped farms and between tightly spaced rows of fruit crops.

 

There are only a few large manufacturers of these this type of machine. BCS, Ferrari, Pasquali, Antonio Carraro (All based in Italy) and AGT (based in Eastern Europe somewhere). BCS, Ferrari and Pasquali have a range of models which are all exactly the same bar the paint job. AGT produce a more limited 'budget' range but are still excellent machines. Sally is a Pasquali Eos 6.60, 49hp. She is named after the marvellous personal assistant of the Estate manager who is our first port of call if we want to get anything sorted.

 

If you are ever considering taking on the holistic management of an area of Woodland and are considering the best core piece of machinery, look no further than a tractor. They are far and away the most versatile piece of machinery you can get. Alpine's are particularly good if you are operating in an environmentally sensitive, very sloped, or tightly spaced site due to their very low ground pressure, excellent stability and tight manoeuverability. There are much larger hp models available, up to around 100hp that are not physically all that much more bulky.

 

These alpine tractors are well balanced as the weighty engine sits quite far out to the front and acts as a counter balance for any machinery you choose to put on the back. Many of the alpine's also have the huge benefit of a reversible seat and steering console which is brilliant if you do a lot of forklift or mowing work. Some alpines are also articulated, meaning that instead of the steering acting solely on the front wheels, the whole front end of the tractor pivots in the direction of the steer. This is great if you are operating in extremely tight spaces, but was too much of a compromise for me as it unbalances the tractor when you have weight on the back. I opted for a 'rigid steer' model. I find that with the use of the independent brakes the rigid steer machines are more than adequately capable of tight cornering.

 

We use the tractor for a whole host of different Woodland jobs including pulling trailer loads of logs, moving bags of firewood around, circular sawing (pto powered saw bench), ride mowing and extracting millable timber with our custom built log arch (more details later and thanks again TCF engineering, also an Arbtalk member I believe).

 

We simply could not effectively do our job without Sally.

 

 

Larger tractors are perfectly fine within ancient woodland as long as care is taken to go in when the ground conditions are such that you will not cause excessive compaction or rutting. Wide flotation type tyres also go a long way to minimising unwanted ground damage.

[Gary Prentice]

18 hours ago, the village idiot said:

Bye Bye Antonio, Hello Sally!

I've just got to ask. 

 

Why did you decide Antonio was a 'he' and not a 'she'?

[the village idiot]

22 minutes ago, Gary Prentice said:

I've just got to ask. 

 

Why did you decide Antonio was a 'he' and not a 'she'?

Antonio was not particularly good at pulling his weight, and hopelessly lost when it came to multi tasking.