An Idiot's guide to Ancient Woodland management

[the village idiot]

Digger Vigour:

 

This time of year we are in full firewood production mode. It's bird nesting season so no tree felling going on.

 

Also, it gets far too hot for chainsaw trousers.

 

Before we can start processing we have to remove the monumental amount of sawdust accumulation from the previous year. We hire in a 5ton digger to help with this task.

 

 

 

After the concrete rides are clear we swap the ditching bucket for a timber grab and set to ringing up the cordwood stack with a couple of happy helpers.

 

 

 

[the village idiot]

As ever our good friend John Shipp has been on hand to do the extraction for us again.

 

 

This spring (particularly May) has been very tricky with all the rain. Luckily John is an excellent contractor and has stopped his activities in the Wood until things dry up again. Some operators would have pushed to carry on, causing awful damage to the precious ancient woodland soils.

 

John is one of the good guys, he understands the importance of sensitive sites.

[the village idiot]

Oaky bloke:

 

Part of our winter felling activities last year included a handful of Oak stems. These are taken out of coppice compartments and along ride edges if we feel they are over represented and casting too much shade for the regeneration to get away.

 

Another friend of ours helped us with a good few days of coppicing and ringing up. In return I offered him three standing Oaks that we wanted to come down.

 

He felled the trees, milled them up and then built this for one of his customers.

 

 

Pretty darn good I thought, especially as it is his first attempt at Oak timber framing.

 

It's really nice to see where some of the millable timber that comes out of the Wood ends up. Ordinarily it gets taken away on a big timber lorry never to be seen again. Also nice for our friend to be able to carry out the whole process from tree felling to finished building.

 

[the village idiot]

Wide Ridening XVIII:

 

While I'm at it I'm sure you're all on tenterhooks waiting to hear how the ride edges are getting on!

 

It's been a while so first a quick recap.

 

Stage one was to clear the ride edges of most of the trees:

 

 

 

Stage 2 was the monster mucher to take out the stumps over half the newly cleared area:

 

 

 

 

Stage 3 was to selectively mow to encourage the desired three zone growth profile:

 

 

Now that everything has started to settle down after this admittedly 'heavy handed' intervention we are starting to reap the rewards.

 

We are getting fantastic wild flower swards in the two zones closest to the centre and the third zone which wasn't mulched is developing into excellent coppice like nesting habitat.

 

 

These ride edges were previously very floristically poor due to the decades of heavy shading.

 

For more info on exactly why this work was undertaken have a quick shufti back at page 16.

 

Edited May 29, 2021 by the village idiot

[G13469]

Great update, always nice to read how things are going on your patch. Thanks 

[Stere]

What you doing with regards to adb...

 

 

Thoose firewood logs are  ash?

 

Apologies if you coverd this already....

 

 

[the village idiot]

5 hours ago, Stere said:

What you doing with regards to adb...

 

 

Thoose firewood logs are  ash?

 

Apologies if you coverd this already....

 

 

Yes, the logs in that picture are almost all Ash. We are a very Ash heavy wood and have been hit very hard by dieback. Pretty much all the crowns of the trees we fell are shattering on impact and it's a sobering sight walking around in the summer.

 

The only change we have made really is to accelerate the felling, chasing Chalara around the Wood to extract some value from the timber before it deteriorates too much.

 

We are getting better at recognising potentially resilient trees in the winter, the canopies still have a slightly 'springy' look to them. We are leaving any of these specimens and will monitor them over the next few years. It is possible that removing infected trees from around the strong ones may help them fight off the fungus.

 

We are lucky in that we get very good birch regeneration from seed in the previously ash heavy areas, as long as we manage to keep the deer numbers in check!

[MrNick]

Are the wildflowers growing naturally from a dormant seed bank ? Or are you helping by sowing seed yourself. They do look fantastic!

[the village idiot]

18 minutes ago, MrNick said:

Are the wildflowers growing naturally from a dormant seed bank ? Or are you helping by sowing seed yourself. They do look fantastic!

Yes, the flower seed has all arrived under it's own steam. Much of it will have already been in the seed bank as you suggest and just 'waiting' for the light.

 

At the moment we are thinking about the best way to remove the grass cuttings after mowing. If we just cut and leave the clippings the soil will become enriched and have a negative effect on the flower mix.

 

We are toying with the idea of a flail with collector. The only problem with this is that the collector will fill up very quickly and we will constantly be emptying it. Another option is an old hay tedder which will shift all the cuttings into a long narrow row. This will limit the enrichment to a single narrow strip and also be of interest to the grass snakes. Might also be a good home for insects (or a buggery as we like to call it).

[MrNick]

A windrow of mowings could be baled and taken away or stacked and left to decompose (after removing band or net wrap)