An Idiot's guide to Ancient Woodland management

[the village idiot]

4 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

Bold move.

Yes, it has raised a few eyebrows but the response from the Forestry Commission and other Woodland boffins has been extremely positive.

 

Apparently it is much more common for Woodland owners to tickle their ride edges, resulting in much less light getting in and much poorer biodiversity gains.

 

Raydon is a big Woodland, it can handle large interventions. In a much smaller Woodland it might well be advisable to be a bit more conservative.

[Gary Prentice]

22 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

Yes, it has raised a few eyebrows

I bet it has , but it's what was needed. Plenty of room now for the various layers to thrive.

[the village idiot]

AND THEN THERE WERE TWO!

 

With the many miles of ride network in the Wood you can probably appreciate that this process of opening them up was a very substantial task.

 

Under the newest incarnation of the Woodland grant scheme, Countryside Stewardship (specifics to come) I had committed to creating 4.5km of three zone ride network, and the same distance of markedly narrower 'access tracks'. This had to be completed within a 5 year window alongside all the other scheduled works (coppicing, thinning, pond restoration).

 

This target has almost been reached with a couple of years to spare. I would however have been almost certainly doomed to fail without a happy doubling of the permanent workforce. This revolutionising event occurred in 2016 when a wonderful young chap named Steve joined the party.

 

For baffling reasons best known to himself he is still with me!

 

 

Steve: (who'll be super chuffed I picked this particular picture)

 

 

I met Steve whilst lodging with a family in a village close to the Wood. Steve is the husband of the daughter of my then landlord. He had grown a little disillusioned with his work as a garden designer/landscaper and wanted a change. He absolutely loves nature and bombarded me with questions about my work when we met.

 

As it happens I had been scratching around for the previous year or so for a likeminded soul to join me in the Woods. The non-contracted out workload was far too heavy for one person. I had gratefully received a few days help here and there from a couple of people (including a few days of felling assistance from our good friend Felix the log chopper. Thank you Felix!) but they all had their own various projects on the go and couldn't join me full time.

 

Steve started to do some volunteer days for me on his days off from the landscaping. He enjoyed the work and the environment and we got on famously, so we began to hatch a plan to enable him to come on board.

 

The Woodland owner had in the past mentioned the possibility of apprentices so I went to the two local agricultural colleges to enquire about any relevant schemes. I shouldn't have bothered. Both colleges were totally bamboozled by my question, and there was next to no provision for a Woodlands based training scheme. (Tree Surgery- no problem). It's little wonder that such a high percentage of our Woodlands are under managed.

 

I reported back to the Woodland owner and he decided to take Steve on regardless, as a straight employee learning on the job. After a month or so's probationary period the freshly ticketed Steve had more than proved his worth, his job was secured and we started to have lots of fun!

 

 

[nepia]

You are blessed with your landowner aren't you. He deserves an Arbtalk pat on the back ?

[the village idiot]

SHIPPING COSTS.

 

A few months before Steve came on board, and I was crawling through the ride edge work, the Woodland and I were delighted to welcome back the marvellous John Shipp. (He of the coppice compartment around the big pond).

 

I had scheduled a thinning operation for a 8 hectare block of hardwoods (predominantly Ash). I did not have the  necessary time or the appropriate equipment to tackle this job so I negotiated a charter of the good shipp John.

 

As most of you will be aware a thinning operation involves removing a pre-determined percentage of the stems in a stand of trees, typically 30% or so but sometimes more, sometimes less. In most cases the objective is to give the most promising looking stems more space to grow, reducing the competition for light in the canopy and soil nutrients in the ground.

 

My particular reason for doing the thinning was a little different. I wanted to get more light through the stand of trees to encourage the growth of the shrubby understorey to increase the viability of the habitat. The Ash stems were quite closely packed in this block and the vegetation below the canopy was looking a little sparse. This particular stand of trees had largely lost it's multi-stemmed structure so it was decided not to coppice in this instance.

 

I was going for more of a 'continuous cover' system. A practice sometimes referred to as 'close to nature' forestry, where the canopy density is carefully and continuously managed to allow pockets of new growth to emerge without planting. This closely mimics the natural cycle of a tree dying, allowing a patch of light through the leaf cover, turbo charging the previously light supressed saplings below.

 

John arrived with saws, digger, tractor, forwarding trailer and lunch, and got to work. He was grafting for several weeks in the blisteringly hot late Summer in full chainsaw clobber. I literally do not know how he manages this. 

 

After all the trees that I had marked up were felled and extracted we had quite an impressive stack waiting for collection. John had agreed to buy the timber standing. We agreed a price per ton of extracted product and John handled the rest. This is quite a common arrangement in Forestry. Another option would have been for me to pay John a day rate to fell and extract the timber, I would then sell the resource as cordwood (or codwood as us arbtalker's like to call it). I generally prefer to sell timber standing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[the village idiot]

10 minutes ago, nepia said:

You are blessed with your landowner aren't you. He deserves an Arbtalk pat on the back ?

Cheers nepia, I couldn't agree more!

 

I'm sure there's more out there.

Edited November 30, 2019 by the village idiot

[the village idiot]

The eagle eyed among you (Beau!) will have spotted a rather unorthodox cargo of stems in John's timber trailer.

 

Next post I'll tell you what's occurring.

 

[Mick Dempsey]

What happened about the stumps on the ride widening?

[the village idiot]

4 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

What happened about the stumps on the ride widening?

All in good time Mick!?

 

There's a small red clue on page 3.

Edited November 30, 2019 by the village idiot

[Gary Prentice]

1 hour ago, the village idiot said:

The eagle eyed among you (Beau!) will have spotted a rather unorthodox cargo of stems in John's timber trailer.

 

Next post I'll tell you what's occurring.

 

Hurley sticks?