An Idiot's guide to Ancient Woodland management

[the village idiot]

I've neglected to take a photo of digger driver Crispin close up whilst he's been in the Wood so found this one on the internet.

 

That's him and his unruly mane on the right.

 

He is a lovely chap and great fun. His Wood near the coast in Suffolk is spectacular.

 

Crispin will be back with a vengeance later in the thread, where he gets into a spot of bother.

 

More to come on the ponds too, with specific emphasis on the biodiversity gains.

 

Edited November 27, 2019 by the village idiot

[the village idiot]

8 minutes ago, eggsarascal said:

Have you kept a diary that you are referring to for this thread TVI?, I struggle to rember what I did yesterday.

No such luck unfortunately.

 

Going through the photos jogs my memory.

 

Bizarrely, I feel like I hardly ever take photos. I'm genuinely not sure where they have all come from! 

 

[the village idiot]

13 hours ago, the village idiot said:

The Ash stems were challenging at first as a lot of them were leaning which gives them a tendency to barber chair (too gruesome to go into- feel free to look it up).

 

I've leapt ahead a little bit here but thought it might be useful for those who haven't had the pleasure of experiencing a barber chair to see what one looks like.

 

This video is from last winter, and you'll get a good idea of how potentially dangerous leaning Ash can be if not shown the utmost respect. I had to reduce the file size dramatically so the quality isn't fantastic. 

 

I think the video might only play on certain devices. It plays on my laptop, but I only get the audio on my phone. Apologies to those who can't see it.

 

Do check out my high tech patented method for knocking out a felling wedge, and note the fact that I am not on my ownsome.

 

A second idiot???

 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2019 by the village idiot
Technical glitch

[Gary Prentice]

4 hours ago, the village idiot said:

 

I've leapt ahead a little bit here but thought it might be useful for those who haven't had the pleasure of experiencing a barber chair to see what one looks like.

 

This video is from last winter, and you'll get a good idea of how potentially dangerous leaning Ash can be if not shown the utmost respect. I had to reduce the file size dramatically so the quality isn't fantastic. 

 

I think the video might only play on certain devices. It plays on my laptop, but I only get the audio on my phone. Apologies to those who can't see it.

 

Do check out my high tech patented method for knocking out a felling wedge, and note the fact that I am not on my ownsome.

 

A second idiot???

 

 

 

 

Getting audio but no video on my laptop. Works on i-phone though 

 

Chucking things at trees is a different approach, but if it works it works... 

Edited November 28, 2019 by Gary Prentice

[Gary Prentice]

6 hours ago, the village idiot said:

I have a 15 page document detailing the woodland ponds with pictures and a lot of detail about the management options. I can probably post up a link to it if any of you want to get nerdy?

Yes please 

[the village idiot]

3 hours ago, Gary Prentice said:

Yes please 

Here you go Gary.

 

The report was written in 2013 as I was just getting started in the Woods.

 

It's actually 25 pages rather than 15. Pondy stuff starts on page 5.

 

Hopefully the link works.

 

juliet pond report 2013.pdf

[openspaceman]

5 hours ago, Gary Prentice said:

Getting audio but no video on my laptop. Works on i-phone though

same here but not got apple and only audio on samsung

[the village idiot]

FISH n' SHIPPS REVISITED.  THE FISH.

 

You may remember that there were two main people that helped me with the bottleneck of heavy forestry in the early stages. John Shipp was one. The other was Jake Fish.

 

 

I had started to supply wholesale charcoal to a company called Treewood Harvesting owned by a chap called John Fish. John is as mad as a bucket of squirrels. 

 

The main thrust of their business was not in fact charcoal, but forestry harvesting. 

 

When I started at the Wood there were still two fairly big plantation blocks of conifer to get rid of. The contractor who had done all the previous removals had left a shocking mess of deep ruts so I asked the Woodland owner if I could try a different company for this final intervention. The owner agreed and Jake (son of John) pitched up in the Summer of 2014 with this strange contraption:

 

 

This is a harvester. Not generally a common site in ancient woodland, but unsurpassable in efficiency when you have large areas of conifer plantation. A harvester has a specialised felling head on the end of a long arm. It can fell, de-branch (sned) and cut any straightish thin branched tree to predetermined lengths in a matter of a few seconds. They are big machines but the large wide tyres mean it exerts pretty low ground pressure which is vital. 

 

Jake was at the time one of the youngest harvester operators in the country but he was highly skilled, and it was awesome watching him fell areas in a few days that would take a good hand cutter weeks and weeks.

 

Unfortunately I haven't got any video of the machine in action, but if you google tree harvester videos you will see what these machines are capable of.

 

Jake worked his way down racks (access tracks between stands of trees) almost literally mowing down the spruce and pine, leaving neat piles of sorted lengths in his wake.

 

This picture hopefully gives you some idea of the aftermath. He was asked to leave any hardwood trees that had managed to cling on to life amidst the gloom of the plantations in the hope that these would help to re-seed the newly open ground.

 

 

Once all the felling had finished, the timber needed to be extracted. The harvester was swapped for a forwarder (timber carrying machine) and Jake stacked all the product roadside so that it could be collected by timber lorries and taken to the sawmill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We chose to carry out this work in the Summer, after bird nesting season, so that the non concrete rides could stand up to the weight of goodness knows how many tons of passing timber. If I remember correctly it was somewhere in the region of 2000 tons.

 

To my relief the rides held up very well:

 

 

The money generated from the sale of the timber went into a pot held by the estate to reinvest in future woodland management operations.

 

The two sites that Jake was working in looked very sorry for themselves afterwards. But I knew from what had happened in the previous deconiferised blocks that all we had to do was wait for the regeneration magic to happen.

 

[the village idiot]

9 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

same here but not got apple and only audio on Samsung

Hmmm.  I'll see if I can get it into a different format.

 

I've got a couple more videos it would also be good to show you.

 

Does anyone know an idiot proof way of reducing video file size to below 64MB, and converting them into an 'open to all' format?

[roboted]

TVI

Educational, Interesting, Well written, Humorous. All the hallmarks of a best seller.

Well done that man ?