Catweazle

I think 5 acres will be a bit small, you won't be able to charge much for it, but here goes. You'll want to avoid the turning up with a clapped out written off rangerover with tractor tyres fitted, usually on a recovery lorry, they will rip up the whole place and be a danger to other users. Stipulate that all vehicles must have a valid tax disk and road legal tyres - no tractor pattern tyres. Divide the land up into different grades with colour coded signs, have an easy route right around the perimeter that is suitable for school-run freelanders and other semi-4X4s. Make some more challenging sections exit from and then go back onto the easy perimeter route - call these intermediate difficulty - the novice can have a go at these and easily back out or rejoin the easy route after the obstacle. You are trying to let people learn their limits in a no-pressure place so haveing them spread around the perimeter will avoid crowds of people gathering to watch the obstacles. Your difficult sections should be in the middle of the land with plenty of parking nearby. People will want to stop for a rest / chat / coffee and watch the serious cars attempt the difficult obstacles. This will also mean that there are plenty of people to pull on a rope and take photos. You'll need a JCB to dig some serious pits here, it's nice if they have a name so that regulars can talk about them and compare notes. Provide a standpipe and hose, the car radiators will get clogged and will need a periodic rinse off, cars will overheat and lose water, windows will get covered in mud. At the exit try to provide a drive through bath and a pressure washer - you don't want those 4x4 leaving half your mud on the public highway. Sell bacon sarnies. Lastly, make sure you have sufficient recovery equipment - people will get stuck in the most unusual places, sometimes upside down.

I can only imagine that there must be some liability like those mentioned above, because it's very cheap otherwise. I hope that the bloke just hasn't got a clue about land prices but it would be unusual for an owner not to take at least some interest in the value. If it's all clear then it's a bargain - if I found some at that price I'd buy it tomorrow.

I do the same, but if it didn't leak I wouldn't have to carry the bottle too.

I love mine, but it's not perfect. It weeps water when cold and would be better with a watertight lid instead of the silly cork on a chain.

I have no experience on working on this saw, but I have used the "shock" method on various other engines and it's worth mentioning that using a fairly light hammer and sharp taps seems to work better than a heavy hammer which is moving slower. It might help.

I found an American dog site that had done a survey of loads of protection dog trainers / breeders. They rated the Bull Mastiff as the best guard dog in the world, knocking the Dobie into second and the GSD was in about 5th. It doesn't surprise me, they're massively powerful dogs. A garage out in the sticks where I get my MOTs done used to have one, it used to walk around the forecourt with a car tyre in its mouth with a Jack Russel hanging off the tyre, legs off the ground.

I don't know if it's physically possible, but for your owners lacking a centre difflock perhaps you could fit the viscous system from a Rangerover, it detects when the front or rear is spinning and automatically "soft" locks the centre diff, it transfers more power to the non-spinning axle depending on the speed difference between the two axles, and you can't forget to turn it off afterwards.

I agree with the comments about a determined thief hurting a dog, even a big one. As I wrote earlier, I'd rather lose my TV than lose a dog any day. But there are times when a determined dog can save someone close to you, I'm happy to go to work leaving my wife with the dogs as I know they would die to protect her or my lads. A protection dog doesn't even have to be large, a Staff terrier is a powerful compact dog with a good protection instinct.

That's a great present - they're excellent I knew about my toaster, but it's still the best present. I've already done myself 2 bagels and loads of toast in it

Do you have a link to confirm that no planning consent is needed for subterrainean housing ? I'm not sure you're right. Re; caravans, the previous poster is correct, you can have one on-site for woodworkers for a season, defined only as being "less than one year". A caravan doesn't need wheels, but must be portable and delivered in no more than two sections. I can't see any reason why you couldn't move it off site for one day a year.

I have recently had rat damage to my van, the buggers have twice eaten the cables to the rear ABS sensors which are £92 each. I wasn't totally convinced that it was rat damage the first time, I thought it might have been cut by an incompetent thief looking for the diesel line, but this morning I have found the ABS cables chewed into many pieces an inch or so long. I'm not going to replace them just for them to be eaten again so is there something I can put on them to repel the rats ? This hasn't happened before last week, the van is parked in the same place it has been for three years but the council recently cleared the yard of all dumped old pallets and rubbish and I guess that what with the snow the rats are getting a bit desperate.

I very much doubt that, with the population increasing rapidly and climate change rendering some fertile areas waterlogged and some desert we will need the most efficient food production methods possible. Mono-cultures, despite their negatives, remain the most efficient way to feed people. Food and Water could easily become the only real currency once the full scale of the fraud we call money is uncovered.

That bag of logs will heat a small house for 2 maybe 3 days in an efficient stove, assuming the weather isn't freezing like now. So you're charging them a quid and a bit a day, I reckon that's bloody cheap.

The biggest problem with overstood coppice is that because each generation tends to grow outwards from the stool the weight of a large stem can split the stool in half. If you have a long overstood stool that has a decent stem close to the centre you can single it and allow it to grow on as a standard. Missing even a couple of rotations won't necessarily harm the tree, a rotation is only 15-25 years and the stool can be 350+, some ancient stools are so old and large that the centre rots away and you end up with a ring of new trees that have self-layered from the collapsing stool. It's been documented that coppiced trees can live longer than maidens, and as someone mentioned earlier if you layer the tree onto a fresh piece of earth then there is no reason why the same tree ( genetically ) couldn't live forever, although I don't know why you'd want that to happen.

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It's one of those things you just want, but can't really justify the cost. Sod it, it's Christmas and I'm going to have lovely toast for years

Without being disrespectful, and I have to be careful as an amateur on a professionals site, but aren't you just proposing that trees that snap off 6 feet off the ground might re-grow ? I'm not seeing anything new that would challenge Darwin here.

You little tease, I just googled that It does look a bit short though, as do the Hornbeam. They're not one-offs though, there are a few so they must have been done deliberately and the tree must have been a fair size when cut.

I have a line about 300yds long of these hornbeam, an old boundary mark; And a few of these ash scattered through the woods; I don't think they are in need of re-pollarding any time soon. They are a bit shorter than other pollards I have seen pictures of, high enough to prevent rabbit damage though.

Are you trying to make a point that trees naturally self-pollard by the actions of rot in the trunk ? And that we should learn a lesson from this and not be afraid to pollard the occasional mature tree ?

Yes, of course they evolved before, what I'm saying is that pace of change of our habits can outpace evolution. The butterflies struggle to evolve as quickly as man can change from needing coppice wood to neglecting it. If a species has lived in a wood that has been coppiced for 500 years it continually migrates to the youngest part of the wood, it evolves to rely on it, if man stops cutting it the species has nowhere to go and dies. http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/cumbria-butterflies090.html#cr

I find one of the most relaxing and stress-busting things I can do is to have a short nap in the woods. There is something about snoozing with the sounds of the trees, birds and mammals around that hits a spot that you just can't get to with the sounds of TVs and traffic around. I have a deckchair and sleeping roll in the woods just for a summers day snooze

I know that man had created unnatural habitat that has been in place so long that species have developed to exploit it. Coppicing is a good example, butterflies have evolved over a thousand years to live in newly cut coppice, our technological age has left the coppice to stand in the last 50 years and the butterfilies cannot evolve quickly enough to survive elsewhere.

A tree that's about to fall over ? A tree that could be cut at 4m to provide a bat home ? I'm guessing, I'm just an amateur.

What an interesting post I like pollards too, they used to be common as boundary markers because of their distinctive form but I guess that with decent maps, GIS and satnav there isn't so much need. Perhaps it's worth starting a Pollard photo thread, to get some examples in case people want to try one themselves. I can upload some pollarded Hornbeam and Ash pics to it, the Hornbeam seems to pollard well, most of mine are healthy and attractive trees.