Ben Ballard
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Everything posted by Ben Ballard
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say what you like bundle i havent got time of day for you
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cheers i mate thats good imformation ,i like the photo at kew got lots of flowers on it,i only got 1 indian horse chestnut growing on our park and still very small but have noticed it looks good in autum aswell
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Victorian Farm BBC2 9pm tonight (Woodsman)
Ben Ballard replied to surreyarborist's topic in General chat
cheers i shall watch that always good seeing the oldschool ways of how forestry was done -
i do the tree rat trapping as our gamekeeper (my brother inlaw) is fat and lazy and only gets of his kabota to fill hoppers and shoot things at this time of year haha ,at least this way i see how many is caurght and i find it fun had 7 this week downside is the time taken to do it on average half a hour to check them each day .
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cheers mate ,do they have good conkers ive only seen one Japenese horse chestnut before at westonbert arboretum and it had realy good autum colour but didnt think at the time to look a for conker
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iam planting japanese and indian horse chestnut to replace common horse chestnuts i have felled on places on the estate i work at,as not as badly affected by leaf minner,has any one seen bleeding canker on these types ?
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Thanks for that post monkeyd
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just cutter 1 going on about a oak i had with that fungus was told by someone that removing the fruit can slow inonotus fungus down as it releases exsess moisture droplets that come out when growing but i not sure if that is true ,what do u think john?
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i guess the heart was rotted out at base from when the tap root rotted away as it went up in to a pinical or it could of been another fungus ,but havent seen any other fruits to surgest this just the inonotus
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is it a old 346xp
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hi i had a oak same size as yours near a building wear i work ,with inonutus dyadeus like what your tree got.did a root excavation and found the fungi had rotted the underside of root and heart of tree,but top side of roots was growing well and had put good growth on , council tree officer had a look aswel and we came to the solution to give 2m reduce and thin retaining as much epicormic as could lowerdown a good direct source of energy to the roots and mimic the odd storm damage branch in crown .the tree looks good now from having the work done and the crown seems much more healthy ,the tree will have regular inspection now.
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Hi you been at the college long or do you work there and at batsford?,steve brooker was my teacher when i was there doing forestry and arb course, everything i learnt of him was worth its weight in gold a wel sound teacher,and had mark fag and brian higginson for arb.
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i learnt to climb on thoese red woods at that colledge back in 95 and the cedars there to, have fun
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nice photos mate
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good boshing nice work you do mate.
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hi David I been thinning/coppicing checking traps got cage traps set in gardens and got fen traps in boxes in a wood ,also had to fell a sweetchestnut near publicfootpath ,that some mindless person had chopped a gob out with a axe leaving it dangerous also spoke to someone that might want me to thin a wood they own at weekends for firewood in they want 10 tonne cutting out and extracting to his house a mile away iam hoping it not all small stuf and elder and i can cut a decent amount of volume out of in a day.iam have arranged to hire crane from estate and might charge him by the hour for our labour someone else has been offered the job but they haven got back to him what would you say was good hourly rate for cutting for cash? i was thinking 8-10 pound a hour and £150 for tractor hire and fuel
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hi david i just do mainly my own jobs on sats not all the time.do the odd bit of tree work for friends but concentrate mainly on doing my logs got about 10 customers as not insured as self employed to do private work .sometimes do trees on the estate at weekends if cant be done in week.this last summer i did some overtime for the bloke who buys our wood,we sold a area of chestnut to be cut and i extracted it with our crane for him .and he paid the estate for the use of the crane .i sometimes come in and load his trailers up for him to.i enjoy the amount of overtime i do but dont do to much as enjoy doing things at weekends with the mrs. i used to do loads of overtime in the past but it catches up with u in the end and end up warn out.
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Hi david hows it going we had shootday today i have nice job driving beaters round on tractor,do you help out on shoot at yours? i am carring on with a thinning job this week mainly ash sycamore oak,willow with over stood hazel its the first thin the wood has had ,the area was flattened in 87 a few big trees stil stand in area so mostly all regen with a few plantings from restocking ,
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telling new lad that customer said to knock on door when ready .and say can we have our tea and biscuits now, and get them to ask for a long weight and a left handed combi spanner from chainsaw shop
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we agree just by looking at the stack i keep note of how many loads i take up to stack average weight of 3.5 when green when fully loaded i get 4 ton it ushaly never far of what we guess it is . some of the wood not always good ,sometimes losts of horse chestnut and conifer .When selling pulp wood we have sales agrement drawn and get what the lorrys weight is on the weigh bridge at the place it going .had a load of larch 2.3 chip lengths had been felled a couple months in summer so a little dry .weighed 22 tonne on ticket .
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we sell our firewood at £25 ton (green weight), to a firewood merchant 2m lengths mainly first and second thinnings .any large lumps i rip down middle with saw before selling .He arranges for the collection wear i have it stacked in loading area. probly costs him about £100 for a 20 ton artic load, in haulage costs to get to his yard.if i deliver a load of seasoned wood in 2m lengths local on my tractor crane trailer would sell at £40 a ton (was 3 ton load on weigh bridge).when we sell to merchant from stack i always agree price going by what weight would of been when it was green .hope that some use to you.
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good luck with your op and dont go to mad been stuck indoors look forward to been better ,i had to have 12 weeks of over the last 2 years so know what it like .Now iam better i enjoy work more that ever .
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that would be nice ,if i were rich i wood have my own small bit of wood and cut it in a rotation to supply with anoth fuel to heat a log cabin that i would have as well ,my boss bourght a 50acre wood 5 year ago for 70grand had some nice oaks planted in the 60s to make a valuable crop one day and lots of hazel and alder i been cutting the hazel to a ten year rotation and marked the oak to be thinned for split rail market and marked final crop trees with blackband(spray paint)and just kept the wood in shape .he sold it to my dissapoitment was nice place to work a few months ago but i was happy when found out they doubled the money on it,the work i done probly didnt have much affect if any on the price of the wood but good as far as keeping it managed.
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Hi john i used to work up your way in midlands last company i worked for was acorn tree surgery 8 year ago work on a estate now as a woodman .
