Big J

Not huge. Pallet wood mostly. Low-grade chocks and bearers for haulage and packaging.

Clearfell, extract, sell for milling and replant with a mixture of douglas and WRC once the site has been improved with drainage. Another week or two and the leaves should be out and I'll take more photos. Thanks for the input chaps

For an average of 50ft on each one.

The trees are truly huge. Some of them nudge 10 tonnes. There had been a plan to try to retain the native hardwoods amongst them, but they are almost all ash so that plan has been abandoned! ?

I went to see a stand of oversized poplar with a view to clear fell. Not helped by the fact that all the trees look subtly different in the south west (when compared to Scotland), I couldn't figure out which sub species of poplar I was looking at. Brief visual description: very tall trees with superb form, usually exhibiting 40-60ft of completely clean stem, then a rounded crown, topping out at 110-120ft. Some size variation, with the trees a bit smaller on wetter ground. Hopefully the photos describe the rest.

Very good post

He's a midget my brother, a mere 6ft 2". A lifelong gym goer, he's built like a tank though! ?

Heresy!

Carbon neutrality is practically impossible, and I don't aspire to it. Nevertheless, it's imperative that we all make an effort. I have heavy machinery, I used diesel and consumables, but I feel that my profession is more carbon neutral than most. What you call freedom, most would classify as willful ignorance.

I do not, no. All trees felled in a forestry setting are subject to felling licences approved by the Forestry Commission. All felling ops that I do are either thinning or clearfell. If thinning, replacement is not required as you're felling to favour the better trees, improve the crop and increase the volume of standing trees on site (crowded trees don't grow well). If clearfelling, replanting is almost always required. We have two large clearfells later this year, both of which will be replanted with more trees than are felled.

Part of a sustainable, carbon-neutral industry supporting thousands of local jobs. If you want locally sourced firewood, biofuel, timber for planking, construction and fencing, there has to be local forestry. And as part of that process, someone needs thin and harvest the trees at the appropriate stages. But I suspect you already know that and are playing devil's advocate in order to get a rise out of me ?

You are of course wrong. Much like the weather forecast, it's much easier to predict what will happen. The exact timescale is trickier to pin down. The effects of climate change are self-evident and abundantly obvious. To deny it puts you on a level with flat earthers.

I agree, but think that 3 tonnes is within the realms of possibility for most people. Hardly worth a firewood processor contractor going out to as well. Our logs are 50cm, so not huge. I'll keep quiet now though, as I'm not exactly helping the OP in their search.

I've never had any timber move whilst drying as much as cherry. One tree that I felled a few years ago split whilst drying and the split ended up 18 inches wide on a 9ft board. Extraordinary. You won't stop it moving. Just stack well, with weight on top and hope for the best.

Haha! A lot of it is because it's oversized and we used the forwarder to ring up. Machine lifts the log, person on each end to disc off the rounds and repeat. Then because the rounds are a little larger, I just stand them up on the ground and split in situ (the ground is covered in wood chip). Again, just to reiterate, I hate doing firewood!

Fair point. In my defense, I passionately hate processing firewood with anything other than a processor with a log deck, but I don't have one anymore so needs must. I just did 90 minutes a day over my Christmas break to keep me active and get some peace from the kids. I'm very experienced with an axe, which helps, but 3t of douglas (which splits easily) is a mornings work at most.

I split and stacked 15 tonnes of ash in 13 hours over Christmas. Not including cross cutting, which took 2.5 hours with assistance from my brother and my forwarder. Slightly oversized logs, I'll admit

Hardly seems worth it. Modest chainsaw and an axe and you'd have that done in a few hours

Fair point. I do have a big WRC site in summer and it wouldn't be as expensive as that.

Nice mill, horrible timber. I always hated larch when I had the mill. Much prefer WRC.

I don't disagree with anything you've said there Marcus. I too have a somewhat misanthropic view on life. We all have an environmental impact, and being cognisant of it is paramount. Consumerism, the throwaway culture and a lack of awareness of environmental repercussions all contribute to a worsening environment for us all. The issue with the new builds being thrown up presently is that as well as being a complete rip-off and awfully constructed (a staggering 99% of new houses build have snagging issues) they just aren't designed to last long. They'll be pulling them down long before the Victorian terraces need to be replaced. Construction methods like straw bales are ideal as the house is easily recycled at the end of it's life, it's cheaper to construct than traditional methods, less energy-intensive and if detailed correctly, can last centuries.

Apologies for being blunt, but you are wrong. The increase in C02 in the atmosphere has been incredibly rapid since the start of the industrial revolution, and the associated temperature rises globally conclusively prove that human industrial activity causes climate change. The individual effects of this temperature rise (which is not universally even across the globe - it's typically more pronounced in areas closer to the poles) are easily observable and are happening at a rate that we can and will see a major change in our lifetimes. Climate change isn't just restricted to temperature too, with precipitation and other weather activity changing too. I'm not asserting that we'll be able to do anything meaningful to stop it now, as I think the realisation has occurred too late. However, we have to try. It isn't helpful though when people cling on to the idea that we're not the cause of it. Yes climate change occurs naturally, and yes CO2 levels vary naturally, but never has the change occurred so rapidly and the C02 levels are now at their highest for 400,000 years.

Sorry, missed this post last night. Population decline in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing when applied very slowly, but a fertility rate of 1.8 would result in quite a rapid drop, and would also be characterised by a hugely unbalanced population, with a high percentage dependent on the state (being over retirement age) and the working population providing for them being a smaller percentage. What it comes down to for me is that there isn't anything that I can do with regards to population growth or decline. We've got two children and would have no more. We're replacing ourselves. What we possibly can do though is build a few good houses in an area that needs them, meaning that environmentally, we're doing our bit.

Climate change as a result of human activity is fact. There is an almost universal consensus amongst the scientific community and the evidence is irrefutable.

Very apt (news article on the BBC regarding the poor quality of new builds): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47826166