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Horses can indeed be agricultural if they are used as grazing tools only. The moment people start bringing in feed and saddling them, it becomes equestrian. You won't ever get an extension while the tie exists in my experience. Depending on how nosy your neighbours are, you are better off complying for a while and then letting the land out to whatever and going for a certificate of lawfulness in 4/10 years time, depending. The other option is to get a good agricultural consultant to say that it is not viable for agriculture and apply to get it lifted. We had one around here. 200 odd acres with a big bungalow. They sold off 150 acres and then said the 'farm' wasn't viable and they got the bloody thing lifted despite much opposition from local councils. Now a residential house with a 50 acre garden.

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Thanks for the comments. Was trying to post a picture but failed. Will try again. Maybe need to have a proper measure. They are on a steepish stone bank and we lose a lot of big trees as they can't get roots down well. So I guess that may affect the grain.

South Devon in a steep wood. Extraction possible I would have thought.

Got 2 big oaks down. One took the other out. I would estimate the big one has a stem that is something like 10m long x 1.5m across before the first branch. Hard to see in the mess. The other as wide but maybe not as long. I would have thought they would be solid. Probably need caterpillar or similar to extract but I would have thought possible. These were epic trees and I'm sad they are down but it seems a shame to log them. Or I could get them milled myself?

It's not asbestos roofing though. It's concrete fibre. Some of it contains asbestos but not all. As far as I know, the type of asbestos (white) is far less dangerous than the blue stuff they used in insulation situations. The fibres are longer and don't catch easily in the lung. Given that most sheets are probably damp right through anyway. Might be an idea to hose it down first but I think in general, concrete fibre roofs are a money maker for the asbestos boys and not dangerous at all. God knows, my family have broken up enough over the years, cut slots in for ventilation with no masks etc. and nobody has not made it past 80 in my family yet.

You can lease a brand new L200 for £200 a month or so. Won't even need an MOT if you do 3 years and will be under warranty. I think that is the route I will be taking to be honest. You need to spend so much to get a decent second hand truck. I guess if it's going to get abused in a tough environment, leasing may not be the best idea.

Sounds sensible. Was wonderng about the top. Do I cut everything to say a foot. Debark a few inches at the bottom and jam them in? Will give it a go.

Thanks, I've grown them before like this. Wasn't hugely successful but many did take and are now trees. I guess I'll just give it a go and see what happens.

I've just taken back one of our fields and it has a very wet strip down the fence line to the next field. I also have a large amount of alder, both coppiced and also some damaged trees that have sprouted new shoots. I know it's getting late in the year but I'm considering harvesting as many sun shoots as possible from my existing alder wood and sticking them in the ground in said field with the view to starting a long term coppice operation with some screening too. Question is, what's the best way to go about this? Cut the shoots with a hatchet and just jam them in the ground? Or cut them down a bit? Am I too lat in the year?

Anyone got any tips for growing from seed? Got a few big old ones in the wood and would like to start a coppice in our valley for timber products. Probably not in my lifetime but I think it's the thing to do.

Decent firewood if treated right though isn't it? This is a field setting. No near boundaries or neighbour issues.

So if I let Leyland get too big you can't knock it back as well?

Neighbour has a willow hedge and it doesn't seem to screen much in winter. He had to do it for planning. Also would worry about killing it off if I ever wanted to.

Thanks, looks like Leyland is the answer. It's a time limited project. Might even get some firewood at the end of it.

Got a little area of land I want to hide from the road and also a noise screen would be good, plus shelter. I need something evergreen that will grow quickly to about 8' on the south side to screen from the road and I need to be able to trim it at this height. On the West side I need more of a wind / rain shelter so shading is not a problem here (lleylandii?). Ideally, I need at least 6' of growth within a year or buy grown plants (expensive I guess). At some point in a the next 10-15 years I may want to rip the whole lot out and revert to pasture so it needs to be fairly easy to pull out / kill. I'm thinking that I need it in place by next winter so was thinking if I got my skates on I could get some small plants going in pots now, ready to plant out in December? Any thoughts? Thanks.

Try keeping a large amount of chikkins in this. Hell of a mess, poor things. I got caught out this year as I'd coppiced about half an acre of hazel last winter and left most in billets in the field to season, assuming I would haul it back in on those lovely crispy December days. Wrong. Couldn't get near it as the field is steep. Have been carting it back by hand and now it's soaked through. Just picked up a Kioti Mechron which will get out the other side of the valley but still means hurling it all across a fairly wide stream. Bit of a disaster really.

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I love this idea. This sort of stuff burns as well as anything else in a good, efficient stove. We must all have felt the heat when burning up brash and have thought about all that heat going into your home instead. Money down the drain. I reckon if you could get it into vented bags and then under cover or polytunnel etc. you would have some superb fuel and you can always mix it with big logs so you don't lose the fire.

I prefer an iPhone to Android (currently using Android phone) but or a tablet I would go Windows or Android. We've got an iPad and yes it's great for sitting on the sofa browsing around but I find too many limitations and buggy browsers. Lack of mouse support is infuriating sometimes. Makes it a 'leisure device' in my eyes, not a serious tool for what I need at least. My next move is to a Windows Surface Tablet. A tablet when you want to sit in bed but you can get the full keyboard case and use a bluetooth mouse and it's a full Windows 10 PC. Sounds ideal to me.

I haven't read all of the thread either but have seen a few posts about teachers and holidays etc. Firstly, with the greatest respect, not many people have any idea how hard it is to be a teacher, especially a primary one. It's a killer and going on about holidays is a little hard to take. I'm not a teacher by the way but am married to one. I certainly couldn't do it. When we complain about fines etc. it's also not the teacher's fault. It's not even the head's fault. OFSTED will grade down schools with attendance issues and as modern parents are so obsessed with OFSTED ratings, schools graded down will lose pupils and therefore funding. This is the single reason why your school doesn't want you to take your kids out in term time. It's not their fault. So, please take it up with your MP or whatever but understand that schools get punished if attendance falls too much. Also, please respect your children's teachers. This used to be the case. Support them and thank them for the job they do. It's not a walk in the park by any means.

Thanks. Will check that too.

Cheers, will check that out over the weekend.

Just to bring this back to life, got similar issues again. I got the saw fully serviced and this sorted it for a good while. I ended up putting the issue down to old fuel as it started doing it when I got it back but fresh petrol sorted it totally. Now I'm using a load of Stihl Motomix I got free which is in date and the same issue. Went out today and cut a load of lengths of DED Elm. Fine. Loaded into the truck and back the shed. Started logging up on the sawhorse and suddenly it starts playing up. If you let it idle for 10 seconds and then rev it, it goes flat out for a few seconds and then chokes. Holding in the throttle means it stumbles on and sometimes picks up again. Let it idle for 10 seconds and you get another go, enough to cut a log but anything big is impossible. By the end of the job the problem had vanished again and it was running at full power continuously. It seems obviously a fuel issue but I can't work out what. Why would it come and go if a pipe was blocked? The filters were all replaced etc. and it's had little use since. Any ideas?

I use anything around 2" to make chicken roost bars and other bits and bobs! Anything bigger than that goes for firewood and a fine fuel it is too. Dries quickly and doesn't soak up too much when it gets damp. Got loads of neglected hazel and alder that I'm bringing back into rotation for coppicing and most of it is for fuel at the mo. One thing I would say is maybe don't hit the tree too hard in one go. I've done a few seriously overstood ones and killed them by doing the whole lot in one hit. I would maybe do it over 3 years, taking off the outers first. Sometimes you have to take a lot out as they inevitably fall over when they get too heavy but I have found a slower approach to be better in most cases. Or you could coppice the outer stems and pollard the inners so the tree still has something to work with. I might try that with the ones I've got to do next week.