dustydave

Keep track of the amount of sleep you are getting - if you start missing a lot of it then get something from the docs. Lack of sleep at this time of the year can lead to some bad decisions which then make things a whole lot worse. Good luck!

They look perfect -do you know of anyone with one of these in the Wiltshire/Forest of Dean area? Cheers

Perhaps the reality is that your success is down to good British ‘get on with it’ work ethic in a country that is more used to a slightly bureaucratic approach (don’t think I am being too insulting to our French neighbours by making that generalisation). Obviously there isn’t a lot of competition -otherwise you wouldn’t be doing so well. Been thinking about this a lot recently and my gut feeling is that we have hit saturation point for some things in the UK which has made certain types of work very competitively priced while in much of Europe they are lacking or overpriced…it is probably time for us as a nation to realise that whatever happens to the euro, Europe will still be there. Trouble is these opportunities are not easily found just through searching google - and need some commitment to achieve. Good on you.

I've always worn Lundhags. Expensive and take a bit of wearing in but good...I mean wear them for 10-years good!

I like excel for calculations and word for invoice layout - if you right click on a cell in excel then click hyperlink it's very easy to link the cell to a word document - you can then flick between the two. I've used account packages in the past, with a few disasters - so i prefer to keep it v.simple and clear so use this method.

You are probably right. I only include this as it might be useful to arbtalk members, as I went down this path in a ‘run in’ I had with the parish council A request to ask whether the matter has been discussed in private.. “is covered in the section on ‘openness’ is in the pre amble to the Code of Conduct, it is general guidance on the way a councillor should behave and it does not form part of the Code (although it is likely that where a councillor has behaved in a way that goes against the preamble, the councillor will also have breached the Code of Conduct)” “If the parish council holds information relating to you, in the majority of cases you are allowed to see or have copies of the information. If they have asked someone to gather information on their (the parish councils) behalf, you are, in most cases, able to see or have copies of it.” Reference: local council Ethical Governance Officer

Why shouldn’t we be able to live in a country where you can put a sign on your gate advertising logs for sale, be it from your house or from your yard or from mars. Unless it’s a flashing neon sign advertising an industrial scale log processing facility what should it have to do with the planning department? I get fed up with the type of retired village nimby that spends more of their time poking their nose into other people’s business than they do in supporting our economically challenged country. In my previous post I mentioned identifying whether the parish council had been involved and in particular whether any discussion had taken place in the meetings about your sign; parish councils have a duty to be totally open about any discussions at meetings or even disclosing any private discussions between councillors. Might not be any use – but makes you feel a bit better if you can stir them up a bit!

Planners can either be okay or make your life an absolute nightmare. I’d just add a few points: Make sure your sign is smaller than 0.3metres squared (I think that is the size below which planning permission is not required). Check the minutes of the local parish council – sometimes they’re the ones who start things. If the planner appears to be ‘cool’ with it, it doesn’t actually mean that they actually are. If things aren’t resolved after one visit then a quick email to your local mp describing the situation and that you are just trying to earn a living, also follow up with a letter to your local paper (let the mp know you’ve sent a copy of the letter to the paper) who love this sort of story, and might just get you some free advertising and will probably only take 15 minutes work.

I love stress – gets me up in the morning and fires me on all day. Trouble is it’s like burning jet fuel and at some stage you have to come down. Works for me, but I know I can’t have too many overheads as I do and will disappear into my man cave whenever it gets too much - which hasn’t made me mr popular with clients and non essentially family - but I have a good life on it.

Best thing to do would be to try and get an mri scan, there's a place in Cheltenham (charity) that charges £220 for a scan and a diagnosis, if it is badly pressing on the nerve you might need a microdisectomy - sounds worse that it is, all they do is make a small cut in you back and remove some of the disc that is pressing on the nerve, i had one done last year and was back to light work the next day - the surgeon didn't think that resting it would have improved the healing process.

He sounds like a bit of a greedy b*stard and to be honest i'm sure that there is plenty of work in Berkshire for someone like yourself - sounds like it is time to move on!

What's it worth to you? Might be that he is a mean old bugger and only wants to pay a minimum rate. Or might be that you quote £38 and then take some timber or get a yard or meet a neighbour who wants more work. the point being that naught comes from naught so if it is not much pay, but you are out there getting experience then i say do it.

I own a piece of land between Bath and Chippenham, most of it is windswept hill side, but a small section (1-2 acres) is in a fairly sheltered pocket( at the bottom of the hill) and has potential to be a small forestry nursery. The site is in an AONB and surrounded by a lot of woods owned by wealthy individuals. It would be fairly easy access for anyone from Bristol, Bath, or Chippenham. I’m looking for a minimal rent on this piece of land on a long term lease to someone that is committed to forestry and who could use it as a base to build up a forestry business servicing the surrounding woods, or for growing trees onsite for sale, or anything forestry related. The site would take some physical work to get it up to scratch and some investment in polytunnels or whatever may be needed. It would also have its own entrance on to a quite byway/track and potential access onto a main A road. The site is doing nothing at the moment, I don’t want to rent it to a horsey person, I work at the other end of a 9acre site and could do with people being around the site for safety reasons, I’d also like to see it made use of.

I once had a customer ask me to remove some trees that were in a row. She asked, “take the third, fifth, tenth tree out” which we did. After we had finished she came out to check the work, then went back in to get her husband… “you idiots have taken the wrong trees out.” Apparently he had assumed that when the third tree was gone, we would then recount from tree one so the new fifth tree was now tree six…and so on.

If you are going for planning i'd leave it for a month or so, as the government are about to announce some changes to what can be done in agricultural buildings without planning permmision.

I've offered on about 7 agric occ. properties in the last 7-years (Wiltshire) and every one has been for sale purely to prove that they could not sell - so that they could later apply to have the condition lifted. I've even looked at a building plot with house at footings stage, that got the agric. condition lifted before the house was built. I wouldn't get your heart set on it

I do know that if we weren’t worrying about global warming, we’d be worrying about the next ice age. This is all designed to ‘confuse’ the population from worrying about the environment as a whole, i.e. global warming bad therefore nuclear energy good.

Other organisms on the planet have caused climate change in the past and I’m sure future organisms will do in the future, the point is not about whether the planet is used to massive and rapid changes (it is) but whether we as a species, have assumed that we live on a stable planet, so have run up an unsustainable population coupled with the demise of an easily availability of hydrocarbons, it is fairly obvious that in the future we are going to run into some serious problems. But on the basis that if we are luckily we only live for c.80 years then there is not a lot of incentive for us to do anything about it. In fact the only thing we could do would be to have less children, kill ourselves, or deny citizens of developing nations the joys of owning a car. It is not hopeless but it is a dead cert. Probably best to plan for the worst and hope for the best - which in the UK might be an improvement. p.s the limestone of Yorkshire were created when the UK was situated over the tropics.

Are they quoting for putting it in a trench as this always seem to bump the price up? I think that they have an average trench cost; which is averaged accross city street/ agricultural field access - hence the high price. I had a quote last year to bring a cable 80 metres away through a field for 10k. Luckily the neighbour refused access in a trench, so I got them to requote this year, bringing the supply via poles to the far corner of my land and have the meter box there - the new quote was for 2k The far corner (nearest pole) is 100metres from the barn, so the lads doing the poles/ connection decided that they'd put the trench in for me (they had a jcb on site for the poles) - took them a day and they refused any payment (great lads!) put 10mm armoured cable in trench (£350), then connected up.

It's a bit like a pub running out of beer, we need to start looking at the other drinks in the bar. Firstly we need to look at new industries that will absorb people into work. We need something that doesn't consume resources, is good for people, is good for the environment. My suggestion would be that we give a 'green value' to every tree, threatened species, acre of unfarmed land etc. Then create industries around improving these things. Every new tree planted would add to our gdp. There is already the bare structure of an industry, we just need to create international consensus. This time next year we'll be millionaires...!!??

I’m looking at getting in an articulated full load of cordwood onto a site that I have. The access from one side is a bit tight for articulated. But it is accessible from another side. The problem is , is that the track up to the site can sometimes get a bit muddy. It is never so bad that you couldn’t get a 2-wheel drive along it; although you would slide around a bit. I don’t want to organise a delivery and then have the driver refuse to drive in. If anyone who knows about these things I’d be very grateful if I could pm details of a youtube clip of the track, for your comments. Cheers, Dave

I once rented a field to a woman like that. She was supposed to only keep a couple of hourses in a 9acre field, but she kept collecting them until she had 7 horses, 10 sheep, 4 cows. Then she refused to pay the rent, or move. The solution... I turned off the water, then phoned the RSPCA and told them that the horses didn't have any water.

I'd be very wary about putting in a planning application. Better to go for a certificate of lawful development. Or, don't do anything at all. If you put in a planning application, you'll get the parish council all excited about what you do there (you've probably got a parish councilor as a neighbour). Even if you do get planning permission they'll attach so many conditions you'll be hard pushed to run a profitable business. Planning officers have plenty of things to do and are not that proactive when the activity is in a 'grey area' such as chopping logs that could be considered agricultural or could be industrial. Become a bit more inventive: tell them that you innoculate each log with shiitake spores, go and talk to your mp etc.

I had a similar problem. The solution... Do you have any farmer friends nearby, or is there a wood near to you (within 5 miles). If there is and you can get friendly with the owner then ask him if you can buy dead wood timber off him, or if ask if you call tell the planning dpt. that you rent the wood (on paper only). Then inform the planning officer that you cannot understand the fuss as the unit in which you process the logs is part of a larger agricultural unit (which includes the wood) - this can be up to 5 miles away. They won't bother investigating exactly where the logs come from.

To be honest you could do much worse than look out for a cheap Navara D22 then get the modifications done to the engine (new 'lead' shell bearings, rod bolts). I pickled mine up for £2500.00, 02 plate with 25k milleage. The upgrade cost about £400, but it's a good vehicle, comfortable (i'm over 6'4") and drives well with a ton in the back.