AHPP

In before the naysayers. Innovative and efficient.

That'd probably get you stabbed on the London underground. No emotion, all ye who enter there!

Assuming you mean panel van (so not just unglazed 4x4s) then I know exactly how you keep coming back to the Delica. I recently did the same search and ended up at the same place. However, I couldn't find a manual that I wanted so went with a Land Rover Discovery instead. That was **** so changed to a Ford Transit. I'm annoyed to not have 4wd or any offroad capability but I currently need the space more than I need to go offroad. Snow is going to hack me off next winter - I've always taken pride in being able to get around whatever the weather. Kangoo etc, yeah all 4 wheels can have power going to them but they're not very offroady. Ground clearance and diffs both lacking. There was a heavily modified Mercedes Sprinter on here a few weeks ago and I believe Iveco are doing more offroad dedicated stuff. I don't know what you need it for but an option could be a £500 small Jap jeep (Vitaras are great) and a £2000 van. Cover the extra tax and insurance with the change. If you're happy with automatic and a vehicle of that age (L400s are all glazed so you'd realistically be looking at L300 if you wanted a panel van), Delica is pretty much the only option. Got more money? Next stop, Pinzgauer!

If I was going the big kit owning route (unless I went with agricultural vehicles), that's exactly what I'd do (to start with). Laugh as much as you like - zero wages, makes tea/lunch, errand runner on hand. Of course that's the plain reality of it (at the moment) but it doesn't make it any less unfair. Moot point anyway. Give it a few years and all the pre 1997 licence holders will have retired/died. Then everything's "fair," people will forget about the silly 3.5 tonne/7.5 tonne difference and the government can get on with the next round of nannying (and grandfathering of course) for political gain.

Of course you can but it is still prohibitive on the grounds of cost and not wanting the indignity of paying for something your mum got for free.

Beautifully illustrates the idiocy of 3.5 tonne licenses. Someone who passed after 1997 would be compelled to keep going with the inappropriate vehicle. Everybody loses.

The swing one, to me, is many many magnitudes more scary!

That's 7 years worth of growth?! Very thin rods (2" at base?). How old is the stool?

Mixed sizes will slow down a processor so sort it (I'm assuming you have a crane, grab, loader of some kind). Consistent stuff of the correct size onto a rack/table to feed a processor. Run the sorting and processor yourself so kit is looked after and used safely. Smaller stuff onto a rack/table to feed a sawbench. Run yourself for aforementioned reasons. Sawbench produces rounds. Get a couple of donks to do those with axes (one loader, one axeman, several blocks with tyres - swap roles every 15 minutes to keep them fresh and competitive). They only need steel toecaps and minimal training. Get a friend to do a mock shift with you to establish projected donk productivity (PDP - well known TLA at the likes of the LSE) then set a piece rate. Only have them at it for short periods (couple of hours). If they get tired and slow down, they'll make less money and you'll make less finished product. Big wood, save it up and hire bigger kit every so often. Clever money goes on conveyors, elevators, etc I think.

Hell of a commute from Essex!

Or is it a New Coke manoeuvre?!

I know it pollards well so that does make sense. Further investigation required!

Thanks. I generally want fvck all to do with the gov but I will have a look and see if any of this officialdom constitutes an offer I can't refuse!

Suffolk clay (bit chalky). That should be mildly alkaline?

Pretty much my first take on the subject but I'd be kicking myself when Apocalyptic Sycamore Disease killed everything I had. Diversity might be less efficient but it might be more productive. You could of course just replant but that's cost, hassle and rather defeats the point of coppice. Nice to hear more support for sycamore though.

Cheers. Keep the links coming!

More to add to my reading list. Field maple and lime though. Yuck to both! Rough, covered in twigs, everything elbow shaped (unless they grow much nicer as coppice poles than they do as trees). I think no-split simplifies things beautifully. Fell a line of trees. Buck where necessary (for manual handling). Drive a tractor with a 3 point linkage sawbench or branchwood logger along the line. Finished logs drop into trailer/bags/crates via wheelbarrow(s)/conveyor. Add barrows, add trailers, add vehicles, add (unskilled) men. Lots of options for how fast you want to work. No skidding (no winch), no forwarding (no crane), less driving distance, less going over the same ground more than once (less ground damage), less product rehandling, quickest drying (maximum endgrain surface area per tonne) straight off the bat.

Winch it back up, loads of radial guy lines, army surplus parachute, scissors, wigwam!

Everybody else will be thinking that though. Get one of the massive Silkys and clean up!

With some reference to it being said on this thread you can get logs from poplar and willow after 4 or 5 years, there's something else I'd like people's thoughts on. I've been thinking that relatively short rotations could be a good idea anyway. Aim to harvest a pole when at about 4"/10cm diameter at breast height (DBH) and cut to chosen lengths. Most importantly, no splitting (huge labour and time saver). You get 4 or 5 rounds from floor to breast height which are decent sized logs and everything above that going up the pole is obviously smaller and smaller diameter (still unsplit). You get a decent selection of log/stick/kindling sizes from each pole. Excellent branchwood logger territory, I'd have thought. How does this fit in with how trees grow and coppice? I'd like to believe this system of harvesting when at 4"/10cm DBH lends itself very well to growing from a stool. Loads of roots and energy from the stool gives quick early growth (and we're not interested in the later, more steady growth). Thoughts?

I'd originally discounted silver birch because whenever I've seen it it's either live and kicking or soft rotten - no middle ground! Does it coppice well? How fast does it grow in comparison to the other species we've been discussing? You've go me thinking about willow and poplar again. A monoculture block of each and maybe a block of the two mixed could run as a sub-system on its own (shorter) rotation. I clearly need to do more research on softwoods and hedging so that I can ask better questions.

Thanks for responses so far. I was originally thinking just get the fastest growing stuff and plant all that but considering ash dieback etc thought diversity might be best! I hadn't considered going with anything that wouldn't coppice but that would give me the option for a block of cherry (let the suckers grow instead of the stool?) and maybe even a block of softwood (which I know very little about). I'm all ears to other suggestions for the perimeter screen. At one extreme, leylandii would be a great screen but of no other use and brings maintenance and shading problems with it. Something that is 80% as effective as a screen but is more easily manageable and/or still usable for firewood would be great. I'm aware of the short rotation coppice willows and poplars for mechanically-harvested biomass but that's not what I'm planning. Tell me more about using willow and poplar as conventional coppice and firewood though. They both have a pretty poor reputation as firewood as far as I am aware. I'm not totally clear on how fast people are saying hornbeam grows. Fast? Slow? Comparable with what? As for aesthetics, I like straight lines, intensive management and high yields!

Maybe cherry. Will it coppice?

Feel free to add your own maps/planting plans for your woodland (real, planned or hypothetical).

Say you were wanting to plant a new woodland to use mainly for firewood and had identified: alder ash sycamore sweet chestnut robinia eucalyptus (monoculture only) hornbeam hazel to be planted in monoculture blocks and mixed blocks. Every year you harvest a monoculture block (or maybe two halves of different monoculture blocks) and a mixed block. Look good? What other species could you include, either to add diversity to the firewood crop or for any other benefit? In the example below: Brown - mixed species Colours - monocultures Grey - unplanted White - hazel (primarily for wind/sight/access shield - is hazel the best for being a dense screen?) The blocks are 50mx50m (0.25 hectares/0.6 acre) each. The hazel perimeter is 10m deep. Total area is 250mx250m (6.25 hectares/15 acres).