the village idiot

In my experience, 'low impact' has a lot more to do with the timing of operations than it does with the nature of the machines that you use. If you're serious about being very low impact you have to wait for the right ground conditions. The best combination I have found is large-ish machinery (meaning fewer trips) in very dry conditions. In Liam's case, working in a variety of small plots, large machinery is probably not very practical. With the range of activities you will be undertaking I would put an alpine tractor and trailer at the top of the wish list. I'm not sure that a quad bike is versatile enough (or heavy enough) for a commercial woodland operation. An alpine on flotation tyres might well have lower ground pressure than a quad. Also have in mind that it is often the trailer rather than the tractor/quad that does the most damage.

Great stuff Liam. Looks like you are having fun! Presumably you'll only be able to extract to roadside with the quad and trailer. What's your plan from there? Do you know what the owner's plan is for the area you are cutting. Are they going to re-plant or wait for natural regeneration? I think there is a grant available for re-planting after 'chalara clearance', but I imagine it probably needs to be applied for before the felling stage. Keep the pictures coming.

I had a pair of those for a while but got tired of picking up acorns every time I sat down.

Price?

Great stuff, and thanks for posting pictures! Do you always burn your brash or is it a site specific decision? Can you tell us more about your set up? What sort of deal do you have with the landowners? Are you finding enough sites to be viable? Is woodland management the core of your business? Did you enjoy your lunch or did you wish you had brought something else?

Slightly off topic, but I was on a stag do recently. One of the guys was an engine engineer boffin, and another was high up in Enterprise car rentals. They were both convinced that Hydrogen should be the future for car propulsion rather than electricity. There are a couple of technical challenges to overcome first though. Hydrogen is by far the most abundant element in the universe so you would think it had quite a lot going for it.

It is thought very likely that us humans along with pretty much all the other modern day mammals evolved from an insect eating furry creature not too dissimilar from our friend the bank vole. It's fun to imagine how different life would be if we were still the prey item for a host of huge hungry predators that could swoop down out of nowhere and rip us to pieces. Paradoxically, our biggest survival threats now come from the polar opposite (microscopic) end of the spectrum (bacteria and viruses). It's a funny old world.

It's a good shout. They're cute little creatures who apparently love chowing down on blackberries. Superb Owl fodder too by all accounts.

WHO WOULD LIVE IN A HOUSE LIKE THIS? We found a rather curious hole in a ditch bank yesterday. Something has tunnelled in and excavated some surprisingly sandy soil. Our conservation guru Juliet wondered if it may have been a water vole that has been flooded out of it's regular home and taken advantage of a temporarily wet ditch as a new home from home. Anybody got any ideas?

There are plans afoot for a very big barn. Updates on this as negotiations progress.

Presumably he has customers all over the country too? Birch bundles are costly to transport. I wonder how much total area of birch coppice he needs to earn enough for a living?

Had to look that up. It's a bit bizarre that downy birch is called white birch as it is much less white than silver birch. We have downy birch and silver birch in the wood already. They tend to hybridise also so we just call everything Birch. It suits our simple nature.

Wow! We do produce a limited amount of birch bundles for horse jumps already, but yes, it could become a more integral product for us in time. A huge area must have been cut to produce that load. They pack down to nothing when you bundle them up.

It's unlikely that we'll plant anything as we prefer to rely on natural regeneration. Not sure if by 'white birch' you mean silver birch (which comes up naturally in our wood like cress) or 'paper birch' which is very white and more common across the pond.

? We remove all the stems from our overstood coppice stools. As I'm sure you'll know hazel 'loves' to be coppiced and failure to produce new shoots is very rare. They'll come up from the roots if not from the stump. Browsing damage is a much greater concern, and I guess leaving a stem or two uncut could act as a safeguard against failure through feasting. Some people leave a bendy stem or two for layering (a technique for producing a new stool from an existing one). We may start doing this on the second cut after we get a good idea of healthy stool density. This is a good question. The Woodland is very large so if we get our rotations right it is unlikely that we will run out of viable quantities of firewood material. That being said there will be a progression towards smaller diameter material, less Ash, and resource of better quality for coppice crafts. I can see us moving towards more specialised products as the management progresses, but I imagine firewood will still be the backbone of the operation. It looks as though Birch is going to become the new Ash on our site so we would be wise to start looking at the most profitable markets for Birch wood arisings.

A hazely picture from yesterday. We are working in a section of neglected coppice at the moment. The whole area covers 25 hectares and much of the hazel understorey looks similar to the photo below, although this is a particularly big specimen. nb. Not every hazel stool sprouts an idiot from it's base! When you compare this picture to 'in rotation' hazel (see below) it is pretty obvious as to which can yield the best variety of potential product. Our primary drive in reinstating the hazel coppice cycle is to enrich the habitat for biodiversity, but the fact that, through coppicing, you are also laying the groundwork for the generation of a more valuable product is also highly significant. There is an old adage that 'a wood that pays is a wood that stays'. There is a lot of truth in this, especially if you tag the word 'managed' onto the end. It is quite surprising what a hedge layer or thatcher is prepared to pay for a heap of sticks. Most sustainable woodland management practices require you to weigh up and balance both ecological and profitability considerations. Unless your income stream is generated elsewhere it is important to ensure that your activities are accumulating enough income to keep you viable. Improving the 'quality' of the crop is an integral part of this. We are cutting one hectare per year in the 25 hectare plot, producing a 25 year coppice cycle. (A map of the whole block divided into hectare coppice coupes is copied below). This allows the 'high canopy' trees to grow to a firewood friendly size before being re-cut. We may well incorporate a shorter cutting cycle for the hazel understorey (maybe 7-8 years). This will depend somewhat on the markets that are available and whether the inevitable bramble layer has been shaded out enough to enable easy access. If we adopt this approach the hazel will be cut twice or even thrice in the period between coppicing the larger growing species. Running two rotations in tandem is a tried and tested approach. Those of you with too much time on your hands will have noticed that there are only 19 designated compartments on the map rather than 25. This is because 6 hectares of the whole area are taken up with our mega ride edges and a couple of areas earmarked for non-intervention (more on this in later posts). We may choose to operate on a 19 year cycle or alternatively we may not cut a compartment every fifth year. I haven't made a decision on this yet, it will depend a bit on how quickly the non-hazel coppiced trees put on growth. It is feasible to let the hazel grow on to the 25 year threshold too and have firewood as the designated product, although it is sometimes difficult to market hazel as firewood. This is a shame as it burns beautifully but the general public have generally been conditioned to desire larger diameter wood split down into wedges. Hazel rarely grows to a size that would require splitting. I have considered producing unsplit hazel firewood bags at a slightly reduced cost to test the market but haven't got my act together on it yet. Next up, a hole for a vole?

I'd heard that the' ring finder' forum had a lot of trouble with people not taking it seriously so they have rebranded as 'Butt Search'

Maybe Woodlots?

Thanks Andy, I don't think you were around last time I went balls deep on my understanding of the human condition. It served no purpose other than to convince people I had lost my mind. A thread on the merits of Scottish independence is not a good platform for me to go off on a philosophical bender. You may well not trust my judgement generally and that is fine, but trust me on this one.

? My understanding of how reality actually works is so fundamentally different from yours that my opinions are never going to make much sense to you. A lot of my thoughts on reality are actually so counter intuitive that they probably don't make much sense to just about anybody! I think my perspective is often too broad to be of much use in threads on specific political issues, and I'm not really in it for the arguments. It may be best if I stick to Woodlands.?

Maybe. It's too easy to point towards the instances where a benefit 'safety net' lets too much through and claim that this shows that the whole system is flawed. No benefits system will be perfect, but without some kind of balancing mechanism between the have's and have not's you will end up with a totally dysfunctional economy. That's not to say that any particular system can't be improved upon of course. It's also probably true that you will only poison your own sense of wellbeing by getting agitated about others getting stuff for free. Life will never be fair, and there are much deeper positive gains available to you if you can start to see past the 'ever increasing bank balance=ever increasing happiness' illusion. Some benefits recipients are 'scroungers' many many more are not. With a little bit of mental re-framing you might be able to start feeling good about the fact that you are helping a lot of people out who have not been dealt a good hand.

It's really just a matter of perspective. Your Mr Mackay's figure begins to look rather conservative when you consider that the global average wage is £13,800 per year (adjusted for the buying power of your earnings in each individual country). According to The Scotsman median wage earnings for the full time employed in Scotland is £23,150. If you are earning nearly double the national average and nearly triple the global average I think there is a case to be made that relatively speaking you are doing pretty well financially.

I'm sure that's not the case Wayne. Real name is Graham. How are getting on with your Woodlands book?

Happy Christmas to you too 5 shires. I hadn't picked up on the religious underpinnings on previous visits, but I guess it is a pilgrimage of sorts.