the village idiot

Unfortunately only from the past. I stopped making charcoal 3 years ago. I'll explain the reasons why in the next post.

This is unfortunately all true. I am sure there are other receptive owners out there but finding them will take a fair amount of legwork. For the situation to change significantly we will need forward thinking political intervention. If our Woodlands were valued at the national government level as much as they surely should be it would become more financially rewarding for owners to manage their woods. I am quietly optimistic that a change is brewing. There has been more talk of trees in this election campaign than I have ever heard in the past. Also the ideas surrounding 'natural capital' and 'ecosystem services' are gaining significant momentum. There is also the groundswell regarding climate change amongst the general public. Trees and Woodland are a very easy win here. It will be interesting to see where we are in a few years time.

This ones for warren, a little fireside reading. It's an article from the local rag's magazine which gives a bit of a countryfile gloss to my charcoal production in the Wood but is a good primer. I'll do a separate post afterwards going into more detail on retort kilns. Burning ambitions WWW.SUFFOLKMAG.CO.UK Tessa Allingham meets Graham Sayell, a man keeping the ancient art of making charcoal alight, and Amy Hardingham...

I don't recall the prize being as generous as that. If memory serves me right it was a lump of charcoal, two at the most.

That sounds like the perfect setting! Thanks for the kind words warren.

Thanks again Mark, I am genuinely touched, and thrilled that there is so much interest. If this sort of work appeals to others, there are many many unmanaged woodlands out there crying out for some attention. If an oik like me can blag their way into them then I'm positive that many others can too. You won't get super rich but you will definitely have a blast, and surely that is more important?

CHARCOAL. During my first three years at the Wood, and for a little time before I started. I was making BBQ charcoal for a handful of customers. My first experiences in making charcoal were actually long before in 1998. I spent a year or two in a couple of Suffolk Woodlands making charcoal in a ring kiln for a local producer. Charcoal is effectively wood heated directly or indirectly by fire, in an oxygen reduced environment, until most of the wood's constituents are burned off bar the carbon. Traditionally it was made in Woodlands by making a pile of wood, covering it with earth and setting light to it. The pile being monitored throughout the burn to maintain the desired oxygen levels. Charcoal production was once the main driver for much of the woodland management that took place in the UK. When coal mining took off the charcoal industry was pretty much extinguished overnight, contributing hugely to the massive decline in Woodland work. In more recent decades charcoal production in the UK has evolved a little with new contraptions, but the basic methodology is still very similar. Charcoal is now almost exclusively produced in metal kilns. There are two main types, ring kilns and retort kilns. They differ from each other in a number of important ways. Ring Kilns: A ring kiln is of very simple construction. It is a large steel ring (often 5-9 feet in diameter) with a number of venting chimneys and air inlets around the sides, topped off by a conical or occasionally flat lid. The steel ring is filled with as much seasoned wood as possible, leaving a void up the middle. A fire is lit at the base of this void and allowed to take hold. After a little while the lid is placed on top and a little while later still, sealed round it's edge with sand or mud. For the next few hours you get water vapour chugging out of the chimneys. After a few more hours the vapour starts to thin out and turns blueish. This tells the charcoal maker that the emissions are now largely wood gas. They will then block off all the air inlets and let the contents of the kiln 'cook'. Air regulation is key. Too much oxygen getting in will result in a kiln full of ash (most disappointing), too little air the contents will suffocate and you will not get full conversion (also most disappointing). Once completely starved of oxygen the kiln is left to cool down overnight. When ambient temperature is reached the lid is lifted off, hopefully to reveal a kiln full of charcoal. The whole process can sometimes take up to two days. With a ring kiln the charcoal maker has to then climb in and shovel the contents on to an external grader where the product is sifted into bags. This is a fantastically filthy job. It is possible to stack one ring kiln on top of another to double the volume of wood inside. I never tried this approach. In the next post I'll take you through the particulars of a retort kiln, a device that I am much more familiar with.

Hi Mick, Many thanks for that input. I was saving you for later when I get onto the Deer management sections. Do come for a visit, the Wood has changed a bit. Stumpy Grinder was walking around the Wood nearly a decade before I ever set foot in it! Did you take any pictures at the time?

Cheers Mark, that's great. It feels a little self indulgent, writing all this stuff about what I do. If you guys are getting something out of it though I'll carry on.

Thanks Steve, Do you know if he is qualified, DS1 or DS2. If so I can put him in touch with our head Deer stalker. I am always looking for new recruits.

HOUSEKEEPING. Just a couple of quick ones that I forgot to put into previous posts. First one should have been in the coppice products post. These are some small diameter Elm poles that we supplied to our volunteer group 'Orchard Barn' in return for their hard labour. They were stripped with drawknives and used as rafters for their new craft barn. No it's not a barn for the vertically challenged, it just hasn't got the walls in place yet. This next photo is an early one from when felixthelogchopper kindly offered his services for a few days in return for some firewood. It shows him bravely attempting to take off a large split branch from an Ash with his pole saw. Poor old Felix nearly had kittens when that lump dropped! He may well remember me bending my chainsaw bar into a perfect right angle when a leaning Aspen tree took matters into it's own hands. It may well have been the one in the foreground.

Thanks Twiggy, Sounds like you've got a fun project on the go too! Deer are a HUGE problem. I'll be doing a post about them and their impact on ancient woodland when I get to the ecology sections.

Sounds like a nice project. Please keep us updated.

No slopes in Suffolkshire AJS. There is a lot more info on the tractor in some of the more recent posts.

WOODLAND GRANTS. As mentioned in one of the previous posts I am self employed and generate my income from the sale of the value added arisings of our management activities. Firewood being by far the biggest income stream. I couldn't keep up the management momentum as much as we do without having Steve on board, and a large proportion of his wage is made up of the Woodland grant that we receive from the Rural Payments Agency (RPA). Without wanting to get political on this thread, the money apportioned by the RPA originates from the European Union, the looming prospect of Brexit is leaving us uncertain about whether these grants will continue, and therefore potentially Steve's job. When I started at the Wood we applied for grants under the English Woodland Grant Scheme (EWGS). Within EWGS was the Woodland Improvement Grant (WIG) which paid a set amount of money per coppice compartment or meter of ride edge work completed etc. The more improvement work you did the more grant money you received. Three years ago, after EWGS was discontinued, I went over to the new scheme of Countryside Stewardship (CS). The Woodland improvement element of CS is called WD2 and the payment criteria is rather different. It is set out in 5 year cycles and linked directly with your 10 year management plan. The amount of grant payed is based on the total area of woodland under improvement. Raydon Woods are 100 hectares in size. The grant pays £100 per hectare per year. So as long as I could prove that the entire woodland was benefiting from my planned improvement works the estate would be payed £10,000 per year. This new system tends to favour larger blocks of Woodland. Small woodland owners cannot claim large amounts through CS and quite a few people see CS as a bit of a backwards step after EWGS. Grants can make a big difference as to whether management work is financially viable, and under the new scheme a certain amount of operations in smaller woodlands will have ceased. In order to get the maximum area of Raydon Wood into Countryside Stewardship I concentrated on including ride creation and maintenance operations. The logic being that these works helped to open up the woodland for access and created habitat havens throughout the entire site. My other obligations include 3x 1hectare coppice compartments and 5 hectares of thinning/selective felling. I have to submit a progress report to Natural England in years 3 and 5 of the scheme with photographic proof of the progress. The payments from the RPA go to the Woodland owner annually and are then filtered through to Steve via his pay packet. Within the Countryside Stewardship woodland option there is also scope for claiming for 'capital items'. There are a range of options on the guidance notes listed as eligible capital items. They include pond restoration, and if I remember correctly, Deer stalking seats and Deer fencing, alongside a few other things. We get paid a certain amount of money per pond that we rejuvenate. It tends to cover about 50% of the cost. If your woodland management activities are economically marginal, or even if they're not, it's well worth looking into the possibility of grant assistance. It can make a big difference and the application process is not too gruelling. First port of call is the Forestry Commission website. Loads of info on there regarding grants. In a few years time CS will be phased out and the plan is to replace it with another new scheme called ELMS. We don't yet know what this scheme will look like, it is currently being trialled in a few locations in the UK.

Nice one Mick. Old school! There is still a market for hazel beanpoles. They look so much nicer in the garden than bamboo ones. We do use billhooks for trimming up the hazel, but we do the initial cutting/felling with a chainsaw.

Thanks very much Conor, I've enjoyed putting it together. It's the first time I've really gone through all the photos and it's been bringing back some good memories. It's also reminded me that a job is as much about the people around you as it is about the work.

COPPICE PRODUCTS. Despite the majority of this thread so far being devoted to fairly heavy forestry activities, Steve and I actually spend most of our time over the winters coppicing. This includes 1 hectare coppice blocks as well as along all the ride edges. In the past when most of our ancient woodland sites were under coppice management a huge amount of useful material was made available. These included rods for hazel hurdles and hedge laying, birch tops for brooms, poles for fencing and construction, thatching spars, wattle for wattle and daub wall construction, charcoal and firewood to name just a few. As new materials came onto the market and the UK moved over to non wood based fuel sources the coppice industry all but died and the once thriving Woodlands fell into neglect. Because of the past lack of management at the Wood most of what we are cutting is 'overstood' and out of rotation. This means that we generate only modest amounts of good quality coppice product. We do however pick out what we can as we find it, majoring in a few specific items. Hedging Stakes and Binders: Any straight material of suitable thickness that materialises from the overstood hazel coppice gets put aside for stakes and binders. These are used during hedge laying which others on this forum will be able to tell you much more about. Stakes are traditionally 5' 6'' long, about 1-2 inches thick and pointed at one end. Binders are thinner shoots cut as long as possible and are woven between the stakes by the hedge layer. Below you can see Steve and volunteer extraordinaire Pete Fordham with a bundle of stakes (not yet cut to length) and a bundle of binders: And below, one of our happy customers picking up a trailer load: Another coppice product we do a limited amount of are Birch Bundles. These are used tightly packed together to make horse jumps. We have large areas of regenerating Birch where the conifers once stood. Birch is a 'pioneer species', very quick to recolonise suitable ground when it is opened up. Birch will be the species to largely replace Ash in the Wood when we lose all of our Ash to Chalara (more on this later). Below is Steve with a trailer load of thin Birch stems before taking them to the processing area. The gloves in the foreground are a sacrificial offering to Odin. Here he is again (Steve, not Odin) with a completed bundle: Our ability to produce a greater range of coppice products will increase as we get deeper into the reinstatement of the coppice cycle within the Wood. By far the best use for all of the larger overstood coppice material we cut is charcoal and especially firewood production. Much more on these in coming posts.

Antonio was not particularly good at pulling his weight, and hopelessly lost when it came to multi tasking.

Sally falls into the category of tractors commonly referred to as Alpines. They are much more common on the continent where their very low centre of gravity and compact size make them suitable for use on steep sloped farms and between tightly spaced rows of fruit crops. There are only a few large manufacturers of these this type of machine. BCS, Ferrari, Pasquali, Antonio Carraro (All based in Italy) and AGT (based in Eastern Europe somewhere). BCS, Ferrari and Pasquali have a range of models which are all exactly the same bar the paint job. AGT produce a more limited 'budget' range but are still excellent machines. Sally is a Pasquali Eos 6.60, 49hp. She is named after the marvellous personal assistant of the Estate manager who is our first port of call if we want to get anything sorted. If you are ever considering taking on the holistic management of an area of Woodland and are considering the best core piece of machinery, look no further than a tractor. They are far and away the most versatile piece of machinery you can get. Alpine's are particularly good if you are operating in an environmentally sensitive, very sloped, or tightly spaced site due to their very low ground pressure, excellent stability and tight manoeuverability. There are much larger hp models available, up to around 100hp that are not physically all that much more bulky. These alpine tractors are well balanced as the weighty engine sits quite far out to the front and acts as a counter balance for any machinery you choose to put on the back. Many of the alpine's also have the huge benefit of a reversible seat and steering console which is brilliant if you do a lot of forklift or mowing work. Some alpines are also articulated, meaning that instead of the steering acting solely on the front wheels, the whole front end of the tractor pivots in the direction of the steer. This is great if you are operating in extremely tight spaces, but was too much of a compromise for me as it unbalances the tractor when you have weight on the back. I opted for a 'rigid steer' model. I find that with the use of the independent brakes the rigid steer machines are more than adequately capable of tight cornering. We use the tractor for a whole host of different Woodland jobs including pulling trailer loads of logs, moving bags of firewood around, circular sawing (pto powered saw bench), ride mowing and extracting millable timber with our custom built log arch (more details later and thanks again TCF engineering, also an Arbtalk member I believe). We simply could not effectively do our job without Sally. Larger tractors are perfectly fine within ancient woodland as long as care is taken to go in when the ground conditions are such that you will not cause excessive compaction or rutting. Wide flotation type tyres also go a long way to minimising unwanted ground damage.

PIMP MY RIDE. It was around about the time of this Ash job that my not so trusty little tractor Antonio finally coughed his last puff of black smoke. You may remember him from a few pages back. He was only 27 horsepower and really not up to a lot of the jobs I needed him to do. Small loads were fine, but with anything heavier he really struggled. I had by this time started to make a bit of money from firewood and charcoal sales so decided it would be very wise to invest in a new machine. Bye Bye Antonio, Hello Sally! Sally is not a big girl, she is not significantly larger than Antonio was but she has 22 more horsepower which makes a huge amount of difference whilst still being very light on her feet. Aside from the chainsaws, she is by far our most important piece of kit and she helps us out with a huge variety of jobs. Two of which are pictured below: The sticking out of elbows is essential to make this particular operation run smoothly. A bit more detail on Sally in the next post.

TOP O' THE MORNIN' TO YA. Woodworks and Gary were quite right when they identified the strange load of logs on John's forwarding trailer as Hurley stick blanks. When planning the thinning of the Ash stand I noticed on Arbtalk that there were a couple of companies based in Ireland looking for Ash over here suitable for making Hurling sticks out of. I don't know if you are all aware of the sport of Hurling, but it is basically a turbo charged version of hockey played by Irish psychopaths. The sticks are traditionally made from Ash as it is strong but with a certain amount of flex. The swollen base of the stick is cut from the buttresses of maiden Ash stems (single grown, not coppice). There were quite a lot of suitable looking stems in the stand to be thinned so I got in touch with Liam and his son Richard (Hurley makers in Ireland) who sent their UK agent Liz out to have a look. Liam had actually won 2 'All Ireland Hurling Championships' with Kilkenny, and got goal of the season in 1992 when he guided the ball through an opponent's legs, flicked it up in the air 25 yards out from the goal and whacked it straight in the top corner! He has since confided that he had no idea where the goal was at the time, his smash could have gone anywhere. His glorious goal of the year was a pure fluke! Agent Liz was happy with the form of the trees (not silly big, with a few buttresses on each) and arranged for Liam and Richard to come over. In the meantime I set about marking up any likely looking trees that were due to come out in the thinning. I had to Ask John, who had agreed to do the thinning, to cut 150 of the Ash stems at 1.4mtrs above the ground. Not a particularly easy task as Ash can be unpredictable at the best of times, and judging what is going to happen whilst firing sawdust into your own face is no picnic. John was not phased though and by the time he had finished all his cutting we were left with 150 short posts dotted around amongst the remaining trees and stumps. Liam and Richard arrived after the main felling but before the extraction to cut down the 150 stems. There is an art to this process so they travel over to do it themselves. First Richard would remove the bark and soil from around the buttresses with a flat tipped metal pole. Next, Liam would do an angled plunge cut around the full base of the tree, cutting very close to (and sometimes into) the ground. He had a large saw with a very long bar and had to sharpen the chain back up after each one of the 150 stems! The blanks were then pushed over, hopefully to reveal no butt rot. Nobody wants butt rot! After all the cutting had been completed Liam came to an arrangement with John to carry the Hurley blanks out whilst he extracted his own timber from the thinning. Liam and Richard returned to Ireland and arranged for a bulker lorry which John loaded up with his 360. The blanks then headed off over the Irish sea for further processing. All in all it was a great experience. The hurley blanks were worth £230 per cubic mtr so we got a good return, especially compared to firewood, and all I (as the client) had to do was spray a bit of orange paint on some trees. These 'niche' markets are worth exploring sometimes as you can add significant monetary value on to what is usually a low value resource. Here are the happy workers. (L-R) Liam McCarthy, John Shipp, Richard McCarthy.

If you find any of these would you be able to bung some pictures up? Either on this thread if it's an old wooded site, or on another/new thread if that's more suitable. It would be really interesting to see what is going on in the forests of the rest of Europe.

Thanks Woodsman, Yes we are very excited about the rides. Pretty much all of the birds have done their thing by late summer. Also most of the nesting activity takes place in the coppice regen areas in other parts of the Wood. Timing decisions often involve a balancing act of issues. By extracting the timber when the ground is at it's hardest limits the negative impact on the soil (compaction, rutting)

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