Peasgood

Can't think of anyone more deserving of a noose but his missus is pretty close.

Stroud, Gloucestershire. Want me to ask for a number or are you sorted.

Do the leaves smell like a Bay tree? If they do I think it might be a Bay tree. If they don't I am not sure.

By all accounts tax inspectors are the second most likely to ask for cash discount. Just slightly behind coppers.

Anybody can buy it on eBay and Amazon no questions asked. It amazes me just how many chemicals you can get on these sites.

I think market gardening has huge potential if you can grow for the consumer rather than the market. Retail prices against wholesale prices is the key imo. You need a good location for easy access close to a reasonably densely populated inhabited by people who care about their food and where it comes from. (ie. rich) Less well off people can of course care but finances take a lot of choice away from them. Sales through well run farm shop or alternatively a home delivered box scheme can be lucrative and rewarding. Poor soils don't help but not so difficult to improve them over time and no reason why raised beds, soilless growing media, hydroponics, poly tunnels etc can't be utilised. A good friend of mine has a multi million pound business growing crops in the UK and I doubt you can see his soil at all as it is likely under concrete.

A very useful feature but you do need to be aware of what danger it can present, particularly if there is any way you can get trapped by the returning ram. For example I had a horizontal splitter with return detent and it would be very easy to reach over the splitter to reach a fallen log and be trapped and very seriously injured and probably a worse injury than removing a few fingers.

Been meaning to get a pic of this tree for ages. Mature oak butchered to fit in with house renovation. Must be something saying they can’t remove. is this what they call raise the crown and open the canopy?

Could really do with making my Posch hydrocombi single handed operation. I know the law and I know why but to me it makes it more dangerous a lot of the time. I end up having to use my knee or summat to hold the log in place until the blade bites. The number of times the log moves as the blade touches it is infuriating. Only me using the machine.

Cut them down and start again

I have a 4 foot two man saw, it is an old one but sharp. I use it on the rare occasion my chainsaw won't quite get through a very big log, just to do that bit in the middle that you can't quite get. It works but I have no intention of ditching my chainsaw. I like them and understand the attraction but for the money I think I would be getting a 240V chainsaw assuming you have power on site. You must have seen the crosscut races at shows, they are damned quick but don't do a right lot of logs.

If you really want to cut it by hand I would strongly suggest a Bahco 21" bow saw. They cut pretty much as well as a Silky and cost a fraction of the price. The blades stay sharp longer than a Silky and are cheap to replace when needed. The blades do rust so it is important to store them dry, that would be true of your crosscut too.

They respond well to pruning. You could reduce the canopy quite dramatically and it will come back (do it when not in leaf of course). Gets rid of any falling down issues and you get to keep a tree although smaller. I have just pulled the one in my garden out because I don't want a big tree near my house. It was a big old tree that an 8 ton digger struggled with.

Nearly half my meals are cooked in my Ronnie Sunshine Dutch oven on the gas hob indoors. I suppose it's camping because I have lived in a trailer for the last two and a half years.

I'm hoping not to run the oil boiler much at all. More of a back up on very cold winter mornings before the fire is lit. A fire every 3-4 days is enough for hot water in summer, at least that is the plan. When I was on wood alone I didn't need to light it much for plenty of hot water in the summer, this is a new house and new system for me.

It is exactly what I am currently fitting to my house apart from my oil boiler not being a combi. Oil boiler heats thermal store so no need to be a combi, I will still be on mains pressure hot water.

I'd suggest a cordless grinder.

I am right handed but can do most jobs with either hand. Spend day after day doing repetitive manual tasks and you learn to change hands. I won't be holding a chainsaw like that any time soon though.

It takes me 10-15 minutes to sharpen mine with a file that cost about a fiver. So in theory I could sharpen four blades in one hour which would cost £120 at least if you just bought new blades. It would probably take 20 minutes to fit four new blades anyway so you would have to be on £150 an hour before sharpening blades became a waste of time. If you are in a job where you can just pass that cost onto the customer then fair enough but if the cost just comes out of your pocket it is a different matter. In reality it is still money that could stay in your pocket. I only ever sharpen the top face of the blade, I'm not sure sharpening to side faces is physically possible. I would say sharpening at least doubles the life of the blade and more likely triples it. Not for everyone because you have to be able to use a file and some folk are cack handed at such things. Horses for courses, I can't climb a tree.

You can sharpen the Gomtaro. Feather edge diamond file off Amazon costs about £7.50

Police around here would turn up three days later if you were very lucky, especially if they thought it might be travellers. In fact they definitely wouldn't turn up in that case, they would just give you a crime number and say claim on your insurance. It has got to the point where if you did actually intervene it would be you getting arrested for racism or something ridiculous. It is a very sorry state of affairs.

They are held on by two 12mm bolts, only takes a 19mm spanner to remove them so not much of a security feature. I think most serious trailer robbers have a way of clamping a hitch around the original hitch that defeats and hitch locks anyway. Just catch one and tear it limb from limb and scatter the bits around to scare the rest off. Works with crows.

If you buy an awful lot of wood do you not already know who to get a good product off or how to tell if the wood you are buying is good quality or not? Also if you are buying an awful lot it would usually make sense to buy quite a bit in one go and store it yourself rather than by a few nets of logs each day for example. My point there is that you should be able to buy enough that you can season it yourself or at least ensure it has been dry stored for long enough. I accept that not everyone has storage space. These assured logs are going to be sold by the same people as before, I would assume from the same trees and stored/sold in the same manner as before. All that will have changed is that the seller has now forked out a not inconsiderable amount of money for a piece of paper confirming what I would expect you to already know. No doubt you have heard of someone buying a car with a full MOT only to discover the tyres are bald, the exhaust is hanging off and the horn doesn't work. But they had a certificate saying they were qualified to issue an MOT. The flipside is also true, that fantastic guy you have always bought the very best quality logs off doesn't suddenly turn up with a load of rotten Poplar just because he has a certificate. Sorry, went off on one a bit there.

If it has been poisoned and you can prove it has, there is not much chance of proving who did it. So no, I doubt you will get anybody else to pay for it.