wrsni

Oddly for me, I haven't thought in great detail just what exactly appeals about the hawthorn specifically. But rest assured I'll certainly pay heed now next time there's a chunk on!

Quite happy burning anything well seasoned, have even burnt well-seasoned elderberry and it was grand. I think hawthorn might have a wee edge over the rest if you want to name preferences, loads of heat of-course but just seems to burn so, so nice. Have a bit of beech to burn this winter, trimmed off a couple of our own trees about three years ago, looking forward to seeing how it does as we've never burnt much beech despite it being all around us!

Alder certainly has the reputation of coppicing well and as stated above given that they seem to be quite short lived by nature so cutting them should actually be a positive, but still..........................!!!!!! Birch is less certain, research seems to suggest that coppicing is more likely to be successful with them the earlier you start in their lifetime so I'll take a few of them down as well but more where they're crowding out something else and need action anyway. I suppose this is all part of moving on from establishment to management, all the while being mindful that it probably doesn't need me interfering at all anymore!

That's similar to here, you get 15yrs of payment and the area must remain planted for a further 15 after that or payment will be reclaimed (in theory anyway!). Seems fair enough given that the aim of the scheme is to establish more areas of permanent tree cover.

Plenty of room for expansion as you say, get the planting spade out! ? My scots pine done the same, that's what they do apparently! So for a year or two I tried straightening them and all sorts of antics, then they became too big to manhandle so I had to leave them but strangely enough they seem to have sorted themselves out. Will you be cutting any alder soon?, I think I'll be cutting a few things this winter for the first, even though it goes against every grain in my body to start cutting down after years of encouraging and trying to nurture growth. The thought of even walking through the gate with a chain saw brings me out in a cold sweat!

I planted the entire area at 2m but due to variation in growth rates I've got canopy closure in some places but still a long way off in others. Such a transformation when it happens.

Good for a new perspective on other things too, this was our last hay of 2019 just after mowing a few weeks ago.

It's about seven and a half acres (2.95 hectares to be precise!), growth this year has been meteoric! No problem Marcus, next time you're Ballymena direction give me a shout.

Also, too late!

Hi Marcus, Never got the chance to call in for a yarn,......................yet! They don't let me out very often now, and when I do get out they panic if I'm not back within a sensible time scale, I think they're worried I'll have got in to a fight with somebody or something.

Well there's two issues there. Firstly, even IF the main threat were global warming, and even IF it is being driven by CO2 emissions, the 'action' being taken to 'combat' it is either laughable, farcical, or both if you are cynical enough. That great environmental champion bonny Prince Harry zooms off on Queen Elton's private jet, but don't worry, he/she (not sure what Elton is these days!) bought some 'carbon credits' to 'offset' it so it's OK then. I mean seriously!!!!!!, what a load of absolute shite, .............................and the majority appear to buy in to this bollocks as well. Or what about air travel generally, estimated fuel usage globally is around 700 million litres per day, and rising rapidly. And that is purely the aviation fuel being consumed with no allowance for the fuel being burned to shift and process the fuel itself, the movement of people to and from airports related to that travel, the electricity consumption of the airports 24/7, etc, etc. And is it all necessary?..................of-course it's not. People now going on a weekend break to New York from the UK, a stag do in Prague, a couple of days in Vegas, all well and good but if you want to be serious about saving the planet, so serious that you're prepared to pontificate and bully people to get your point across, then it needs to be looked at as something which we at very least need to put a much higher value on. Global trade equally needs a huge shake up. Ship a washing machine, microwave, toaster, kettle, whatever, half way around the world only for it to shit itself and be discarded in less than a year, then a local 'recycling' centre, and before much longer on a container back to where it started. But of-course if we weren't shipping our goods in from China, then stuff would have to be produced here, and nobody really wants to do that any more as we all go to university now and are much too important to spend a day working to actually produce something! Never mind that we can kid ourselves that we are reducing our emissions when in fact it's just that we are shutting down all the factories that made stuff while somebody else is upping their emissions to make the stuff for us! But secondly, the planet as a whole is being polluted and stripped of it's natural resources at an increasingly accelerated pace, and while the evidence for the human contribution to climate change is at best contestable, the human contribution to these two is beyond any doubt whatsoever. Yet there is no debate taking place whatsoever along these lines as too do so meaningfully leads to issues which no one wants to face up to.

To be fair, that's quite an improvement. They don't usually bother!

But we won't, which is where the debate ends anyway. That's why we're screwed.

It increasingly strikes me that the bold Boris may be a bit cabbage looking, but green he most certainly is not!

I'm not suggesting that wealth should be redistributed as we live now. But our current global wealth is invariably generated by effectively 'raping' the planet, if that is to change, as it must if we are truly serious about preserving it's long term viability, then our present 'pecking order' would also have to change as there simply would not be the degree of wealth generated to maintain things as they are at present. So either those in the higher echelons with wealth to spare (which would probably include most in the developed world) would have to accept having less, in some cases much, much, less, or those presently getting by on subsistence would have to starve. Talk of 'global warming' and 'carbon emissions' is at best tinkering around the edges as it does nothing to address the twin issues of pollution and depletion of finite resources, it possibly may even be a complete irrelevance.