wrsni

A 500w halogen on each gable and a wee generator to power them. Minimum cost, minimum hassle, and good light.

You can double check it with this one. This is definitely accurate, used it a few times planning for various changes around the farm including the new woodland and when the "official" measurements come in the planimeter is always there or thereabouts.

Excellent post.

Hard to argue that it is indeed pretty much a "7 days a week" society that we live in but happily not everyone within it is a "7 days a week" person just yet. Just because something is majority opinion doesn't mean everyone has to conform to it.

I own a motorcycle shop and drove a Volvo estate for six years. Apart from being a phenominal car it also appealed to my sense of irony!

Making a comment like that is nothing to do with discussion, heated or otherwise, it's just ignorant and totally devoid of common decency.

You're not exactly covering yourself in glory with comments like that either.

Very well said sir!

I've a 109, which I'd take to be the older brother of the 420. I've owned it from new, not one jot of bother with it over the years and I fully expect it to serve me well for many more years to come. Assuming they still build them like they used to I don't think you'll do much better.

Very true, my initial planting "prescription" consisted of about 50% ash but this got completely derailed by the introduction of the ash ban just as I was about to order my stock. The forestry service man was very good however and knowing that I was ready to go he told me to work away, use as many native species as possible, but given that they had no new guidelines in place yet, it would be hard for him to tell me what they wanted. So my species list is/was, English/Pedunculate Oak, Alder, Hazel, Downy Birch, Silver Birch, Rowan, Norway Maple, Scots Pine, Sessile Oak, Red Oak, Lime, Whitebeam, Wild Cherry, Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Crab Apple, Horse Chestnut, Holly, Guelder Rose. Last year I purchased some Sweet Chestnut and added Bird Cherry, Plum (Victoria and Damson) and Ash that had self seeded about the farm. This year I plan to plant a few pear trees and have also planted out a few sackfulls of daffodil bulbs and have some wild strawberries to go in. Next year I plan to start grafting on to the crab apple trees and plant a few of whatever else comes in to my head between now and then.

Well there was just short of 6000 in it in total so weeding/watering/mulching wasn't an option. I fenced the entire perimeter with rabbit wire as that was more cost effective than individual shelters. Survival rate?, can't be totally sure. Certainly well in excess of ninety percent as I bought about two hundred replacements for "beating up" last year and ended up having to plant the last of them between rows as I couldn't find spaces. It was a helluva job digging holes for each and every tree but I've been told that's what's saved the day given that the two growing seasons they've had have been some of the driest over here for quite a while. Within that mortality, probably half of the casualties were birch. They were easily the largest of all the things supplied to me, some probably 5ft, don't know if that's relevant or not. Others with more experience could probably comment accordingly. Regarding growth, I'm quite happy. I was always told that it would probably be year three before they'd really start to shift anyway so given that their two years have been so dry and warm as long as they've survived at all I'll take that. Also quite a high percentage of oak within it which will never be fast!

..........and finally, this past autumn. This is pretty much the same area as the last photo but in the opposite direction, so the same trees.

This was around May time the same year, it's first spring. Not in the same part of it and looking roughly the opposite direction.

This was taken almost exactly two tears ago at the very start of things. Just a quick snap on a very old mobile phone but glad now I took it despite the poor quality!

I had it on a batch of store cattle a good number of years ago, soon spread across every one of them. I got a couple of spots on my arms, missus got it, even the dog had a spot on his nose. Seems to be a case of treating the symptoms but there's not much you can actually do about the disease. Once it had cleared up that particular time it never returned! However, the holly will certainly do no harm so why not. Good luck.

I did say that rather tongue in cheek, in fact they're both hoping to get well paid jobs, buy up some of the neighbouring land in future and extend things rather than shrink them, but all that is conjecture. I hope they've both been reared well enough to realise that co-operation always beats discord.

Same here, and happily that attachment has filtered down to the two weans. May be a conflict of interest in future though. The fella is 21, currently studying for an honours degree in sportsturf science at Myerscough and has just been awarded a scholarship with the R&A, the lass is 19 and studying for a degree in agriculture. Nearest neighbour says that he wonders in 10 years time whether the rest of the place will be a dairy farm or a golf course!, I just say that by then I'll be in the woods and they can sort it out between them!

To me this is probably the biggest thing about it. Over the past thirty years I've taken a piece of very good but neglected land and turned it in to a productive dairy farm, built a private race track on part of it, and more recently turned the areas around the race track in to our own private golf course, and of-course the woodland. The thing about the others is that they need constant input and without it they will gradually be devoured by the forces of nature which I claimed them from. Not so the woodland, once properly established it can do it's own thing. Certainly while I've strength to do it I'll guide it along in the direction which I wish and if I weren't here the direction would change, but it would still be a woodland just under it's own regime rather than mine. For that reason is there really any such thing as truly "neglected woodland", maybe a more fitting name would be "unworked woodland" or dare I suggest "natural woodland"!

It usually does of it's own accord anyway!

I've a bit of overgrown hedging to cut in the next couple of months, it's not actually in that bad shape even as it's quite narrow and well tidied around it, just tall. I've an MS440 sitting with a 24in bar and it'll be nowhere near it, billhook for cleaning and the little Dolmar with 15in bar for the bigger stuff within it. Big bar in a hedge is at best a nuisance, at worst bloody dangerous!

I can see this turning in to one of the best threads on the entire site, and now in the best sub-forum on the entire site as well! I'm pretty new to the world of arboriculture, was a full-time working farmer for almost thirty years but trees were something that you ignored until they got in your way and then you ripped them out and continued on! Don't know what first sowed the seed in my head but took a notion concerning planting some trees 4 or 5 years ago. Didn't know what to plant, how to plant it, what it would do when it was planted, or even whether it was wise to plant trees on 8 acres of prime arable land. But I bought books, started to read, trawled the net for articles, etc, etc, and within a few months was hooked. Started planting on new years day 2013 and by the beginning of March had just shy of 6000 trees in the ground. Split the area in to three different blocks, all seperated and serviced by pathways, all planted with a different idea in mind. But now I have the hard part, waiting for a woodland to flourish. This past autumn was actually the first time I started to get a feeling of the whole thing turning in to something, but I hope this year coming will see some proper activity. Very different in some respects to the title of the thread, arguably the exact opposite, but one thing applies equally to both. There is no right or wrong, if you are going to work in it then work it according to what you want from it. I planted three blocks completely differently not knowing which would be the best, or the most "correct", but already I know that all they are is different. There is no one worse or better than the others. But what I would also say is very important is to have no regrets about doing something. As stated above, you can tumble something in a minute but you'll not put it back together. So take time and think about doing something but have no regrets once it's done or you'll just kill off all the pleasure you could have. Good luck and I look forward to following the project on here.

As far as I'm aware there is no practical way of doing so on a bare-leaved plant. I was a bit paranoid about this when buying the holly plants for my woodland as I wanted to be sure of having both and therefore having berries but ended up just having to increase the number of plants and hope that the laws of probability take care of it.

As the Americans like to put it, "there's no replacement for displacement". Too much emphasis on horsepower considering that it's a totally theoretical value, it can't even be measured in real terms, it's only ever either calculated or estimated. But of-course it suits manufacturers of everything mechanical really well as it allows them to make all sorts of claims that can never be properly disproven.

Indeed it is, I've worked on and ridden a few of them and find them terribly underrated.

Glorified TRX!