Paul in the woods

I was going to warn that although hens can be lovely to look at and have scratching around the place they are also mini-dinosaurs and will happily rip apart all sorts of garden wildlife, snakes, lizards, whole nests of voles etc.

I built my coop from scratch and I'm not keen on plastic houses but it is easier to keep clean. There are cheaper plastic coops out there. I wouldn't say you'll save any money keeping hens, we did it because I can't stand the way chickens are farmed. Even if you ignore the law that bans kitchen scraps I think you're likely to need to buy layers rations and that's not cheap these days. Having said that they are great to make children a bit more aware of food and farming. Watch out for foxes, the number of people I know who said they don't have foxes only to loose their clock to a fox. Edit to add, if you're looking at a plastic coop I know someone who likes these: https://nestera.co.uk might be worth a look?

Yes, you seem to want to be a bit more self sufficient / reliant rather than make do without mains services. We've been going down that route for a number of years. Cut our own firewood, grow a fair bit of our own food, had chickens and have a few bee hives. I'd start off by asking what you want to achieve. Do you want to unwind from a busy life, safe money or want a bit more control of where your food comes from?

If there are power lines then speak to your local power network team. They are normally very helpful although it might depend on the actual risk to the cables.

Well, in my experience when highways fly tipped waste several meters into my property they claimed ownership but when the hedge right next to the road needs cutting the ownership suddenly becomes mine. Anyway, you can ask for a map which shows boundaries. Sometimes the highways do own bits of land and it will be shown on their maps. Our council has a specific person who processes these requests. On the other hand, if you had asked the land owner guy who owns the tree as it's worth £2k these days for firewood he may have claimed ownership...

I'm glad I did my DSC1, despite not needing it as I have my own land. I was granted an open cert after passing it. There's also the practicalities, buying a rifle, ammo, safe etc; and the extracting of the carcass, refrigeration, processing and storing all the meat. I'm still a vehicle and freezer away from eating the red deer on my woodland.

Rabbits are quite hard to find in lots of places, also most farmers will either have someone sorted for the rabbits or expect someone experienced and insured etc. Grey squirrels might be easier to get but hard to skin and not a great deal on them. Do you have much shooting experience? You might be better off joining a shooting club for a while to gain experience and to meet people who do hunt.

To answer the op, yes, speak to your local game dealer or stalker and you can buy a whole deer carcass butcher it yourself and freeze it. Or you could go down the rabbit, pigeon, squirrel route. What are you after? Matty, isn't it there any qualified stalkers around you who could help?

I would have thought of there's enough usable wood for someone to do the work then a felling license would be very likely. Any danger would need to be serious, this is from the FC guidance: An exception applies for the felling of a tree or trees necessary for the prevention of danger or the prevention or abatement of a nuisance. The danger exception could be said to apply only where there is an immediate risk of serious harm and urgent work is needed to remove the risk The nuisance exception could be said to apply only where there is actionable nuisance (i.e. actual damage or an immediate risk of actual damage being caused), or nuisance by way of actual encroachment. If you use this exception you will be asked to provide evidence of how the tree(s) presented a danger to people, property or infrastructure for example. Not all old or diseased trees are necessarily dangerous; you need to consider the risk they pose and demonstrate the exception is valid.

If you've got time on your hands I'd use a decent hand saw.

I'd stick to carving by hand. A decent knife like Mora 120 is fairly cheap and will easily slice through green wood such as lime. For a spoon I'd also suggest sycamore, field maple or perhaps beech. You'll be practising on your first few so don't worry about splits or sanding. Take care of your hands though, slow and steady and don't try to remove too much at once. If you're serious there's some useful inspiration over here: https://bushcraftuk.com/community/

Is it too soon after the ivy threads to come out in support of the humble thistle? Our bees and finches love them!

From the photo I'd guess the drive must be hard to use, with a electric/telecoms pole on the other side. The tree will just get wider as well.

This is why I wanted to try something small scale to work out if it's worth jumping through the hoops. I've spoken to the EA about something else to do with the stream and quickly realised there is very little logic to their rules - if you ask you have to follow them even if there's loads of other people not following them and causing more harm. On the note of low flows, I could cope with only using the power when the stream is in full flow. Even though it's still cold at night, because it's been dry we have much less need for heating. The need for heat and wet weather go hand in hand down here.

There may be rules but that doesn't mean they are followed. Farm slurry should be injected but old equipment can still be used to spray it so that's what's done round here. The sewage sludge has most of the water removed and is dumped in piles on the fields for a month or two. It's then spread using the same trailers that spread rotted manure, so just thrown out the back. It's mainly done before planting crops, such as forage beet but I've seen it spread on grass. (Obviously animals are not put in the fields immediately afterwards but I think it's only kept animal free for a month or two). There is plenty dragged onto the roads etc so possibilities of cross contamination.

Looks like galls of some sort.

One of Ben Law's books might be useful as he started out with overstood chestnut coppice iirc. It might be worth trying to contact him via his wife to see which of his books would be best and to see if he could offer advice?

We have a couple of acres of very rough pasture that could provide a feedstock. I also wonder about all the waste silage that's left to rot in the farms around here. There's a few wrapped bales rotting just down the road. As for the human waste, no mains sewers round here, or water, or gas. Some of the locals still look surprised when you turn on a light... The fields are frequently spread with sewage sludge which gets washed off into the streams and out to sea. I don't think I'd be causing any problem with a little domestic spreadding.

I've always thought it would make sense to recycle human waste via composting and then on to young trees, so human waste. II gather that may not produce much gas though but I can source an endless supply of cow manure, if I could be sure that was free from aminopyralid type weed killers that would be ideal. Actually, I think wood backed up with solar for autumn/spring/summer use seems our best bet. Hydro more of a long term prospect for when I get fed up with processing firewood.

Thank you for your reply, I've not ignored your reply it but been spending most of my free time sorting out a good supply of firewood. I know what you mean about this time of year being low flow season, it's not really rained here for well over a month. Stream still has a decent flow. The problem I have is that I don't own both sides of the bank, I think it would be possible to get permission from the other land owner but that would make things official and I'd just get bogged down in bureaucracy. Perhaps one day I'll go down that route. I had wondered if I could extract water via a pipe, run a pipe down the hill to a turbine and then put the water back. But the stream has about 1m steep sided high banks which will make that difficult. Another problem is the 1m deep 'ravine' can fill and overflow when we get a decent spell of rain so I don't think it would be wise to have any turbine right in the stream bed. Also wondering about some form of biodigester to make some biogas.

I'd be interested to see the moisture meter bit, to see that you're made it clear that the meters the public are likely to use will measure on a dry basis whereas the woodsure scheme is wet. I also agree with the comments on almond, not heard of it used in the UK whereas I understood hornbeam was widely used, certainly more common than almond. I tend to be in the 'it'll burn ok if dry camp.'

Looks like unopened flower buds of an apple, possibly a crab apple.

Unless the owners specifically asked about the trees I doubt any claim against the previous owners would get any where. When I've sold both the estate agent and the solicitor have been very reluctant to pass on any comments I've had about the property.

I was going to ask if running smokeless coal overnight would be any cheaper than gas, even after the gas price rises as I expect coal price rises as well. I've recently had to use a few bags of smokeless brickets and they were terrible - didn't last long and didn't give out much heat. As it seems you don't have to change anything worth trying a bag of two before stocking up.

In the UK we have a government organisation call the Forestry Commission that has produced various leaflets, books and PDFs. Unfortunately it's been restructured and many of the links I've got don't work any more and I find it much harder to find stuff. The research arm are now called Forest Research. This book might help, I've not seen a copy but thought I saw a PDF ages ago: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/research/the-silviculture-and-management-of-coppice-woodlands/ A different view might be Ben Law's "A Woodland Way", there's a couple of chapters about planning and planting in there but far more on making use of woodland products.