peds

Oh definitely a necessity for a forest school. Just make sure there's enough ear protection to go around for all the wee ones.

What does your wife do?

It's a huge shame, the amount of potential fuel wasted, even if it's not as good as split rings. A lot of misinformation out there about what makes good fuel

You and your bubble.

I too would love a branch logger, also for outdoor use on campfires and BBQs. For a camp fire, kids in particular prefer putting smaller diameter stuff on, it burns up quicker so they get to put more on, which is of course part of the fun. For quick BBQ (as opposed to smoking and slow roasting), smaller diameter coals are easier to manage than big bits and create a more productive cooking area. Are jonky home-made branch loggers a thing?

New idea: have the perps spend the rest of their days making cutting boards and spoons from the remains of their victim to sell at the local gift shop.

You got me all wrong guv, I'd put a huge value on the tree itself, and there should absolutely be an equivalent punishment for the crime. Just in regards to replacing the tree itself... there's still a tree there, and I'd rather keep the old one, which isn't dead, than kill it and bring in a new one. It'll look lovely in a few hundred years, some of the prettiest big trees out there are obviously once-upon-a-time coppice jobs. Edit: so what I think I'm getting at is that the price tag of putting a new tree there isn't really a worthwhile measure of the value of the crime... this is a case for which we invented the word "priceless". The scrote won't have two shiny shekels to rub together anyway, just send him off to the penal colonies to sew potato sacks or something.

Did I not hear that the stump had shoots appear, as sycamores occasionally do? Would we not just let the tree that is already there get on with it? A lot cheaper...

I'm sorry, how much per chain? Like tires and mattresses, I'm happy to spend a bit more on some things.

Has anyone put out an accurate guess of the value as firewood and chip?

RIP, big dribbling cat, you have passed the single shared brain cell to the next orange in line. I'll chop out my two a fat line each of catnip in his honour.

I won't let you down boss. I pass dozens of lovely big yew at a nearby Holy Well, I'll keep an eye on them going into autumn.

Still morning, is it? Was about to go to bed last night at about 11, when a callout came in for a missing person on the mountain. Bad weather, yellow rain warning, flood risk. Not the best conditions for someone to be out in overnight. Get dressed, fill the thermos flask, down a coffee, grab the bag, hop in the car, keys in the ignition... stand down, person located. I don't really drink coffee after 4pm usually because I won't sleep, so following a cup at 2300, today's productivity has been shelved. Some gentle pottering instead.

I did this a few times when I was planting for forestry, some sites were 2 hours away. Made more sense to camp out and do a few more hours, instead of planting 600 sitka straight into the fuel tank.

I tried my best to keep up with this, but I lost track pretty quickly. I think I understand the gist of it, but i wouldn't want to be quizzed on the details. Electrics really isn't a language I'm fluent in.

Nice one Peas, it is indeed a 2kw inverter I've got. I'll give it a go on the campervan setup at some point then, it sounds like it could be a go-er. If I were to do any wiring in the work van in the future for it I'd probably want to be a bit more belt-and-braces than the jonky first-attempt affair in the camper, but it'll do for an experiment, anyway. Regarding the size of my hose, I've had no complaints so far...

Well I'm using 1½inch fat yellow hose at the moment, anywhere up to 50m of it depending, and at that kind of distance I'd hate to go down to a skinny Homebase hose because of the loss of pressure through friction. Better to have a bigger volume crawling through a fat pipe than a smaller volume screaming through a skinny one... But I've got a 12v to 230v inverter for the campervan, we've only ever used it to watch a film on the laptop, so not exactly hungry... but I've also seen others' camper setups where they are running a little electric oven and even a kettle off their leisure battery, which are much hungrier, through an inverter again... so there must be a way of doing it. As you say, petrol will always have the grunt, you could empty the IBC 4 or 5 times off a tank of hydrocarbons, the question is how many electric batteries would it need to empty it a single time, even with trickle charging while driving around... I might just have to do some tinkering with it on a rainy day sometime I suppose!

This old thread will do for a bump. I need a bit of help with some maths. I get the feeling @GarethM might have the knowledge for this one... I'm currently using a 2-stroke water pump to move water from an IBC in a van to wherever it needs to be - usually either recently planted trees or hanging baskets and window boxes - but I'd like to see if it's possible to switch to electric, to reduce noise and fumes wherever I can. I've also got a 1.1kw electric pump, same output as the 2-stroke. Is there any way on Earth that you could have the same kind of wiring setup as a campervan with a leisure battery, charging off the engine when moving, and giving power when switched off? Obviously a campervan leisure battery wouldn't give much run time, after going through an inverter... but is there a way to make it work? Bigger batteries, more of them? Steal them out of a written-off Tesla, maybe? But would the necessary charge time between runs make the idea impractical? Happy to be told it's a pipe dream, I was just wondering.

Beautiful coronet cut on that right hand stem 👍

Tidy.

This, err...this bathcast... where... exactly... is the camera located...?

That's a great idea, and I'd like to subscribe to your vlog.

Beautiful garden, very dog-friendly.

Morning all, I don't suppose anyone has any data to hand showing the relative uptake of water in various woodland settings at different times of the year? Obviously it slows right down for broadleaf, but it carries on to an extent with evergreens, conditions dependent... I wonder if there's a handy table anywhere comparing it across seasons and species? Might be a bit too much to ask! I've been asked to plant a garden woodland in boggy ground, just want to discuss the whole range of options with the guy, from digging ponds and drainage to just firing in whips and walking away. Cheers dudes. Edit I've got this pdf from 2005 so far, hoping for something with a bit more meat on the bone though. fcin065.pdf

Maaate, that looks sublime. Ever made your own pasta? Toss that through a pile of rustic orechiette and you've got perfection.