coppice cutter

Stop, stop, no more!

Maybe in future I'll not bother reading your posts and just react to them based on what I expect you to have said.

Was it one of those big thumping 5hp jobs?

Oh man, that's a catalogue of events there that would utterly do my head in. There'd be divorce proceedings.

So you're getting all hot and bothered about something that you didn't even watch because you thought you knew what it would be like anyway. Hmmmmmm!

No, the Guardian article totally agreed with your point of view. If you're comfortable with that, then there's no problem.

I know the theory, i.e. that it would cost more to police than to just give to everyone, but I think they could do more. For example, if a pensioner earns enough, then they pay income tax. So there's a degree of individual means testing taking place there already surely?

Last electricity quarter at 33p per kw/hr was low two hundred and something, so even it goes to 40odd as some are predicting we should be able to keep it around or little over 100 per month most months, probably not possible February and March during lambing though. Also about one and a half medium tanks of propane for the cooker and that's us for the year, everything else is self-produced firewood. House and yard has all been switched to LED over the past four or five years, even the lambing shed, and workshop has been switched to LED this summer. Can't do much more now other than pay whatever it is.

No, I don't specifically need the firewood, but I see what you're getting at. It's not the first infected tree on the farm, but it's the first one I've felt the need to take down, it's also the biggest, so most likely to come down of it's own accord messily. Been watching it a couple of years now and it's all been downhill, increasingly so more recently. There's a young tree growing right beside it showing no signs of infection so far, as indeed are all the rest in the same hedge, so I think I'll take it out in a controlled fashion and give the young upstart it's chance to shine. Don't want it falling on a sheep in a storm or something equally ridiculous.

I've the first infected tree on the farm to take down shortly. Seems the best policy will be to do it in dead of winter and treat the firewood as normal? Shouldn't be any issues felling it as it's nowhere near the public and plenty of room around it.

Completely missing the point. Clarkson never claimed he was the farmer, he was the well-heeled landowner. All the good work was being done by those around him, who he had to pay to get anything done as he was too incompetent and totally incapable, without them nothing worthwhile would have been achieved. Giving the real credit to those around him was a recurring theme throughout the entire series and also illustrated that there were thousands of Kalebs, Ellens, and Gerards working away across the land day and daily, totally unknown, yet doing stuff that a huge percentage of the population wouldn't be capable of, and wouldn't make the effort to do even if they were. But don't worry, you're not entirely alone in your view! Clarkson’s Farm review – Jeremy the ignoramus rides again | Television | The Guardian WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM Eight hours of a buffoon screwing things up for our supposed entertainment is bad enough, but it’s his total...

Oh I could put up with that OK, more that she comes across as a nasty, unpleasant, vindictive racist that gets me. Fortunately she's also as thick as a brick or she could do even more harm.

No, I'm not having that. "Irritating tosser" he may be, but he mostly irritates people who deserve to be irritated. Plus, he done farming more good in one series of shows than the BBC have done for the forty odd years since they replaced their proper farming programme with that countryfile shite.

I'd like to and have tried to many times. But she keeps popping up, like an unwanted sucker from something that you thought was dead and buried.

I heard grey squirrels described a while ago as just "rats with good PR". Seems the public perception of greys goes down a few notches every year.

I initially thought James Kingston, but then seen the guys age. I suppose the good Mr Kingston ain't as young as he used to be anymore either.

Hard to know how they perceived things back then before everyone's taste buds were shot to hell by monosodium glutamate. After a bit of a health scare a few years ago I had to give up sugar in my tea and using any extra salt at the table. How my taste in food changed over the following couple of years was pretty dramatic to the degree that most processed or takeaway food now tastes akin to poison, but I still like a bit of home baking so even my taste buds are still hugely corrupted by modern life. So it's a fair point, something which seems essentially bland in our present time may indeed have been perceived differently back then. Then again, rivers and streams would have been pretty much unpolluted so would they even have bothered, is there any record of it having been done hundreds of years ago I wonder.

Having read the report by the University of Alaska on the potential damage done to the trees, it's another reason why, having done it unknowingly once, I wouldn't tap any trees again for birch sap when there's no need to. https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/handle/11122/3198 They are especially sensitive trees.

Son-in-law has an Isuzu pickup of some variety which has become the default dogsbody vehicle for all of us and it plays up a bit from time to time. But it's usually not too long until there's a trailer load of sheep/cattle/something else behind it which facilitates it being given a good caning, and that's it back on the straight and narrow for a while. But they also kept my daughters wee Civic after they were married and he uses it for a lot of the short runs, checking stock, going to his work, and such like. Apart from the amount of fuel it saves, it also keeps the Isuzu away from a lot of the sort of thing that would be causing DPF issues. Their 'good' car now is an XC60 and so far there's been no such issues with it, and I'm pretty sure it'll probably have a DPF as well. But it's a right lump of a thing and only a two litre so maybe works a bit harder? Not sure. Diesel vehicle for the road is something I'll never have anyway. Anyways, I'd still drop a battery terminal off for an hour just to see what happened.

Deal!

My head was trying to advise, but in my heart, really, I'm rooting for the tree. If you excuse the pun!

If we can include solicitors, barristers, and 'expert witnesses' then I'm in?

You're really not getting this at all are you?

Yeah, that's entirely possible too, they're always finding more ways to limit your options. Sneaky buggers!

Car or bike, it's always worth disconnecting the battery terminals for an hour when there's an electrical problem. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but it's not much hassle to try no matter how small the odds of it working. Maybe google* it first? *- other search engines are available.