Slad

Hi Commando, it's Youngs normal (wine) yeast - my local shop has sold out of their cider yeast. I used an EC-1118 sparkling wine yeast on the 4% stuff but it didn't start so I've tipped in more of the Youngs. I have read the same as what you say in that wine yeast is best. I'll take a look at the Andrew Lea book. I've got "The new cider maker's handbook" by Jolicoeur and "The History and virtues of cyder" by RK French. Both a good read in their own way; the former seems to be a bit of a go to "bible" - a book I would like to write.

Making perry this year for the first time since we moved in. Great year for top fruit here - trees groaning. Made a scratter out of wood we milled earlier in the year, a fence post and a handful of screws but bought a simple screw press. Life's too short. Going to make something more like the kit in the photo above next year though, which looks great. Probably going to keep the screw, but use it with an 8T bottle jack instead of adding wood blocks every 5 minutes. We're keeping the trees' jucice in separate demijohns so we can see what each pear is like and done some with high alcohol yeast and some with normal Youngs. Too impatient to wait like all the books say so brewing it fast like a beer in the boiler room. The air locks look like steam trains! A neighbour advised adding back water to the same volume of water taken off and repressing. Worked well although the ABV will probably be 3.5 - 4%, which will be OK for "session" drinking I guess? Top tip for bottles; we have a discount shop near us which sells stuff near its sell by date. I bought 2 x 40 bottles of Grolsch (454ml) for £21 each. This is a bit cheaper than the bottles I was looking at on Amazon plus I get to give the Boy 40 bottles of lager to drink with his mates into the bargain. Any top tips for cider? I've made lots of wine and beer before but cider is new to me. We have a couple of apple trees and a crab apple so might give it a go. (Went for perry first because we have too many pears to ignore)

Very good video showing slipping loads for the knots being talked about. Which knot should you use for joining ropes? - YouTube

Thanks, that's useful; googling European Death Knot now! Great idea using the throwing line, wish I'd thought of that. 🙄 Now, does anyone know how to get pine sap out of ropes?

No, I agree. There's a bit of history to this re - nesting birds - Page 8 - Trees and the Law - Arbtalk | The Social Network For Arborists . It's already been spiked. The tree will come down in due course, just not yet. It looks like a dartboard from the last climber and my ropes/prussiks are covered in pine-smelling snot. The reason for climbing this time was to put a camera on the nest so we could check if it is occupied and see what happens; the ringers have been told not to come back and we wanted to make sure that was the case (and see the birds; if they're going to stop play in the woods, I want to see what they're up to). I climbed using just ropes, pruning the pine as I went so the nest could be seen from part of the ground. It took me hours (lots of small branches, hard to throw because of other trees, no experience of climbing pine trees etc etc). Because of the high winds, for the second climb I didn't want to hang about so I spiked up. Damage has been done and the nest isn't on this tree.

All sorted; Suzuki Jimny uprated by an off-roading mechanic. Uprated engine, 2 inch lifts, nobblies, chopped "pickup" format and extra roll-bars. Petrol, unfortunately, but only going round the farm so mileage not an issue. Handles all but the steepest slopes. Thanks for all the help.

I was climbing a large pine (double rope, MRS, fresh from my climbing course) and I got to the point where my shiny new 35m ropes weren't long enough, the ends were of the ground. I had a two ring cambium saver, so left a single rope fixed and went back down (winds picking up anyway). A couple of storms later I spiked up the tree using the fixed line attached using my locker (fall arrest). This time I took up a 50m line as well. As it happened, there was no point in going higher (the storms had destroyed the nest I was going to put a camera on). And here's my first question: How would you deal with a climb where the rope is too short? Coming down, I wanted to get all the kit down and wanted to abseil down rather than spike. Second question: How would you arrange the ropes so you could get down on them but be able to get all the kit down afterwards? I know how to join two ropes with stopper knots and could have used the knot to jam the cambium saver and abseil down, but I didn't fancy trusting to that when I had other kit. What I did was put a carabiner through the eye on the first rope and connected the second rope to the carabiner. The carabiner was the jam and I used my ID to abseil down. Metal on metal wasn't nice and I was pretty much spiking down anyway in case the crab broke the cambium saver (not likely, but...). So, what would you do?

Guessing prussik loops go in with the ropes too? Climbed a previously-spiked pine a while back and the loops were so caked in the sticky stuff I could hardly get down.

Completely on-site use. Anything with "Rover" in it seems expensive. Any other makes? Toyota has a good reputation ( tool of choice for ISIS ) Jimny gets a mention on some of the farming Facebook groups? Even the Fiat Panda 4x4 gets a mention; might be a bit stumped by the hills though. What do you think about ATV/quad bikes? Can they tow small trailers? We just need to move a small amount of wood every now and then, tools, not much else. I'd prefer something with a roof/roll-bar but if they will do the job, maybe worth looking at?

So it's nearly six months since I first asked the question and all the advice has been really useful, thanks. I tried the zipline thing. It sort of worked, but more hassle than it's worth. The best piece of kit for moving wood and brush has turned out to be a Docma VF105 Red Iron two stroke capstan winch. I have a couple of 8 ton snatch blocks so can pull large tree trunks. I've just moved a very large ash and some smaller oaks and birches. It's an amazing piece of kit and with 100m of low stretch rope I can pretty much move anything I need to. For domestic use, it's perfect. For anything that needs lifting, a neighbour has an 8 ton excavator with tree grab I haven't completely solved the problem of moving stuff around though. We have some gulleys used to pull trees down (by horse) in the olden days. I've cleared them out and these could be used as a 4x4 track to get up and around the hills. So the next question is...what 4x4 could I get for a few grand that I can use to shift me, equipment and maybe a few logs around? Anyone do any green lane-ing?!

As a PS: I'm getting a climbing helmet so didn't mind stripping the stinking Oregon helmet down. Using a knife, you can prise out the straps by lifting the inserts over the retaining bumps. Then you can hand wash them in hot water with the bicarb, washing powder, bleach, agent orange etc. I don't think you can do this too many times or the plastic will wear and the helmet will be less good if something hits you and the straps pop out too easy. But you can do it without having to wash the whole thing and get the ear defenders wet etc.

I get to use my helmet without gagging. (I could probably have phrased that better 😁)

And we have a winner! 👍 And keeping the old one indoors somewhere warm too. Thanks all.

Ok, I'm probably not going to get many sensible replies, but I thought I'd ask anyway. My helmet stinks. The black webbing inside the helmet (not a climbing one) sort of smells of mildew from all the sweat. I wash everything but no joy. I'm guessing it's because it stays in an unheated garage and festers. No mushrooms yet, but give it time.. What do you lot do, or do you all smell of roses?

So, I did some extra work over a weekend and put it towards the 12" Husqvarna T540iXP. Couldn't get a Bli200X for love nor money, so went with the bigger Bli300 (9Ah) battery. (And the Q330 charger) Thanks very much for all your suggestions. I came very close to the Stihl 161 + charger + 2 x batteries which would have probably been cheaper but wouldn't have made me as happy. And I'm glad I bought the 300 battery. With the wind the other night, we've has some trees down. The saw got a good workout (so did I) and I flattened the battery by the afternoon. 200X battery might give it short term extra grunt but being able to cut for longer is more important to me as it turns out. Lovely saw, it rips through wood super quick. Definitely something to use with caution - it feels like a toy compared with my 20" cheapo POS but cuts as fast/faster. Nice and "quiet" too.

Thanks for all the comments. Are the warranties on the Stihl any good? Will they cover repairs to the oil pump? @gand - Do all the new ones have the Upgrade kit as standard? The T540iXP looks really good but it's got two problems; it's out of stock everywhere (which says something) and really expensive for me. The T540iXP is about £770, the Stihl about £500 - £270 difference. (That's another battery, a few beers and a bunch of flowers for the Mrs...) Scratching my head now. Sell a kidney and wait until next year, look at the Makita 36v or something else. Is there anything else? Something that will cut as fast as the Stihl

A mate has a 10 year old Husqvarna on its first battery and it's still really good so I'm thinking of getting a one (for tree work and for quick jobs where I don't want to fire up my petrol saw). The makita seems popular here but looks a bit slow compared with the Stihl 161 T and the Husqvarna T535. The Stihl 161 T + battery + charger seems to be about £500. The Husqvarna T535 + battery + charger seems to be about £600. I'm leaning towards the Stihl but haven't used one. Has anyone used one and is it any good? Is the other one worth £100 more? That's only a tenner a year over a decade but still... (Stihl? 😁) What do you thinnk?

1% marketing? Thanks for the pic - "rubber/vegetable oil preparation" anyone? Google is showing me pastry recipes...

Sorry if this is a numptie question, but what's in biodegradable chainsaw oil please? I'm sure I'm not the first, and won't be the last, to wonder whether cooking oil would do. I ran out of "proper" oil and because I was using a cheapo DIY chainsaw I used rapeseed oil. There was still oil left when the fuel was gone (so it wasn't too thin) and the fling was no worse than than the Rotatech biodegradable I had run out of. It's much cheaper too (and I don't have expensive chainsaws yet so probably won't make a big difference to me if it doesn't work). So I'm wondering now if they add something extra I don't know about which is important. Anyone know?

Yes, we got an email with an apology in it a few days ago, which looked like a grown-up had drafted it for them. The excuse was basically "we phoned the previous owner who didn't tell us they'd moved but they still gave us permission". Which I think is complete nonsense. Then they tried to say that they hadn't climbed the trees, which is a bit odd, given the photo of them carrying climbing kit and the gaff holes which appeared in the trees at the same time. Basically they are still not telling the truth when all they needed to do was be honest and say they'd made a mistake and we could all move on. So they've been banned from our place for the foreseeable and there is a complaint going through BTO. Interesting to see if they close ranks or handle it properly.

No. I'd sent the photos and a list of what they did. I guess they sent their excuses. 🙄

Just heard from the Police guy dealing with it that they don't give crime numbers because offences under the Wildlife and Countryside Act are not recordable, but that they are looking into it. They've contacted the other lot.

It's gone a bit quiet. The thing most people would do would be to come round and apologise. They have our contact details so I'm not sure if they are too ignorant to apologise, or have been told to keep quiet while they are investigated by the BTO (the people who license them). The thing is, before we knew they were with the GRMG, we reported them to the police. So now the Rural Crime Team are involved too. And now they are in trouble twice, all because they were too lazy to do the right thing. Sometimes "sorry" is enough, but right now I hope they find another hobby.

Perfect, but I think probably too expensive for us. That's what I'm playing with at the moment. We've got 200m 14mm polyprop (about as "dynamic" as you'll ever see - I'm sure you could use it for bungey jumping) in a loop with swivel and pulley at both ends (polyprop is another word for "likes to tie itself in knots"). I'm pulling the loop tight with two double pulleys (no decent anchor close enough) and tying that off. Then as Woody P says, jumbo bags or cargo net at each end with the full one pulling the empty up. I might use an ID to control the decent or just let the ground slow things down - the anchor at the lower end has a slight rise in front of it. What could possibly go worng... 🤠 If it works, I'll look at maybe getting a better rope and really like the look of those capstan winches too. In budget and multi-purpose.

I see your point, but that's my timber/firewood we're talking about here. It has value to me, and also to the birds, which prefer living trees to nest in. A throw line might disturb the birds, but probably less than being picked up, lowered to the ground, weighed, measured, ringed and raised back up into the nest. I think how the climber gets to the nest is going to be insignificant compared to what comes next. You'll have seen my comments about ladders; it's not easy. But if you care enough about wildlife to ring it, you should care enough to do the job right.