Last September, I met Lyndsey from Central Beds Council at Centenary Wood, near Greenfield, to talk about some ride widening she wanted us to do for her. In return for taking out some young trees that were overshadowing some paths and causing them to stay muddy through most of the year, we’d get to bring […]
It sure does feel good to have finished cutting and clearing at Centenary Wood. That’s four winters of cutting or at least four January and Februarys. Winter cutting can be hard work and sometimes daunting; last winter more than most given Jane’s hand injury that took her out of the equation. Our apprentice has been […]
It’s been exciting and a bit emotional to start coppicing Chester Wood for a second time, after a twenty year gap. This was in November and December last year and we managed to get one coup cut before Christmas; an area we first cut in February 1997. Chester Wood is a small piece of ash […]
I heard earlier this week that the Mayor of London’s office is considering a ban on wood burning stoves and open fires in some parts of the capital where air quality is very poor. This is due apparently, to the high particulate content of wood stove smoke. My initial reaction was one of horror, of […]
Unbelievably, it’s just about a year since we cut the first hazel at Centenary Wood, between Pulloxhill and Greenfield, Bedfordshire. In fact it was 12 January 2016 when we started. All in all, the trial has been a success and the new growth, although variable in vigour is pretty good. The wood dates from the […]
We’ve cut more hazel in Bottoms’ Corner this winter than ever before and that means there are vast amounts of pea sticks to be bundled and sold. Good news for us because we are receiving orders for large numbers from commercial gardens. It seems that word is getting around the gardening world about hazel as a top stick […]
We own about four hectares of woodland of which one, Chester Wood, is ancient semi-natural. The rest is a plantation: Bottoms’ Corner, created in 1999. The ancient woodland is a strip that survived the destruction of what may have been a much larger wood of which no records survive as far as I know; its removal must have […]
Having left my part time job at Christmas we’ve survived two months now without that regular and comforting clang of money arriving in the bank. We’ve both been working on the farm in the meantime and this is the beginning of what we hope will be our busiest time 0f year, when gardeners and plenty of others […]
A day spent talking about coppicing, ancient woodland and the stuff we do? Hardly a tough assignment really! Given that this is stuff I should be able to do in my sleep, I did spend a whole load of time preparing for it. This was a trial run for the Clophill Heritage Trust , a […]
On Thursday Jane and I took a trip to Suffolk to visit a chap called Graham who I had found posting on a forum populated by all sorts of interesting woody types, but mainly arborists comparing notes on chainsaws, forwarders and other exciting machinery. These of course are of great interest to me, but it […]