What a difference a week can make in the wood. From there being some faded colour and lots of brown leaves on the trees, particularly the young chestnuts, only a few of the oaks (not sure if it is the Sisal or the English ones) are hanging on to a last few leaves. The views across the wood have changed dramatically once again and with the honourable exception of the far north west corner, you can see pretty well every part of the wood from the wood pile in the central glade.
This time of year makes tree identification a bit challenging, when you are working with buds and bark only, but it is a great time to take stock of what we have and what we want to do with the trees.
We have identified a load of large but mostly dead chestnut stems that will come down for firewood either this year or next - felling them will also regenerate the tree boles and bring on a load more shoots and poles for future years. We have identified a whole load of Wild Service that we can either play with a bit, trying copicing and pollarding techniques, or we can fell for wild fences - the wood is pretty useless for most things, including fire wood.
There are a bunch of hazels that need to be managed - either copiced for future poles, woven to create barriers, or nurtured to produce more nuts in future.
We don't do much with the oak trees except tidy up the lower trunks, getting rid of ivy and small branches, and pay our respects in the appropriate manner!
Hmmm a tree hugger, I should ahve known!
Posted by: Mr Luddite | 30 November 2007 at 05:09 PM