The sound of saws in the wood - when we bought Crow Wood in 2005 it had not been managed for around thirty years and it needed attention, the Sweet Chestnut had grown for too long and the area of Scots pines planted in the 1980s had never been thinned. Over the years we have re-started coppicing in half acre areas and thinned some of the pines to give a richer tapestry of tree ages and stages. In the first year we hired a Woodmizer to plank up some of the chestnut to use to build our shed (which did have full planning consent !). Recently we decided that we needed some more quality timber of our own to use on various projects and also that the Scots pines now 60 to 70 feet high would provide some great wood. They needed a bit more space too.
I am pretty confident using a chainsaw and have done lot of the coppicing myself but these pines are seriously big and intimidating trees so we brought in some experts to advise and do the job for us. Enter Frankie and Rich from Weald Woodscapes. Standing back to watch them put in the hard work was a real treat and the truth is that they made it look easy; watching these professionals at work I was aware of the flow of their movements, the way that they minimised effort by using levers and wedges to deal with these very heavy and cumbersome trees and the ever-present potential danger there is in woodland work.
Ok lets not try and avoid the obvious, I am older and less fit than these two, but its experience and expertise that matter most and I am grateful for it, as the net result is a whole new area of pines and, later in the summer, a huge number of quality Scots pines boards. The pair will return later in the year with their two working horses to extract the timber and then later again, plank it all up. Its an exciting project and seeing more light and air come into the wood where they have worked is pretty magic and worth the investment.
I am pretty confident using a chainsaw and have done lot of the coppicing myself but these pines are seriously big and intimidating trees so we brought in some experts to advise and do the job for us. Enter Frankie and Rich from Weald Woodscapes. Standing back to watch them put in the hard work was a real treat and the truth is that they made it look easy; watching these professionals at work I was aware of the flow of their movements, the way that they minimised effort by using levers and wedges to deal with these very heavy and cumbersome trees and the ever-present potential danger there is in woodland work.
Ok lets not try and avoid the obvious, I am older and less fit than these two, but its experience and expertise that matter most and I am grateful for it, as the net result is a whole new area of pines and, later in the summer, a huge number of quality Scots pines boards. The pair will return later in the year with their two working horses to extract the timber and then later again, plank it all up. Its an exciting project and seeing more light and air come into the wood where they have worked is pretty magic and worth the investment.
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| Dealing with hung up pine |
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| using a wedge to correct a lean |
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| watching it fall |
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| coppicing an area of chestnut |
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| Frankie and Rich |
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