Woodland Custodianship

[Falstaff]

Local politics view of free schools aside, everywhere is short of decent school buildings so if they decide to buy they might not have any planning permission problems.

Their problem will be with the design, as the local politico's try to get their oar in with whatever hobby-horse they are riding.
I've just had something realistic turned down because they want to keep it for mass transit trams with tracks, sometime in the un-specified future. Not a hope of getting serious Govt. funding for that. Autonomous buses, yes, and probably pretty soon.

 

[Falstaff]

Seeing Broch's pics, are there any restrictions on what you can do with ash that has died. e.g does it have to be burned or can you make things with it. Presumably it has to be cleared to prevent cross infection?

 

[Broch]

Seeing Broch's pics, are there any restrictions on what you can do with ash that has died. e.g does it have to be burned or can you make things with it. Presumably it has to be cleared to prevent cross infection?

Actually, there is no requirement to clear it or limit its movement, strange though that may seem. The lifecycle of the pathogen is from leaf litter that fruits on the forest floor. When that spores in summer it spreads with wind.

I have found that young ash that can show infection through to the core loses some strength - I tried making a flat bow from a piece that did not look infected and it had very little strength (it was an experiment). On the plus side I've had some nice looking 'spalting'. I intend to try and harvest the bigger stuff if/when it comes down to do stuff with - furniture, carving, etc.

 

[FerlasDave]

The dieback makes the material very brittle. Even in older trees, those that have the scarring don’t have even the strength for simple joinery project. It’s really of no use other than firewood unfortunately.

 

[Broch]

In some cases I agree but the larger trees I've had to deal with have a great deal of sound timber on them. I think it all depends at what stage they are felled. As I said, I've had some nice staining and spalting on the wood from infected trees.

The two candle holders on the bottom left are ash that was infected.

 

[FerlasDave]

Yeah I would think for things like those candle holders or cutting boards etc you’d be fine but I wouldn’t want to make any furniture out of them personally.

 

[slowworm]

Having been out in our woodlands to see how much damage has been done and what trees need clearing I've noticed quite a few deer about. Several red, and a couple of pairs or roe. The roe are tucking in to all the ivy that's blown down and the red are just milling about at the moment.

 

[Broch]

Have they been spooked into your woodland do you think? We've heard muntjac much closer since the storms.

 

[slowworm]

I don't think they've been spooked. We regularly get roe in both woodlands and several red in one. You normally see foot prints, droppings, signs of grazing, the odd deer or their noises.

What's been unusual is seeing so many and also it's the first time I've seen red and roe together.

 

[slowworm]

Having mooched about our woods a fair bit now since the storms there is also a fair bit of damage apart from the more obvious trees and branches down everywhere. There's several trees leaning more than they used to and a few split branches way up in the canopy.

This photo is from a neighbouring oak, the split starts off about 5m up and goes about 3m along the branch. The branch is about 30cm wide. Quite a bit of weight on that branch but I expect it'll stay there until the next storm.

Always pays to look up before camping!

 

[Broch]

Yep, I've been around our wood now. We've been lucky, only the odd branch down but nothing major. The storm was from the South West which our wood is protected from; the new North Easterly storms are what causes damage here

I have a number of hung-up and leaning trees, some alive, some dead. I inspect them regularly and record what I find. There are no public footpaths through the wood but by recording my inspection I am seen to be carrying out 'due diligence'

 

[John Fenna]

The woods hat I play in took a real beating with over 20 trees down - luckily none falling into the communal area of my camp, though a couple of the most used pitches had a big Scots Pine land over them!
The toilet area was pretty trashed and half my time in the woods has been clearing and rebuilding the toilet area, clearing the pitches and using brash to rebuild/build windbreaks, come habitat heaps, come sight screens - the other half helping the owner clear some of the fallers to make things safe....
Before

Toilet rebuit

The pitches cleared

Clearing the main entrance way and the owners wood shed

Several of the fallers stood up again once they had been trimmed...

 

[Broch]

Wow John, that's some serious damage. I wish we were closer, I could have come over to give you a hand

On a lighter note - I did a one-one chain saw course with Phil Dunford years ago, right up to 500mm trees, leaning, and hung up trees. The big leaning trees were great fun. You do the last cut standing on the root ball and when it goes the root ball springs back up and can bounce you a foot in the air (do not try this without a professional showing you first!!).

 

[TLM]

2 weeks ago had three smallish trees down after a unusually hard wind from awkward direction (neighbor cut a largish area open few years ago). So basically I got off easy. Got about 30cm of snow in last 24h. Ground is not frozen very deep so there is a possibility for additional damage if that wind direction repeats, fortunately it's a rare one.

 

[slowworm]

Starting to log up the fallen trees here. This was just a branch, probably about a tonne of wood.