Alottalove

I love Woody...he's been working on his updates for last weeks fence-a-thon, I wont interfere but I have been chivvying him along to get the posts and photos on here before you all get bored and find a blog about squirrels to entertain yourselves with.

I also have a lot of love for the people who are supporting our little project; our wonderful neighbours, family and friends.  One of whom posted a very touching message on Facebook the other day;

Woody and I were really taken back by Jo's lovely message as it really only feels like this is such a small time bumbling project compared to people who do take on wrecks of houses and transform them into homes or real life crisis that some people really have to confront and deal with every day. 

We are just playing on a very big gardening project, we have a long way to go but little gems of support like this make us realise that we have already accomplished a fair bit.  So...thank you.

We are very lucky peeps!



Land Week 16th - 22nd Feb

Woody took a week off work to help Ian break the back of the land preparation ready for the 500m of fencing that needed to go in (plus hanging 3 gates!). Despite all our earlier clearing work there was still a huge amount to do.

So far we had concentrated our efforts along fence line A-B clearing the very low hanging branches, dead trees and general tangle of brambles, wire and old gates.  A first wave had been cut and sorted; logs piled up, brash burnt, but a second wave needed to be felled to ensure the fence would not be damaged later on by falling dead wood.  

The avenue of trees on the driveway stretch from B-C also suffered from low limbs, very twisted old growth, multiple wire strands embedded in trunks (lethal for chain saws!) and a wide strip of brambles and young birch.  Before the low branches could be taken down the floor needed flailing in order to make clearing the logs/branches safer.

Once all the clearing had been done, posts, strainers and the wire all had to be installed.  Of course this little plan does not account for weather conditions, kit malfunctions, emergency calls outs and log shifters bunking off for a days hunting!

Monday - The Baroness!
Monday a bright and bitterly cold morning.  Ian helped with the first stage clearing by mowing the brambles and birch saplings down along the driveway fence-line with "The Baroness", this would save much hassle later on when we cleared the felled and limbed oak, birch and holly.  Trying to clear logs and branches from thick brambles is not much fun so the Baroness' help was much appreciated.  

Crouchy & The Baroness flailing from C-B

www.baronessuk.com
Next came allot more felling of the low level branches.  As you can see from the above photos there was only 6ft of head height in places, not enough to get a tractor and post banger in under so there was more prep work to do than we first thought.

It looked like "fencing week" may turn into "prep week....with a bit of fencing at the weekend"!

Tuesday - Pole Saws Can't Swim

A freezing morning with a hard frost but very sunny...perfect day for hunting!  I am afraid to say I ducked out of log shifting and spent a fantastic days hunting with our lovely neighbor Kirsty and our two beloved horses Easter and Nester.  There was frost on the ground well after 11am, the sunshine was gloriously warm and we set off (at speed) across country to explore parts of our local area we never usually had access to.  Kirsty and I both felt very privileged to be able to take part in this rural tradition in a beautiful area where we are lucky enough to be "landowners".

Anyway, back to the boys who were still clearing low branches, still being thwarted by the years of neglect that the old oaks had been subjected to.  Ian was up and down ladders with chain saws and decided to use a pruning pole saw from the ground instead.  Effectively a metal pole with a chainsaw on the far end, using it must take some skill; a bit like writing your name with a pen on the end of a long stick! Focusing on your cuts, over 12ft above you it is easy to forget about the bottom of the pole saw where the engine is. Judging the height and angle to cut in from, getting the revs of the engine right is quite an art form... it was all going so well until Woody turned round and saw that Ian was engulfed in a cloud of steam and swear words. Too busy looking up he dunked the whole engine of the pole saw into a water trough.  It turns out that pole-saws don't swim very well and it was back to the ladder for Ian!

Tree line view C-B with the low limbs felled.

Wednesday 

In go the first posts!!

Thursday & Friday - R&R (Rain and a Reprieve!)
Too wet to get on the land with the heavy machinery so....Woody went window shopping!

Saturday
I left Woody and Ian to get on with the fencing while I mucked out stables only to find they'ed been on a bacon roll eating, fence post buying jolly, well it was a beautiful day!  We had a productive day and even Joanne, Ians better half turned up to help shift posts after she had spent the morning moving her sheep to spring grass.  We had an early-ish finish as they were off to a shoot dinner....Woody and I doubted that we would see Ian (in any sober state) on Sunday! :)

Tree line C-B, pruned with logs and brash neatly stacked ready for sorting.

Sunday
Quite proud of ourselves today, we worked on through pouring rain getting soaked clearing the brash piles cut down earlier in the week.  It was a hard slog, it was freezing and we wanted to give up and go home several times but we kept going.  If we cleared down to the far corner we could go home having accomplished another job.  The week had taken it's toll on Woody who had been project manager, apprentice, delivery driver and laborer.  I'm very proud of him for all his graft as I am not always sure he see's my vision.  I can see it though, it might not be perfect but there is so much we can do to make it what we want, exciting times!

Green Week??!

Somewhere I heard or saw on the internet that the 9th-15th February is Green Week.  It jogged my memory to have a look on The Woodland Trust website to see what their contribution was...of course it turned out it wasn't "green week "in their world....perhaps that's because their world is always green? 

While I was mooching about their website I started reading up on the support they offer to people wanting to create a woodland project, they might be able to help us get started with replanting trees and reinstating the hedges on our little patch.  With lots of information and not much time to read it all in my lunch break I sent them off a quick email outlining our project.

Minutes later I received a reply!

Dear Lara

Thank you for your recent woodland creation enquiry. I hope you will find the information below useful - I’d be happy to chat through anything you’re unsure about. We are currently offering advice and guidance on woodland creation to individual landowners though our MOREwoods project, which I’ve outlined below. We can also advise on applying for more generous funding through the Welsh Government.

Through our MOREwoods scheme we are offering guidance and support on woodland creation, and we also have a small pot of money available. We offer onsite advice as part of this project so an adviser (from the Woodland Trust or one of our partners) can discuss species mixes for your site in person. In order to apply for MOREwoods you need to have a minimum of 0.5 ha (1.25 acres) of non-wooded land that you would like to plant and be willing to plant between 1000 and 1600 trees per hectare.

We also have funding available for landowners who wish to create ecological links to woodland by planting new hedgerows on their land through our Trees in Hedgerows (TiH) scheme. To qualify the new hedge must link with areas of existing or newly planted woodland. You will need to plant at least 100 metres of new hedgerow, up to a maximum of 750 metres per applicant. We are offering a subsidy of 60% against the total cost of the plants and guards, but cannot arrange or fund fencing or contractors for hedging.

The alternative would be to apply for the next EU-funded grant scheme from the Welsh Government who have invited expressions of interest for planting of at least 0.5 ha. It  has also been announced that they expect to offer a parallel scheme for smaller scale planting such as small copses, shelter belts, field boundaries, field corners and scattered individual trees. The new grants have not yet been finalised and the scheme is unlikely to be available until the 2015 – 16 planting season. Our advisors will be able to provide further information. 

For small scale planting on agricultural land in Wales we can supply trees through our Farm Tree Pack scheme. These packs are supplied with guards and are subsidised to around a third of the nursery price, although due to demand we can only provide a maximum of 2 packs per person per season. We have three types of pack available for you to apply for, with a higher land species mix available for land more than 150 m (500 ft.) above sea level:

Native Tree Belt (210 trees)

Sessile oak, wild cherry, downy birch, rowan, hazel and hawthorn (supplied without cherry for higher land)

Wood Pasture (20 trees) 

       Sessile oak, common lime and beech (lowland); sessile oak, downy birch and rowan (higher land)

       Planting for Pollinators (210 trees)

       Hawthorn, blackthorn, goat willow, crab apple, rowan, hazel and dog rose (lowland and higher land)

So that we can identify the potential planting area and suggest the best source for funding for your land please could you answer the following questions:

• What’s your motivation for creating new woodland? (e.g. wildlife habitat, fuel)
• How is the land currently managed? (e.g. mown grass, grazing land, scrubland)
• Are then any services (e.g. power lines, gas pipes) passing through or adjacent to the site?
• Is there any other woodland close to the site?
• Are there deer in the area?

Please can you also send two maps and we will be able to advise on the next steps when you get back to us with a bit more detail on your plans.

  

If you have any questions about MOREwoods, grant funding or woodland creation please do let me know.

Kind regards, Woodland Creation Project Officer

How exciting!  A lovely email with some great information to get us started, giving me a warm feeling to know we will be able to get access to knowledge and possibly financial support for our project.  The best option for us would probably be to show an expression of interest in the small scale planting scheme that the Welsh Government are looking into setting up.  We had better start thinking about putting a plan together.

We have a busy time ahead as Ian is due back to finish off the first stage of fencing, we have a real deadline now with spring on its way and (to help with the grass management) 4 ponies arriving!

Oh and I did a bit more digging, it IS Go Green Week for People & Planet! (had to be somewhere!)