Barbed wire has no friends....

For at least 40 years the farm that our land was once part of had been patched up and made good with barbed wire, most of the time stapled directly onto the trees.  When we had quotes for replacing all the fencing the first bloke that came up suggested we did the same... well, I was not impressed even though he assured us that that is what all the locals did (they don't!).

Many of the trees bare the scars of barbed wire that will eventually lead to their premature death, allowing infection a doorway into their heartwood.  

We promised that although we may have to continue to use wire to fence the land, we would never staple onto trees, its quite sad seeing them like this, I have to admit to giving them a pat to apologise (yes I am a daft old bugger).

We set about with bolt cutters and started the painstaking task of cutting away all the wire, there was allot and much of it is buried into the ground like brambles (I have been slashing away at "brambles" only to find out its rusty wire!).  Carefully we have collected and folded a growing pile of scrap metal and wire from the land, its pretty surprising for such a small area and there is still much to cut out of the trees.

It is horrible stuff, but used correctly it is useful stuff...we are putting 1km of clean new, tight, barbed wire back in after taking all this out!

Talking of which, Woody had a little accident on Saturday... 

Wire tensioning had not been going to plan all day but the sun was shining and I could hear the banter chattering away across the fields.  I was having a tantrum with brambles getting tangled in the slasher for the millionth time, I heard a yelp, looked up but all seamed ok so carried on...

What had actually happened was pretty scary and could have been a lot lot worse! Whilst tightening an awkward 100m section the wire was constantly catching on things, Woody was leaning over the barbed wire sorting it out when it snapped like an elastic band. PING... OUCH.

Fortunately the main impact was on his forearm, missing all arteries, veins and eyeballs!!  After a quick patch-up with a bandage he was back working in no time, but it could have been so much worse.

A sobering reminder that the work we are undertaking is dangerous...and we need a bigger first aid kit!!!  

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!)

2015 goals and dreams...whatever the weather...

"Little-big tree", the small but perfectly formed baby oak

With work looming and both Woody and I feeling well recovered after the new years "do" we set about our last couple of days grafting on the land before we went back to the office

Stone wall, log pile and the new fence posts

There were huge branches that had been felled by Ian several weeks earlier that we had been avoiding dealing with because they were just so huge and we did not have a working chain saw.  

There was no putting it off any longer we had to try and move them and create a workable space.  Rather than trying to tackle the branches as a whole we just chipped away with cutters at the smaller outer twigs, then the smaller branches until we could work with a hand saw on the bigger stuff.  Little by little, and it took two days, we finished clearing the boundary ready for Ian to come back once the weather and ground improved.

We work up on the land in most weather conditions, it is beautiful when the sun is shining with views of the forest and river.  There are often buzzards hunting or playing overhead waiting for you to disturb a mouse or vole for them to pick up for lunch.

Lovely frosty mornings

Fence posts waiting for the gate and wire

It is not always quite so idyllic and we have been stranded up there in pouring all-day rain, sudden and violent hail storms, wind too dangerous to work near the trees or so biting that we end up with terrible wind burn and look like we have spent the afternoon slapping each others faces.  

The pony paddock...i think

Being so high up sometimes all we get is a cloak of fog, so depressing and clinging that everything is wet with dew, logs slip out of your grasp and you loose all sense of scale of the field you are working in.  All you want to do is start a fire but that is almost impossible with everything dripping but what a huge relief when it does finally roar into life!

One of the log piles

The more time we spend up there the more we will learn about the conditions and best places to grow and replant new trees and hedges.  We were given a beautiful big Quince tree by my dad but are waiting to figure out the best location to plant it, we must do that this year.  Our main goals for the next few months are;

• Secure the top boundary fence, paint and re-hang all the gates - by end February
• Re-connect the water and re site the trough - by end February
• Fence off the pony paddock and top triangle - by April
• Re-lay the bottom hedge and part of the middle hedge - before growing season.
• Finish any major tree pruning - before growing season

There are other goals like planning where to plant, what repairs are needed on the cow shed or can we get planning for a dry store/stables etc. but we can start daydreaming about the fun stuff once the priority goals are achieved.

We have booked a weeks work with Ian in February, keep your fingers crossed for some good weather!

Motivation from a mangled mess

Due to our work commitments we can be move around a lot, so it was a great feeling in August to reach our one year milestone of living in the same house and even better when we bought our patch of mud.  It felt like we had started to put down roots.

Because of the past years events it was a bonus when we found a busy and social livery yard for my horse Easter only a couple of miles from home.  We made an instant group of friends, useful contacts and had an active social life, something you can be in danger of giving up on when you keep moving and leaving friends. We thought we found a good bunch of like minded people but it was a real tragedy when it all fell apart at the end of the summer due to some silly decisions made by a few of our friends, people we trusted.  

September was a tough time and going up to the land most nights and weekends gave us some space to get away from it all.  Clearing paths, chopping and burning gorse took our minds off the feeling of being cheated.  Needless to say we got alot done out of shear bloody mindedness that autumn.  "Never let the f**kers get you down!".

Woody (mostly) and I hand cleared this path through 5ft high gorse

Another bundle of brambles for the pile

Woody making short work of the top triangle brambles.

The first of many bonfires

40 winks?

Remember the cow shed?

July 2014

September

July 2014, there's a shed and yard in there somewhere...

There is it! 

As you can see we had been busy but we were only just scratching the surface. We were loosing the light in the evenings and the ground was becoming difficult to cross in a normal vehicle.  We needed to get some hard standing in to allow us to drive in and work on through the winter and so far we had been doing everything by hand (except for the brief stint with the brush cutter that was useless!) we needed help!

Summer Treasures

Fox Moth Caterpillar

The pond and natural spring

Five Spot Burnet Moth

Brick cow shed

Meadow Brown Butterfly

Treasure haul from the brambles

Late flowering Eastern Gorse

Bedstraw

Common Lizard

We have alot!

"Are we mad?  We ARE mad!"  was the general consensus as we sat in the dining room of the hotel where the auction had just taken place, surrounded by a wedding reception!  Neither of us felt safe to drive, dizzy with adrenalin, so we decided to get something to eat before we made our way home.

We had somehow bought Lot 2, sadly missing out on the more wooded, but smaller, Lot 3. Where to start?  On purchasing the land we had the legal obligation of repairing some of the boundary fencing, easier said than done, it had been left for years and was a jungle with low overhanging branches and thistles 8ft high!  Our first job was to start to clear a path in to the center of the meadow and start the slow process of clearing; dead trees, wood, brambles, gorse, old metal gates and other junk.  Sounds simple...

Field names always have a way of naming themselves; top or bottom field, road field, big oak, cherry tree, hill field etc.  The same logical naming started to happen with our land too.  So far it's Top triangle; the half acre triangle where the main entrance is, full of brambles, and Pony paddock; two acres of flat pasture with a pretty little oak halfway down.  It gets a bit "wooly" after that, the further you walk in the more you realise the old hedges have blurred into a mass of gorse.  There are other landmarks dotted about; a wet bottom corner, a pond, snake rockery, blue box, brick shed....etc... I am sure these will evolve as we clear, excavate and replant.

We started work on the Friday we completed and signed the last contract.  Woody hired the biggest brush cutter we could get in the car wedged in with saws, cutters and a kettle we left work early setting off for the land on a muggy afternoon in August.  Arriving at the land and unlocking the main gates we drove down the long driveway and finally bumped over the the grassy threshold (feeling a bit like trespassers!) into the first field where we negotiated a few rocks and anthills and made our way through the sea of meadow grasses.

We unpacked the car and woody got straight on with clearing an area where we could set out tools, have a fire and put the kettle on to start our obsession with making a good "cupatea" on the land.

I spied Woody after a few hours taking it all in, I think his face says it all....what have we done!?

 

The first few weeks were spent figuring out what we had.  We spend a lot of time walking round and round, finding something new each time.  The top fence was knackered and the driveway fence was pretty much rust and sticks so that needed sorting but to even get to them we had low hanging Oak branches and Birch saplings everywhere that needed to be cut back....we had a lot of sawing ahead of us...

Heavenly, but we've somehow got to get a tractor and post basher down there.....