stuff bad news, try this

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stuff bad news, try this

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dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46212
Location: yes

Posted: Mon May 25, 20 7:17 pm Post subject: stuff bad news, try this
much better to do something good in whatever ways you can 2 orchards and 7 acres of mixed woodland so far, i need a new site

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15968

Posted: Tue May 26, 20 6:26 am Post subject:

I have been purposely not reading that as most of the articles on the subject are pretty trite. Skimming though that, it isn't bad, and they seem to have picked on some reasonably sensible small woodland owners to talk to. The complex where the private part of our wood is is a Woodlands for sale site, and there are a number of different owners, all with their own ideas. Most of them start off enthusiastic, then lose interest after they find it isn't all beauty and sitting in the woods listening to the birds singing. Depending on the wood, it can be hard work and the weather makes a big difference. We are rather unusual in that we base our work on our woods rather than it being just a hobby. Having said that, we are trying to improve the wood by restoring parts of it to its traditional use (coppice) and thinning the plantation. The products of this work are used to make things like firewood (with some bought in from another large wood in the complex), charcoal, besoms etc.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46212
Location: yes

Posted: Tue May 26, 20 2:33 pm Post subject:

my 7 acre wood was, in part, a response to well-meaning but inept "improvements" to the adjacent clough top which added some "exotics" and removed most of the wildlife to create a "nature reserve"

the other side of the clough to my wood has been "improved" over 30 yrs by the chain gang folk so it has some oddly placed and badly built drystone work and little else apart from a few of my tree plantings in bits they cannot work easily, it does slope a bit

in the early 60's it was a fairly trashed post-industrial meets rural landscape, it has got better

the thing i liked about the article was the theme that "we don't own it, we look after it for later"

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15968

Posted: Wed May 27, 20 7:04 am Post subject:

That is always the way I look at it. I am the steward of our wood during my lifetime and will hopefully pass it to our son to continue the work. After that, it is up to him as I don't think the cat will want it, but the aim is to leave it to someone or some organisation who will understand what we are doing and continue. As our wood is possibly over 1000 years old, many people have had their own ideas on how to manage it over the years, and it shows in what is in the wood now. We have beech avenues, put in during the 19th century, oak trees in rows, a few more recently planted trees, although only a walnut, which we think was a mistake for ash, a red fruited crabapple rather than the native green, and a wilding apple, probably from a pip as exontics. There are a few western red cedar and Corsican pine that were planted as nurse species in the beech plantation, and we are hoping to reduce them a little, although not entirely, as they have some uses.

If you do a management plan it brings it home to you. I was doing one with the beech plantation done in the 1960s, with some put in during the 1930s. As beech has a final felling age of 80-100 years, I realised that I would not live to see the 60s planting come to full term, unless I live to be over 110, which is not that likely.

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