The first year

Where do you start when you have just bought 50 acres of ancient woodland covered in Sitka spruce? After spending several years thinking about owning a wood, suddenly I had one and I had to figure out what to do with it. The first year was basically about that. Trees take a long time to grow and a woodland takes a long time to evolve. It definitely felt right to spend time thinking through a plan rather than rushing to start. Actual work in the wood was very limited, while lots of time was spent exploring, thinking, researching and planning.

Below are the activities we did in year 1. I’ve written about the management plan in a separate post.

Roadside safety

As the woodland runs alongside 900 metres of public road I decided it would be a good idea to get a tree survey done to make sure we weren’t at risk of liability for a passer-by being squashed under a falling tree. The survey indicated that some of the trees were unacceptably dangerous and should be removed. The road-side section is native woodland and I was a bit upset that my first action as a woodland owner would be to remove mature native trees. However, it turned out the council were already concerned about the trees and the Forestry Commission agreed.

Next step – how to fell and extract the trees without holding up the traffic too much. The answer came in the form of our friendly local harvesting contractor and a couple of his cutters who got the trees down and out of the way with the aid of his forwarder. The council let us manage the traffic ourselves with stop/go signs, with welcome help from Jamie’s sister and my sister . The whole operation went pretty smoothly. We ended up with a large pile of birch and alder logs, while the road is hopefully less hazardous. It still has plenty of mature trees and young trees are growing up in the gaps.

Mapping and planning

I was keen to get to know the wood before deciding on a plan (although I had plenty of ideas). This was easier said than done because most of the wood is a dense spruce plantation and getting through it involves a lot of crawling, stooping, being poked, scratched and getting lots of bits down the back of your neck. Also, once you are deep into the spruce it is pretty difficult to know where you are.

We brashed trees along 13 parallel transects that each run from the bottom of the hill to the top along the length of the woodland (brashing means removing the lower branches of trees). This provided access at regular intervals and allowed me to get a much better picture of what was where. By using my observations, together with aerial imagery and LiDAR (topography) data, I drew up a map of the woodland on the computer. This showed the slope gradients, the locations of particular features and the distribution of tree species. The mapping was helpful for working out the management plan. I used it to divide the wood into different compartments and to decide where to locate new access tracks.

The mapping exercise and my subsequent wanderings in the wood meant that after a year of ownership I had a fairly good mental map of the wood and now generally know where I am!

Firewood chopping

We chopped a lot of wood – using only muscle power and a splitting maul. Most of the logs from the road-side felling (see above) we cut into rounds with a chainsaw and then split. We found that using the tyre method made things a lot quicker – splitting the rounds inside a tyre fixed to the chopping block stops the logs falling off, so you can just keep smashing away until your round is in pieces of the size you want.

The split logs are now stacked on pallets, covered with tarps and seem to be drying out nicely. We learnt the hard way that if you are sloppy in your stack construction you may suffer acute structural failure when the logs start to dry out and shrink.

We considered getting a petrol log splitter but decided that, for now, our rate of splitting by maul given small initial outlay and zero running costs (except perhaps a few extra calories for the operator) did not justify the purchase of a log splitter. Anyway, splitting by hand is more peaceful and I also find it quite satisfying.

Domestic improvements

We bought an old touring caravan and put a wee log stove in it so that we have a cosy abode when we are in residence at the wood.

Over the summer I finally got round to building a toilet shack out of spruce poles. These were from some small trees I took out from just above our yard. It turned out wonkier than planned but maybe that adds to its charm, its charm also being gained from the lovely woodland view you get whilst undertaking your business.

The loo is for solids only. These are deposited in a bucket and then covered with wood shavings. Kitchen waste also goes in. When it is full I empty the bucket onto a compost heap and cover the contents with plenty of bracken. According to ‘The Humanure Handbook’ this should eventually turn into lovely compost.

Bracken

During the summer I cleared a small area of bracken above the yard using a slasher. As bracken apparently makes good compost I gathered it into a big pile to see what happens. There is no shortage of bracken in some of the open areas of the wood. While some bracken is a natural part of our type of woodland, the thick, dense stands you find in open areas with more light appear to smother other vegetation including regenerating (baby) trees.  I intend to make a plan for dealing with this somehow. Bracken seems to be a widespread problem in Scotland. I am sure there are uses for which it could be harvested. I believe crofters used to do this. I’ll do some research and write a blog post about it sometime.

Track routes and other brashing

The habit of Sitka spruce to grow with its branches right down to ground level makes for needing to do a lot of brashing. Inside the stand the lower branches are dead and brashing is needed simply to allow access. This can be done with a silky saw. As I mentioned, we brashed transects. I also subsequently brashed routes for the tracks that I am proposing to put in. While the best general track layout could be determined from the map, the precise route needed to be worked out on the ground. This required me to spend many hours poking about in the plantation trying to find routes that made best use of the gradient and avoided as many native trees as possible. I brashed the routes and marked them with orange tape. Between the transects and the brashed track routes, getting around the wood is now a little easier.

Brashing the edge trees was another task we started. On these trees the lower branches on the outer side are alive and often large. Removing them (easiest done with a chainsaw) allows more side light into the plantation and it also stopped them from damaging the deer fence in some places.

The future

Well, that was a brief guided tour of year 1 so you should now be up to date! Working out a management plan felt like an achievement. Implementing it is going to be the next challenge so come back to find out what happens in year 2 and beyond.