Soon after my last blog post, open areas in the woodland underwent quite a sudden transformation into their summer look, with the growth of one plant in particular – the bracken. This plant grows rapidly and prolifically in many of the native woodland areas in Comar Wood, especially in the more open places where there is plenty of light for it and the ground isn’t too wet. It is amazing how it can grow from an underground rhizome into plants several feet tall in a matter of just a few weeks.
While bracken is a native plant, and my general philosophy with the woodland is not to interfere too much with natural processes, in some areas I have decided to manage the bracken a bit. I’m not sure whether the dense bracken found in some areas is completely natural or a result of the indirect effect of humans. For example, perhaps in previous times wild boar or wild cattle would have prevented bracken becoming so dominant. Maybe lower levels of browsing by deer would have allowed an understorey to develop, reducing light levels so that bracken was less vigorous. On the other hand, maybe areas of dense bracken have always been a feature of woodlands like Comar Wood.
My main bracken management is currently in the compartment of native woodland found at the western end of Comar Wood, near the waterfall and gorge. This is an area of about a hectare containing mature silver birch trees, with a stand of aspen in one corner. Since birch has a light canopy and these trees are relatively spaced, there is enough light coming in to have allowed bracken to become dominant.
While the sides of the gorge have various different tree species present (birch, hazel, oak, rowan, bird cherry, wych elm) and a range of ages of tree including mature trees and regenerating saplings, the main area is much less diverse, with just birch trees all of a similar age, and the aspen. Under the bracken are lots of little tree seedlings and saplings, mostly rowan but also hazel and oak. Since there are no larger saplings present, it seems that these seedlings are not able to establish beyond a certain size. Part of the problem had been browsing by sheep and deer (whereas sheep and deer cannot easily access the steep sides of the gorge allowing trees to establish here), but shading by the dense bracken canopy in summer can’t have been helping either.
I would like this native compartment to become more diverse, so have been trying to help these little trees. Fencing work at the end of last year has been keeping sheep out of the wood and although there are deer about, I believe their numbers are low. My other intervention has been bashing the bracken. In the short term this lets more light get to the tree seedlings and in the long term (if I do it for a few years) should reduce the vigour of the bracken.
My tool for bracken bashing is a slashing hook. This has a long wooden handle and a sharp metal blade with a hooked end. I find this works well because the length of the handle means I can work standing up straight and swing the hook to slash a decent swath of bracken in one go. The bracken stalks are cut through and I can then use the hook to gather the bracken into piles. I do this because the cut bracken would otherwise smother the ground flora underneath. By piling it, most areas are kept free of cut bracken, allowing ground flora to continue to grow. Ground flora under the bracken consist of grasses, mosses, blaeberry, heather and various other flowering plants such as tormentil, wood sage, harebell, violet and devil’s bit scabious. Hopefully knocking back the bracken a bit will also help some of these plants and let insects access important woodland nectar sources.
The downside of the hook is that it is possible to accidentally slash a baby tree hidden among the bracken. I have found that just keeping an eye out is generally enough to avoid this, and with the smaller seedlings I am slashing above them anyway.
I enjoy bracken bashing (as long as there aren’t too many midges out) because it is a quiet task using just a basic tool. A simple tool like a slashing hook is very satisfying to use. It has no moving parts, just a blade that can be easily sharpened and maintained and it is light and easy to carry around. There is also something reassuring in the knowledge that humans have been using these types of tools (sharp metal blades attached to wooden handles) for thousands of years. I enjoy the simple, repetitive, physical rhythm of the work and the awareness of the surrounding environment and nature that I get whilst working. When in the right mindset, these types of job can almost be meditative and give a greater connection to the land. One thing I have noticed while bracken bashing under the birch trees is just how many ants nests there are. I was often coming across these mounds of what looks like finely sieved soil amongst the heather and grasses.
Hand tools have been something of a theme for me in June and July because I have been doing some paid work pruning Christmas trees. This was my first experience of the job and I enjoyed it for the same reasons that I enjoy bracken bashing. It helped that the site was in a quiet spot with a nice view! Tools are a pair of secateurs and a machete-style pruning knife and the work involves wandering up and down rows of Christmas trees (these were lodgepole pines), trimming the new growth to help them get into the perfect Christmas tree shape. There is an element of skill in using the machete and knowing how much and where to cut on each tree for the best results. It was a satisfying experience to wander up and down the rows, improving my technique, whilst listening to the background noise of various bird calls and songs, especially the curlews in the distance.
Not so long ago, all forestry work was done by hand, with the assistance of horses for timber extraction. It can be easy to forget this when watching a modern harvester and forwarder at work felling and extracting hundreds of trees in a single day. Even chainsaws, which only came into widespread use in the 1960s, are now considered a rather slow method for felling trees in comparison to a harvester (although they still have lots of uses for felling trees where a harvester would not be appropriate). Before chainsaws, trees were felled using axes and cross-cut saws. I had a go at felling a tree by this method when I did a course in Sustainable Woodland Management at the Centre for Alternative Technology, back in 2014. It is a two-person job, with someone at each end of the saw, pulling it backwards and forwards. The effort required by two people to fell a single tree makes you realise just how much manpower went into forestry before the age of machines.
While modern commercial forestry is dominated by big machines and focused on output volumes, I believe there is still an important role for human-scale working in woodlands using more basic tools (including chainsaws). Having people on the ground, regularly working in a woodland has lots of benefits both for the woodland and for the people. They can get to know the woodland and its wildlife more intimately and therefore design and adapt management interventions appropriately, helping the woodland to thrive. For the people there is the satisfaction of seeing this happen, the reward of regular encounters with nature and the mental and physical benefits of active, outdoor work.
While managing small woodlands like Comar Wood in such a way can never be competitive with commercial style forestry in terms of timber outputs, there are benefits that should be realised in the the longer term. These include a higher quality of timber and potentially a greater volume of quality timber produced per unit area; a more resilient woodland that is able to naturally regenerate; healthy soil that is able to support continued growth; and a woodland that is more then just a timber crop – it is a diverse ecosystem. In our case it is a matter of figuring out how to manage the woodland in this way whilst also ensuring it is financially sustainable, since timber prices reflect commercial harvesting outputs. Lower overheads are one advantage we have, but further ideas to explore include ways of adding value to our existing timber harvests, finding other ways in which we can generate some financial income from the woodland and, when we are eventually able to harvest high quality timber, finding premium markets for this.
In the meantime, I feel rewarded by being able to spend time quietly working away in the woodland making small differences that will help the woodland and its nature to flourish.