Low impact forestry in a small Scottish woodland
Autumn’s now in full swing here in Cannich. The glen is turning various shades of golds and browns and the slightest breeze sends flurries of leaves drifting down from the birch trees. Our aspen trees up by the waterfall have turned a bright yellow and the ground below is becoming carpeted in their leaves, which […]
August I started writing this post back in August, when we had a spell of hot weather. Things are starting to feel a lot more autumnal now and that seems like a distant memory but I thought I would still include it: I have been enjoying August in the woodland. The spell of hot, humid […]
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 […]
Sitka spruce is the commonest tree in Comar Wood and also the commonest tree in Scotland, very successful but also highly controversial. My feelings towards this tree have been gradually evolving so I thought I would write a bit about it here. Sitka spruce in Scotland Non-native trees have acquired a negative reputation amongst many […]
I can’t complain too much about having to distance myself here at Comar Wood because it’s what I often do much of the time anyway! Life here hasn’t really changed a lot in the last couple of weeks and at least spring seems to be going ahead as normal. I thought for this post I […]
As you may have gathered from the management plan post, the main initial operation in Comar Wood is thinning of the Sitka spruce. I am pleased to say that this is now underway! Progress has been slower than I’d originally hoped because my time has been a bit limited recently. However, I’ve managed to find […]
Over last winter and spring we carried out our first major operation in the woodland – construction of access tracks. We need tracks so that we can get into the wood with a tractor to start gradually removing the Sitka spruce trees. After spending a lot of time on planning, it felt great to start […]
Following on from the previous post about what we currently have in the woodland, here is an overview of the proposed management plan. I fully expect that elements of it will change as I experience the realities of putting it into practice, but this is the current version. As you will have gathered, although it […]
Here is a more detailed description of the current state of the woodland. (For the idiot’s guide see my earlier post (https://womaninthewoods.net/we-bought-a-wood/). There is a post coming soon about our proposed management plan – they’re sort of linked, so I hope you are paying attention! Where is it? Comar Wood is in Strathglass, a fairly […]
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 […]
