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 weather that we had during the first part of the month gave a tropical feel to the woodland and a welcome (to me) change from the cool, damp summer weather we have mostly had for the last couple of months.
The mad rush of early summer is over. A sort of climax and maturity has been reached. Everything is just ticking along in a comfortable way, deep green, soaking up what remains of the summer light and warmth. The heather flowers, basking in sunshine, breathe out their honey-perfume. Birds have finished nesting now and everything feels more relaxed. Robins have started singing again and their outbursts of melody are sometimes interspersed with the tuneful cascade of notes from a willow warbler or fast trill of a wren. The late afternoon sun illuminates a cloud of insects dancing in the still, warm air, while dragonflies flit about catching these unsuspecting creatures.
There seem to be huge numbers of spiders’ webs everywhere at the moment. I’m not sure if there are actually more than earlier in the year, or whether they are showing up more in the still, dewy, misty conditions we have been having. During the spell of high pressure, mornings often brought low cloud with mist or mizzle. These still, damp mornings were a peaceful time to wander quietly in the woodland and it was then that the array of webs hanging in the wet grasses and festooning the branches of the trees were especially apparent.
Early September
A clear, chilly morning the other day had a definite feel of autumn about it. There are hints of yellow in the birch trees, bird cherry leaves are turning red and bracken is starting to turn brown. The jays are out and about and robins can be heard ever more frequently. It was a welcome change to have a still, sunny morning and I took the opportunity for a wander through part of the woodland, enjoying the dappled sunlight that highlighted ferns, mossy rocks and other little details of the forest structure.
New developments
Apart from my bracken bashing, I left the woods to themselves through most of the summer while the birds were nesting. It is possible, with some care, to work in the woods and minimise disturbance to birds, but when I’ve worked in the woods during nesting seasons in the past I have invariably come across nests, which I then try to avoid, making things more awkward. There is no great urgency to our work here so I generally just prefer to avoid it altogether and just let the birds get on with it. By August nesting is over and woodland work can start up again.
The next major task is to extract the logs from my thinning work earlier in the year and to finish off this part of the thinning. Unfortunately, the tractor we bought a few months ago to use for the extraction has been of action due to its PTO not working. I always knew it would be a risk buying an old, cheapish tractor so accept that it will take a little while and a bit more expense to get it up and running properly. We have a good mechanic who has now sorted the problem and he assures me that the rest of the machine is in good nick. Now we need to find a winch for it and hopefully then we will be able to get going! In the meantime, there is lots of tree brashing and removal of small spruce to keep me busy, a continuation of the work I described here.
One new development in our lives over the summer, which I have not yet mentioned, is that I am pregnant. We had decided we needed some more occupants for our house and now have a pair of babies on the way! The twins are due to appear at the end of the year. I am now having to adjust my woodland work to accommodate the growing bump. I decided a couple of months ago that using my normal petrol chainsaw was no longer a good idea. I didn’t think that the noise and fumes from the saw would be doing the babies much good (they can start to hear from quite an early stage).
The Husqvarna 535i XP
This seemed like the ideal excuse to invest in a battery-powered chainsaw. I had been thinking for a while that it would be nice to use a battery chainsaw for working in the wood. They are much quieter than petrol ones, don’t produce fumes and don’t require use of fossil fuels to run (depending on where the electricity used to charge the battery comes from). I realise that batteries also have their own environmental impacts and I don’t think that batteries are the answer to all of our carbon cutting needs. However in this case I decided the battery was worth it, so I bought a Husqvarna 535i XP.
The saw has a lower power than my petrol Husqvarna 550xp but it is more than enough for many of the jobs that need doing in the wood. While I am pregnant I am focusing on lighter work. There are lots of small areas of remnant native woodland that I am gradually enlarging by cutting side branches off edge spruce trees and removing small spruce trees. This helps to allow native ground flora to expand outwards. I have been using the electric saw for this work and it is great! It has had no problem cutting through anything I’ve tried it on so far. It makes an appreciable noise when cutting, though nothing like the petrol saw – according to the specification it has about half the noise output of the petrol saw. However, as soon as you stop cutting it is silent, which I love because I can put it down for a few moments to stack some brash and be able to hear the sounds of the woodland, rather than the tick-over noise of a 2-stroke petrol engine.
At the rate I am working at the moment (slower than usual), and on this type of job, there is enough juice in the battery to do about half a day’s work, which is ideal. However, I am definitely spending more time moving and stacking brash than actual cutting, and mostly cutting pretty small diameters that don’t require much power. If I start working the saw a bit harder at some point, the battery run-time will probably start to be a limitation. I will have to either adapt how I work or buy a spare battery.
While it doesn’t completely replace the petrol saw, I think there is a great niche for the battery saw in the work here at Comar Wood (I will perhaps write up a more thorough review once I have been using it for a bit longer). For now, I am glad that I decided to buy it because it allows me to continue with work in the woodland during the shortening days of autumn while the baby bump grows. Being in the woods in autumn, especially working and making progress (however small), just makes me feel good!
CONGRATULATIONS 🙂 How lucky your children will be, having such a glorious place in which to grow up!
The woodland is looking splendid and the pictures of the sunlight reaching in and splashing gold paint on the floor in that newly autumnal fashion is always reassuring in its cyclic way. Good buy on the chainsaw front. We too have a petrol and battery and the battery tends to get pulled out for all sorts of little jobs.
Our thinning is starting this week and will last about 6 weeks, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed for a bit more dry weather.
Hope you’re over the yucky first few weeks, (maybe you escaped that bit) and into enjoying growing your little ones. Keep well:)
Thank you! I was low on energy and feeling a bit funny the first few weeks, but I am over that now so back to enjoying the woodland and the good weather we have been having recently. Yes the cycles of the seasons and ongoing beauty of nature are nicely reassuring, especially given the strange and uncertain things that are going on in the human sphere at the moment. I hope your thinning goes ok and the weather holds for you and that your woodland responds well to it. All the best.