Woodlands.co.uk - Woodland Activities
Greenridge – my wood.
Having been born and brought up in rural Devon and then subsequently spending a career of 50 years at sea, the prospect of retirement with all its encumbrance of zimmer frames and wheel chairs was not sitting too comfortably on my shoulders. A year into this experience, at about the time the wife stopped talking to me, and with the feeling of guilt experienced every morning of really not doing very much constructive with my life, except walk the two Springers the obligatory six miles a day along the coast outside my home – it really felt as if the rot was well and truly starting to set in. That is until one day, whilst exploring a quiet part of Northumberland, I espied a Woodlands.co.uk for sale sign. Read more…
Containers in woodlands: forest stores and shelters
There are two ways of “doing forestry” – traditional forestry works with teams of forestry workers who descend on the plantation, do their work and move on, storing no equipment. In the other model with smaller scale management a more permanent presence is needed and minor works are done throughout the year, and there is usually a need for somewhere to store equipment. Such forestry equipment can include tree-planting kit, hand tools, fencing materials and even camping stuff. What the owner or manager needs is some space that is dry and secure and does not need expensive and potentially damaging foundations. Many owners wish to manage their woodlands in this way but they need a store and shelter of some sort. Steel Containers can be the answer.
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My wood – part two
The second instalment to “my wood” has, like Spring, this year – sprung rather too soon. I’ve been away for most of the last week starting work on a new area of woodland in Norfolk that I hope to be able to bring to market in the early summer. So after nearly a week of absence , I hurried across the field as the light rose on Saturday morning accompanied by Stig who seemed even happier than me, tail wagging frantically in the bitter frost.
Despite some savagely cold dawns, a couple of weeks of unseasonably warm weather has transformed the woodland. It has been more of a boom than a Spring bloom this year. My hornbeam is in leaf, the hawthorn is in blossom, Read more…
Coppice and dead wood
I am currently studying for a Foundation Degree in Forestry and Woodland Management at Plumpton College in East Sussex and am preparing a dissertation on dead wood in coppice woodlands.
Coppicing is a well-known silvicultural practice, carried out in the UK for the purpose of habitat and wildlife conservation, and for sustainable timber production / products. It is widely accepted that, whilst coppicing has many benefits for conservation, ‘woodland historically managed as coppice is generally lacking in dead wood’ (FC 2002). Earlier literature such as Buckley (1992) and Kimmins (1997), supports the view that there is a general lack of dead wood presence within actively managed coppice woodlands. Read more…
My Wood
Some of you may know me as I’m the Regional agent for East Anglia. I own my own wood and wanted to share with you my wood over the year. I’m often asked by owners on what commitment in terms of work a wood entails. This will depend on the woodland and your needs and aspirations. However, I thought it might be useful to give a regular update on my own woodland.
I’m blessed with the best wood in the world or that’s what I think. It’s my wood. It’s called Snipes wood after one of my old dogs and it is 150 metres from my back door and surprisingly despite spending my working life in woodland – I love every moment I spend in it yet do very little work with it. First thing every morning I walk around the wood with “Stig “the dog and love seeing the sun rise as I head back for home.
Lath Wood
My wife and I decided on the purchase of a small wood a few years ago. We were able to research financial, legal and physical practicalities on-line and www.woodlands.co.uk was the most useful site in our search for a suitable wood. We visited nine or ten woods across the South of England, from Devon in the West to Kent in the East. We were looking for a wood between 3 and 6 acres up to a spend of about £40K. Some people spend as much on a car, whilst for us non-drivers – a wood is a much better, permanent investment, especially when financial products are looking risky.
But we weren’t just looking for somewhere to bank money but a place of natural beauty and quietude to enjoy and preserve. Our wood had to be accessible from London by public transport but still a rural gem away from built habitation. We were ideally looking for a bluebell wood with a good mix of tree cover — not a conifer plantation. Read more…
Social Forestry in Glede Wood.
Visits to ‘Glede Wood’, Shropshire, provided for the use of the Small Woods Association by Woodlands.co.uk, have begun again with the start of our new project ‘Branch Out’
Our Social Forestry projects have targeted a range of disadvantaged groups from NEET’s (Not in Employment Education or Training) to women offenders. This time we are engaging members of Telford’s black and ethnic minority.
We have managed to gain some funding to buy a minibus, bought cheaply courtesy of Hitachi Capital, which allows us to pick people up from the town centre. As a result this broadens participation and removes another barrier to exploring the forestry sector. Read more…
Woodlands are more than just collections of trees
A leaf usually has a lifetime of only a single year but is often seen as the basic building-block of a forest which lasts for much, much longer. A tree has a lifetime of about 100 times as long as a leaf, with a lifespan of about 100 years. Looking on a larger scale, the forest may have a life of 10,000 years or about 100 times that of the individual tree. So these three elements – leaves, trees and forests – are each a couple of orders of magnitude apart in their length of life, yet they are vitally reliant on each other, and we instinctively think of a causal chain, with leaves leading to trees and trees leading to forests. Read more…