Last spring I had a bad fracture in my left wrist, had surgery to put the fragments together, and then got the bombshell advice to avoid use of vibrating machinery like petrol chainsaws from now on. As you can imagine, that’s a life changing injury in my case. Since then I’ve been working out what to do and getting as much advice I can including from my physiotherapist. I’m planning to make posts about how I carry on managing Century Wood and I hope it will be useful for other people who are dealing with injuries and conditions like arthritis.
Well, to be specific, Lantra wants to criminalise chainsaw use by private individuals on their own land unless they have paid for a Lantra-style chainsaw course. Lantra describes itself as the UK and Ireland’s “one-stop-shop for land-based training and careers”. It has a dominant position in regulating training courses for rural skills. Since there are HSE regulations that require businesses to ensure that workers are properly trained, this brings some Lantra qualifications into that mandatory framework – you can face criminal prosecution for employing people to use chainsaws without the proper training. That’s reasonable and we have a long tradition starting with the Factory Acts of requiring safeguards when employment is involved. But now they are seeking to extend this to private individuals.
This month I’ve visited the Bois de Versoix, a forest of about 1300 acres about two miles from the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. This woodland is a working forest but also contains a nature reserve, Les Douves, with amenities for the public. In particular, there is parking near the nature reserve on the Chemin de Douves, and so it’s a good place to start.
In 1425, 600 years ago this year, the town of Shrewsbury had a stamp made for the wax seals attached to official documents. On the stamp are three shield designs: the three leopards of the King of England, a cross of St George, and on the right the three leopard heads which have become the emblem of Shrewsbury and its county of Shropshire. But why leopard heads? And why are they called “loggerheads” in Shropshire?
Impression of the Shrewsbury town seal, 1425, in the Shrewsbury Museum. Copyright Shropshire Museums, used with permission.
Earlier this month I was on a trip to Illinois in the US and inspired by my shepherd’s hut stay in Devon, I took the opportunity to stay in a cabin on a small farm well away from the cities. “The Little Red Cabin” is on a hobby farm just outside the town of Lena in northwest Illinois, only a few miles south of the border with Wisconsin.
It was built only a few years ago and is a timber framed building with wood siding and a corrugated metal roof. It’s very well insulated, finished to a high quality, and well thought-out.
When I built the Barn at Century Wood back in 2018, I made sure I aligned its side door with the side door of the Log Cabin. So far this has become a short path with some paving slabs to help when the ground it’s muddy. This year I got a generator and log splitter which I use in the Barn, and I’ve increased my use of the space as a workshop that’s free from rain and hot summer sun. So now I’m building an extension to the Barn to roof over the gap between the two buildings.
Last month NASA published evidence for ancient life on Mars. If true, it would have been like the bacteria on Earth which get their energy from iron chemistry without needing oxygen from the air. It felt strangely close to home as iron bacteria on Earth are present in oxygen-starved seasonal ponds and streams, and become particularly visible this time of year, including in Century Wood.
Back from my September trip to Devon and Dorset for the Smallwoods AGM and Hardy’s Cottage, October has mostly been about firewood. I brought trailer loads back home from Century Wood where I had cut it last winter, and then split and dried it in the Barn.
On the way back from the Small Woods AGM in Devon, I visited the cottage where Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and lived as a young man. His novel “The Woodlanders”, about people living and working in West Country woodlands, inspired the name of the Woodlanders Facebook group, and I’ve always wanted to visit places associated with the book.
The cottage is at the end of the lane that runs through the small village of Higher Bockhampton, and is now in the hands of the National Trust. It is a wide red brick house with a thatched roof and a large garden that was used as a yard by Hardy’s father, a builder. The interior photos show the main parlour which was used for cooking too, the bedroom where Hardy was born (with a cot), and his bedroom (with a desk in the window). The garden included an apple orchard, and a shed now has a cider press and other building and agricultural tools. Cider is especially relevant to The Woodlanders as the main character, Giles Winterbourne, was a cider maker during the autumn. It’s necessary to book yourself onto one of the tours of the building to visit, and you can’t enter the garden until your appointed time. You can see quite a lot over the fences though if you don’t have time for all that.
This weekend I’ve been in Devon for the Annual General Meeting of the Small Woods Association at the HQ of the Dartmoor National Park. I drove down on Thursday, the AGM was on Friday, and then there was a woodland visit on Saturday. I’m going to write a separate post about visiting Thomas Hardy’s woodland cottage on Sunday.
I decided to do something a bit different for somewhere to stay and booked an off grid shepherds hut near Newton Abbot: Swallow, one of the two huts of Wood Lane. Similar price to a budget chain hotel but as you can see there’s no comparison.
