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2025

Connecting to outer space

Ten years ago I wrote about TV as a slightly unwelcome visitor in the Log Cabin at Century Wood. We took a tuner to watch an episode of Shed of the Year when it was still on TV, but it felt like an intruder and that radio seemed much more natural. TV has not visited since and we’ve relied on radio for a connection to the world outside when we’re there. But this month I’ve taken the plunge and got a Starlink Mini dish to get a high speed internet connection.

Over the last decade the lack of phone signal became more inconvenient. Signal has always been patchy, especially when the trees are in leaf, and if anything got worse over the years as we shifted from 2G towards less penetrating, higher frequency 5G. I’ve found I can get an ok connection from one of the fences with a farmer’s field as there is a direct line of sight to a distant cell tower. I dreamed up schemes with a base station there and hundreds of meters of armoured mouse-proof ethernet cable running to the Log Cabin, but it really didn’t make sense financially (£100s) or logistically (a pain to set up and maintain).

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Bridging the Gap

The felling of the Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian’s Wall has had a huge amount of media attention, from the discovery of the crime on 28th September 2023, the morning after Storm Agnes, to last week’s conviction of two men for the criminal damage to the tree. It’s not at all a woodland tree, but I think there are some important rural issues that are part of the story but which the media have mostly glossed over.

The Sycamore Gap tree in 2018. Used with permission.
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Gathering firewood

Yesterday I took the tractor and trailer round to gather some piles of firewood I’d felled and cut up in January and February. Some of these were right next to the rides and easy to get to, but a couple were way off any of the rides behind tangles of brambles and fallen branches. Despite this, I was able to get the tractor in by finding a roundabout route since it’s narrow enough to get through gaps and has enough power to get over smaller logs and stumps.

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“Woodlander” by Ben Law

Last year I finally read Ben Law’s book “Woodlander” from 2021. I’d read his “Woodand Way” (published 2001) and “Woodsman” (2013), and he is a prominent advocate for traditional woodland management and crafts. “Woodlander” is billed as “a guide to sustainable woodland management”. It’s a very good introduction to the subject and I think works best in mapping out all the pieces of the woodland management and ecosystems jigsaw, and giving people new to woodlands signposts about the more detailed advice they may need in practice. It’s also a pleasure to be taken on a tour of the subject by the man himself. On the strength of it, I got his “Woodland Workshop” and “Woodland Craft” books over Christmas.

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