Two years ago I went to the previous edition of the APF show and we went back this weekend when it returned to Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. The APF is the UK’s biggest show dedicated to forestry and related sectors. Despite its focus on “big forestry”, we found plenty to see as family woodland owners.
Alice Holt is one of those names that crops up again and again in British forestry as one of the three research stations of Forest Research (the other two are in Scotland and Wales.) It appears in papers and reports because it’s both a place forest scientists are based and a working forest where long term experiments in silviculture and tree health can be done. I finally managed to visit the forest in Hampshire this summer and took some photos.
We had a lovely holiday in Devon and Dorset this summer, with a visit to the Neolithic Sweet Track on the drive down from Cheshire. In Devon we stayed in a beautifully furnished cabin in Dartmoor, and we were also able to visit Thomas Hardy’s house with the study where he wrote “The Woodlanders” in 1886/7.
This week I went to Century Wood to get some jobs done and make a start on felling trees for the 2027-28 firewood. In the end I only got a token amount of firewood cut but at least it’s a start to this winter’s felling season. I also made the clearing around the Cairn bigger and tidied it up. There are now 504 stones on the Cairn from me, one for each visit, plus others from other people who have come here. I was mostly away from the Cabin so I just set up the Starlink mini dish for half an hour – on the ground, on its case, with a battery.
This summer I visited the Sweet Track on the Somerset Levels for the first time – a Neolithic wooden trackway across the marshes that is 5800 years old. The area is still wet today and was in stark contrast to the parched and brown fields we drove past on the drive down from Cheshire. The visit made me think about continuity with our ancestors who first managed the land, but also the changes in climate and land use which have happened over those thousands of years.
Today is the first day of meteorological autumn. Ever since I bought Century Wood I’ve paid a lot more attention to the seasons and when they “really” are. When does spring really start? When does it turn into summer? What about the distinction between autumn and winter? There are lots of definitions, but could I use the changes of the woodland itself as a guide to the four seasons? More recently, I think there is a much simpler way of looking at it.
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.
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.
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.
Read More »The Little Red Cabin in IllinoisBack 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.
