Trees trees trees and mowing

First lockdown we spent plenty of clearing up trees and mowing.

So far second lock down has some similarities!

Here is Daisy ‘helping’ me tidy up branches by standing so it is impossible to out them on the wheel barrow. Thanks Daisy!

Nice mown lawn

Here are the branches before Doug cut them up

My fire refused to light as those branches were still damp. Doug burnt 3 other bonfires we had around the place waiting for sunny weather. Now we have non left for bonfire night! I am sure there will be more by then...

Tree Cutting

In every storm we have been worrying that the large trees near the house might fall and crush the house or barn. They were too big for us to cut and too close to the house, so we had some experts in to do it. They were very efficient and cut down or pollarded five huge trees in one day. A cherry picker certainly made it easier, but one of them had to climb several of the trees to get tricky bits off. Scary stuff, high in a tree with a chain saw!

Before

Pine has gone

Ash has been pollarded too

They also cut down two more ash that you can't see clearly in the picture and a dead oak on the drive. The cows decided to rush towards that just as they nearly finished cutting, but we managed to avoid any of them being squashed! One of them was in heat, so they were all acting crazy.

It was expensive to have them clean up all the mess and would have cost more again than just the cutting, so we are now left with a huge mess to clean up!
But that is ok as at least the house and barn are safe.

Cutting trees in the potager and elsewhere

The potager has been getting more and more overshadowed by trees for some years. As we are about to put in some new beds (the wood we did 5 years ago is rotting now) we thought we had better take advantage of the lovely weather to get it done. It started as one tree we were going to cut and a few hazels and ended up as far more.

Hard to get a photo of the scale of the devastation. We left that silver birch and another smaller one. That was it.

Lots and lots of branches to be burnt and relatively little firewood. This is the way of all trees!

While we were at it we gave the plum tree at the top of the drive a drastic trim. Again many branches few logs

This is the potager with the mess cleared up. Now we can get on and do the new beds. This weeded one is going to be the first so that peas and beans can go in asap. We are also going to add a fruit cage at the other end over the raspberries, black currents, blueberries and gooseberry.

Giant sweet chestnut has fallen down

The photos don't really do it justice, it is HUGE. It fell across the path up to the top field, which is inconvenient if you want to go to the top field, but kind of convenient too as it will make removing the wood easier as it gets chopped up.
We are not quite sure what happened to it, its roots don't seem very big - did they rot away or what??
Hopefully none of the others are planning on doing the same thing.

This is looking down the path at it, you can kind of make it out across the path - all a bit hard to make it out, the roots are on the right of the picture. The light coloured bit of wood is on another tree that got broken as it fell.

Puny roots for such a giant tree

Gap in left in the canopy

Another similar tree so you can get a feeling for how big it is. None of Doug's chain saws are big enough to deal with all of it. We might need to borrow one for the lowest down widest bits.

One of the branches

There are still many many trees left (this is only a few of them.

Grazing, fences and wood

We have a few too many grazing animals at the moment and despite the spring growth we are struggling to keep them all fed, so we are working to get the field the sheep are in ready for the cows.

A couple of trees have fallen on the fence so the first task has been to get those removed. One of them as pretty big. Plenty more wood for the woodpile - though it still has to be split.

HUGE tree. Doug has split some of the rounds so they won't roll and just left it in the field for now. It doesn't show in the photo, but it beside a steep bank, so quite a bit of work to get it out.

I have split one log, it is hard work. Here it is burning in the fire

This is smaller bits gathered ready to be cut to length

The next thing is to clear and strim all the the brambles round the fence and fix the fence up.

More wood

But not enough yet!
We took advantage of the drier weather to get the car and trailer over to where it is stored. We need to get it up to nearly touching the balcony to see us through winter. The next loads come from in the field and are less weather dependent. Winter is coming though so we need to get on with it!

The wood here includes the very last of the wood we bought with the house. Soon we will be on to burning only Doug cut wood!

Wood for winter

I resisted the title 'Winter is coming'.
We don't know yet who much we will need for the new uber heating system, but we know we will need a lot as it takes a lot of wood to heat anything! Of course we won't need as much now as we will when the whole house is being heated - we hope though that that will be less than we were burning in the old stove in the living room/house with no insulation and far more ventilation than there should be.
We have moved some round from the woodpile to the end of the house while the weather is dry and we can get the car and trailer over there. We need to do 3 or 4 more trips to fill this space and be in a good place for winter coming.

This is lots of scrabby bits from the bottom of the pile that we have put here at the end to burn soon.

This is the last of the wood we bought with the house. Doug has been chopping lots of new though so hopefully we will have enough. It feels like a never ending task.

Many of the woodpiles round here are lovely works of art. Ours tend not to be as we have a lot of strange lumpy bits of wood that don't stack very well. I guess when you buy your wood they only sell you the beautiful stackable bits.

Cutting down the trees behind the house.

The trees that hold the bank behind the house together had grown tall enough to touch the electricity feed into the house. Though it is covered we don't want them bringing it down. Plus they were hanging it bit over the roof which is not a good thing even though at this point they were not big enough to do any damage - a stitch in time saves nine as they say.

This is an after photo. You can see the cut trunks on the right and the odd branch further down that is still hanging over the roof, but much better now - it is lighter in windows at the back of the house too.

None of the trees were very big so this is the relatively small pile of stuff that will be cut in to lengths for the wood burner. See the nice safety trousers Doug is wearing his kind wife bought them. It makes it hot work though.

And this is the giant pile of stuff that needs chipping (or we might just bonfire)

Wood

Doug has been busy chopping up lots of wood around the property. Mostly it has fallen in various storms. We need quite a few cubic meters of wood to keep us warm each winter and they need to dry for a year or more depending on the type.

This is all new stuff that Doug has just chopped and moved here

This is a variety of ages of wood, mostly chopped by Doug

This is the small amount of remaining wood that we bought with the property.

We don't really know yet how much we will need to see us through the winter once the house is done with the underfloor heating and the new heating system.

Fire wood

With wood burning central heating we have to make sure we have a giant stock of logs. They take some years to dry, so we have to plan ahead. It is hard work cutting the trees down and then more hard work cutting it all up.

Chainsaws are dangerous things and I am too scared to touch them, even when turned off, but Doug is doing a heroic job of making sure we will be warm for years to come. We recently bought a saw horse with a chainsaw holder that makes it a bit easier and safer to cut logs to length at least.

This tree was getting dangerously close to the electricity wire that brings the supply in to the house, so had to be cut back quite drastically

Cutting it down isn't really the hard work bit (though the dangerous bit) it is the tidy up of all the branches afterwards that is most work

These ones will be cut to length to suit the fire in the saw horse at some point

I don't use the chainsaw but I do use the hedge trimmer. It is quite scary too but only works with both hands on it, so at least you are unlikely to get your own fingers - maybe a leg though.

Cutting down a big dead tree

You can't see it super clearly, but it is in the middle of this picture in the far away tree line leaning over to the left. It has been dead since we moved in, but recently has started leaning more.

So Doug and Don tackled it this week. 

Doug thinks we got maybe 3.5 stere - which is the French measurement for fire wood. It is a cubic meter of meter lengths of wood. Which means when you buy it in 0.5 meter lengths to fit in the fire it is a little less than a cubic meter as thy pack closer together when shorter.

You can see the stump in the background.