Woodsman
Page 4
I often visit here with my children for bilberry picking, as the reduction in tree cover has encouraged the spread of this prolific berry across the open heath. The wild relative of the blueberry, it is delicious in flavour and ensures the children’s hands and faces are more purple than when we have been blackberrying. Plenty are consumed while picking but others are taken home for one of my seasonal favourites – bilberry pancakes. I remember as a child that strawberries had a particular season. Now, with imported food, it is possible to eat them all year round, and the energy cost of transporting them is reflected in the price, unlike the associated pollution. The excitement and anticipation of waiting for the first strawberries to ripen have been taken away and in doing so this exquisite fruit – at its best when plucked straight from the plant – has become trapped in a plastic package and transported around the globe. It is the eating of fruit in their particular season that makes our connection with growing food so special and foraging such a delight. Blueberries are readily available all year round, but bilberries, they have their season and even then you will not find them in the shops. This perfect little berry creates a day of adventure. A picnic is prepared, water bottles filled and a mission undertaken to venture out across the heathland. A whole day unveils itself around this seasonal fruit. Games of hide and seek are interspersed with more picking. My son Zed becomes a bilberry scout, venturing ahead and alerting us busy pickers behind him to the treasures he discovers. Tess, my daughter, is picking well, her face blotched purple from her stained fingers. ‘Look at this one,’ she shrieks, finding a good-sized bilberry. As the day draws on she is on my shoulders as we start our descent and the journey home.
Foraging engages you with the countryside and all it has to offer. It is an experience that will etch itself on your memory, a world away from purchasing a punnet of blueberries at a supermarket. Added to that, it is a healthy day out that costs nothing – and you often end up with a free lunch!
I can’t finish writing about foraging without mentioning the sweet chestnut. One of the main foraging activities at Prickly Nut Wood takes place during the chestnut season. Although I should properly refer to it as harvesting rather than foraging, as the trees surrounding my home produce large amounts and collecting them is quick and rewarding. The sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) was introduced by the Romans for its delicious and nutritious nuts, and is now so well established in the woodland landscape that it is often referred to as an ‘honorary native’. In my early days at Prickly Nut Wood, I harvested sacks of the nuts and sold some to Steve Jones, a fine independent greengrocer at Fernhurst, whilst others I bartered for beer in some of the local pubs. Chestnuts are well adapted to cope with the awaiting grey squirrels. Unlike hazelnuts, chestnuts have a spiky case and the squirrels have to wait until the chestnut case opens before they are able to harvest the nut. The case opens to produce three nuts, which most years ripen to a reasonable size. The grey squirrel has its opportunity but so do I, and there are always plenty of nuts to go round. The best method for harvesting I’ve found is to throw a tarpaulin under the tree. The nuts fall on to the tarpaulin and are easy to sort from their cases, and the remains are swept away. A few hours later I can return, knowing all the nuts on the tarpaulin are freshly fallen. Picking this way, I ensure quality nuts and do not waste time picking amongst the piles of all the cases that build up under a productive chestnut tree.
I have eaten chestnuts in numerous ways, from bread and biscuits to nut roasts, soups and chutneys, but I still find it hard to beat roasting them on the open fire. I have a French chestnut-roasting pan I was given, like a frying pan with a woven metallic base. Although a functional object, it is beautifully designed and is always a pleasure to put into use. I take autumn walks through the coppice and return with pockets full of chestnuts, then sit around the outdoor kitchen fire roasting chestnuts and looking out across the woodland – so many times with so many different people, the experiences all meld into one, one taste-provoking, magical experience that encapsulates autumn at Prickly Nut Wood.
As my year of observation began to reach its end I started to consider my plans for the management of the woodland. Observation had been a privilege, and with that focused time I had learned so much more detail than the hustle and bustle of life generally allows us. Now I was engaging with the prospect of reworking some of the derelict coppices and introducing some of my own ideas, such as the planting of coppice fruit avenues.
Coppice fruit avenues are where fruit trees are intentionally planted between cants of coppice, or in clearings next to cants. When a cant is cut, sunlight reaches the fruit trees, causing the formation of fruit buds and the promise of a good crop the following year.
I clearly remember cutting my first cant of coppice. It had last been cut some 50 years earlier and had some larger-diameter stems, as well as areas of windblow and deadwood. There is a sense of history within the woods that feels like a tangible link when you cut coppice.
Coppice is the term used to describe the successional cutting of broadleaf woodland during the dormant winter period. In spring, when the sap rises, the stump of the tree (known in coppicing as the ‘stool’) sends up new shoots that are grown on for a number of years until they reach the desired size. They are then cut again during winter and the process is repeated over again. The wood cut from coppice is known as ‘underwood’, and has for centuries catered for a variety of traditional products and supported a large rural workforce, from the cutter and coppice merchant to the craftsman. Coppice is a valuable crop and, managed well, can sustain more people in work per acre than any other modern forestry alternative. It is also a sustainable pattern of management: trees rarely need replanting, so the soil is not disturbed and therefore not subject to the risk of erosion. Nutrients are returned to the soil mainly through annual leaf fall. Coppicing creates a cyclical habitat and unique ecosystem, and is one of the few patterns of symbiosis known in nature in which human beings form a crucial part of the relationship. In a well-managed coppice, the stools are closely spaced about five foot apart, and the ground is fully shaded by the leaves and coppice shoots. When the poles are cut, sunlight pours in, dormant seeds waiting for the light sprout, and different birds, animals and insects move into the newly created habitat.
I feel in touch with the woodsmen of old when I sit down around the brash fire and contemplate the previous cut, and the one before that. Coppice woods carry history within them, and with it they carry hope for the future. A truly sustainable landscape is one where the sustainable practices of previous generations are being repeated in the present in order to leave resources and opportunities for the future. Coppicing is one of the few landscapes in which humans are an integrated part of the ecosystem and where taking resources from the landscape produces positive by-products. Each area that has been coppiced allows in the sunlight that helps wildflowers thrive, which in turn provide food to caterpillars and fills the woods with summer butterflies. If we remove the human element, the woods return to high forest, the varied patchwork disappears, the wildflowers recede with the shade, and there is no food for the caterpillars and butterflies. This remarkable ecosystem is dependent on the coppice worker, cutting his or her annual quota of poles from which to make a living. In Bradfield Woods in Suffolk, managed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, coppicing was practised before 1252, according to Oliver Rackham in his seminal work Ancient Woodland. These woods contain some 370 species of plants, and this vastly diverse woodland has developed over the past thousand years by humans cutting poles on a cyclical basis for their needs. In return, nature has responded by creating a unique patchwork of plants in the shadow of our small-scale timber-harvesting operations.
Nature is constantly trying to create woodland. As human beings, we control nature in different phases of this evolution and in the example of coppicing, we create a diverse woodland that we keep on a rotational cycle of perhaps seven years, in the case of hazel. If we take a field that we don’t cut or graze with livestock, the
grass will become long and tufty, and then perennial plants such as brambles will appear. Next come the pioneer tree species such as birch and willow. These colonise the area quickly but will only form a temporary canopy, and over time the climax canopy species, such as oak, beech or ash, will find their way to the top and become the canopy layer. This is what we refer to as ‘nature’s climax’. This is the point where the evolution from earth to high forest has reached its final point; beyond this climax layer nature does not evolve further but rather waits for a canopy tree to fall over and, when the light is let back in down to the forest floor, the process begins once more.
With coppicing we have kept nature to within a certain point of that cycle. By regularly restricting the re-growth of, for instance, hazel, to seven years, nature is not allowed to reach its climax.
The wonderfully diverse flora of chalk grassland has been established through keeping nature at close to ground level. Grazing with sheep ensures that the pioneer tree species do not become established and begin the upward journey to becoming woodland. When we look at landscapes rich in biodiversity, coppice woodlands and chalk grassland are two very different landscapes. The first came about because of the need for small-diameter poles, the second because of the need for wool and meat. These land-use patterns that produce food and materials for our needs whilst maintaining a rich, biodiverse landscape should be the models we use to help us design future landscape strategies.
I spent a good while when surveying my first cant of coppice not just looking at the timber, the direction of felling, the dead wood and hung-up branches, but also searching for the best extraction routes for the timber. As mentioned, the soils of Wealden clay in the wood are on the north-east face of the hill and are impassable with a vehicle most winters. Extraction needs to be by hand, by horse, or winched from a hard ride to the woodland edge. Some of the 40-year-old coppice poles were up to 14 inches in diameter at the base and immovable without some sort of mechanical aid. I have experimented with most forms of extraction over the years and the key is choosing the right equipment for the right wood. With coppice woodlands, where much of the cut material can be turned into product, it is often sensible to do the conversion within the wood. Large poles can be cleaved into four pieces for posts and rail fencing, which is the vernacular fencing style throughout Sussex. When making pales for chestnut-paling fence, I’ve built a cleaving break in the middle of the cant. The timber is processed in the wood and tied up into bundles of 25 pieces, easy to carry out on the shoulder, while the bark and any off-cuts are left in the wood itself. Hurdle makers will often set up and make hurdles in the coppice. Cutting enough material to work up and make hurdles from takes a couple of days. This way, as they work through the woods, they are carrying out only the finished hurdle. When we cut five-year-rotation chestnut coppice for yurt poles and bean poles, we work it up with a bill hook and carry it out the woods on our shoulders. Each journey out of the woods without carrying a bundle is a wasted extraction journey.
The use of horses is making a steady recovery in English woodlands. Although some are being used in agriculture and horticulture, it is in the forest that horses can be uniquely valuable. Coming in a range of sizes, all with different pulling powers, selecting the right breed for the right woodland is vital. In coppice woods, from which lighter poles are extracted, a cob can do plenty of the work and cause minimal damage to the ground flora. When larger timbers need moving it seems hard to better an Ardenne, which are stocky horses with immense power. A number of years ago I engaged Richard Branscombe and the Working Horse Trust, with their reliable Ardennes Monty and Dylan, to extract about 80 oak trees for a barn we were building.
17 May
It’s day two of the extraction and I arrived to find Monty and Dylan tethered to the horsebox, feeding up on some hay. I think yesterday was hard work for these two horses. They spend a lot of time pulling carts, but this is real work and they knew it. All harnessed up, we walk back along the ride and hitch Monty up to the forwarder. I’m impressed with the voice commands – the control Richard has is firm but calm. Monty pulled up alongside an oak butt, this one about 15 foot long and 20 inches in diameter. After yesterday’s sharp learning curve for all of us, today it seems more instinctual as we prepare the forwarder and lay log bearers for the log to roll up, while Richard attaches Monty to pull and roll the log up the bearers on to the forwarder. It’s impressive to see the tension in Monty’s muscles as he pulls forward and in doing so safely negotiates getting the log to stop, centrally positioned on the forwarder. Monty is then hitched up again to the front of the forwarder and commences his return journey back through the woods. He stops perfectly, aligning the log and forwarder with the sawmill. This pattern – but with changing the horses – continues throughout the day. As the afternoon draws on, we approach a large butt that looks far too heavy, even to the hard-working Monty and Dylan. Richard decides they will pull the forwarder together. All hitched up, but no number of commands would make them budge. Richard instructs me to take Dylan’s bridle and run with him, and he’ll do the same with Monty. Sure enough, the horses picked up the pace and our encouragement was enough to start the forwarder moving. I felt truly alive running next to Dylan and encouraging him all the way. When we arrived back at the sawmill, it was the end of the day. Time to feed and rest the horses. We all had a smile on our faces. It doesn’t make me feel like that when I extract with a tractor.
I’ve extracted with ropes and pulleys, using a vehicle stationed on a hard ride (stone track) to drive forwards and in doing so pull the timber to the edge of the ride. This is an effective system but reduces the life of your clutch! A better alternative is a forestry winch, which is powered and driven from a tractor’s three-point linkage. Many are remote-controlled, and the one I use works off two cords. I can stand well away from the operating area and pull one cord to start the winch and the other to stop it. The winch pulls the timber to the back of the tractor, where it is secured with a logging chain. It is then possible to winch more trees – my little 50 hp tractor will take three or four small butts at a time.
Only in cold winters when the ground freezes solid is it possible to drive into the woods and collect poles with a pick-up truck. This doesn’t happen every winter, and so when it does it is important to make the most of it. On icy mornings when the ground is hard I will extract until the sun comes up and starts to warm the surface of the woodland soil. Being on the north side of the hill, my hours of winter sun are limited and this is one of the few times it seems an advantage.
Back in the coppice, I am beginning to fell some of the smaller poles and deadwood. The deadwood is extracted for firewood – it will already be well seasoned and dry, but I do not take all of it. Some standing deadwood should always be left as it is an important part of woodland biodiversity. A coppiced wood with a few upright, dead stems can look strange to the uninitiated, but when you stand at the edge of the wood in early spring and listen to the resonance of a drumming woodpecker, the value of those standing dead stems becomes more obvious.
The smaller poles I lay in drifts to be worked up, which is standard practice in most coppice woodlands. By felling the poles in the same direction and then laying them in rows all facing the same way, I end up with a series of these drifts, looking like rivers of brash flowing through the coppice. I then start at the end of the drift and work up the poles from the butt to the tip. Because they are lying in drifts, it is possible to pick up the next pole with relative ease, whereas when they are not drifted the poles will snag and tangle as you try to separate them. I work up my poles with a Morris’s Devon bill hook, my preferred pattern of bill hook to use for this job. Bill hooks (or handbills) are an ancient tool, and many different shapes and patterns were made for different regions and uses. It is possible to find a good second-hand bill hook that, with a few hours of dedicated sharpening, will return to its former glory and keep the new generation of coppicers in business for many a year. Makes to look out for are: Moss,
Fussells, Elwell, Brades, Gilpin, Harrison … there are many others. As work on the land became mechanised the range of bill hooks declined, and most that are now readily available are inferior tools. These are often not made of tempered steel, and they therefore do not hold a good edge. One company still making traditional bill hooks at their hammer forge near Exeter is Morris’s of Dunsford. They make about five patterns of bill hook, plus an excellent double-handed Yorkshire hedging bill hook. These hooks are properly tempered and are ideal for working coppice woodland. Finding a good bill hook is the first step; learning to sharpen it is the next.
For sharpening second-hand bill hooks – or a hook that has really lost its edge or has been misused so that there is a small dink in the metal – I turn to my 30-inch waterwheel. This sandstone wheel I picked up a number of years ago from Arthur Rudd’s. Arthur runs a building and reclamation yard near Passfield. His yard is an Aladdin’s cave and yet remarkably he seems to know where everything is! Arthur has a great knowledge of bricks that needs recording before he departs this world. But back to the grindstone … it has an MOD symbol on the frame and was made in Falkirk in 1942. I have always imagined it was used for bayonet sharpening during the Second World War. It takes two people to sharpen the bill hook: one to turn the wheel with its crank handle, the other to press the bill hook against the stone at the appropriate angle as it turns.
Sharpening a bill hook involves first sharpening the shoulder of the blade, as the key to getting a clean cut with a bill hook is that there is a smooth transition between the edge of the hook and the shoulder of the blade. Having ground down the shoulder a little, I then move on to the edge. Although the grindstone wheel can create a reasonable edge, to create an edge for coppicing and working up I like to use a Japanese ceramic stone. These water stones are first worked over the shoulder and then the edge, and their natural clay is worked away during the sharpening process, leaving a glistening edge. My Devon bill hook is lovely and sharp and works up the coppice pole with minimum effort, removing all the side growth and small knots. I then slice off the tip of the pole with one swing of the bill hook. I always cut the poles at an angle as the hook will slice through the grain at an angle with ease.