Preparing winter fuel stocks. learning new skills and enjoying the woods

The tarp is now up over Base Camp 1, thanks to Chris being around to put his festival stage building skills and experience into use. It's a big tarp, camo style and is intended to provide good shelter so that we can utilse the area for a range of activities and leisure. There's plenty of dead ash to collect at that end of the wood and we eyed up a couple of leaning ash trees with exposed roots that we can take down. I suspect though they will get snagged in the large oaks and it won't be a straightforward job. Lots of timber in them though and I still have plans to make a pole lathe up there - hence the tarp.

I learned from Chris that the bungee straps used on every eyelet help keep the tarp both secure and able to give a little when the conditions are blustery. We built a frame out of ash poles (all proving to be diseased but still strong) and rolled the tarp over and under the central beams for added stability, then we anchored each strap with paracord to nearby trees. Good fun and after a few adjustments were happy with our work. We should be able to roll the front edge back if needed to let more light in.

That was a couple of weeks ago. Since then we've had some storms and downpurs. One resulted in a small stream flowing through the woods, down the track, under the gate and down the steps past the garage. The tarp held up and our considerations during build of how the water would flow off the tarp were good and we neither had pools forming on the top nor flows inside. Good stuff.

We now have a garden table and chairs as we may want to eat up there and we have a growing pile of lumber to prepare for fuel.. In my experinece, you need to start on that early and it's surpring how much wood is needed especially if the winter is long. There should be plenty of wood available without felling any healthy trees and I know Chris feels the same way. Unfortunately it looks as though ash dieback is present leaving us with limited options. The mature ash should be ok at least for a while but the smaller ones will need to come down eventually. The infecting fungus develops in the leaf litter and the spores spread during the spring and summer. Clearing the leaf litter can therefore inhibit the spread of the disease but in a large wood that's not practical. My aim will be to continue to regenerate through natural seeding and hope that ampngst those that grow into mature trees will be ones that have a natural resistance. Meanwhile, we'll continue to increase the diversity of tree species with hornbeam, field maple, wild cherry, hawthorn, birch, crab apple and rowan  to add to the existing beech, oak, hazel and ash.