We had 20 tons of crushed concrete delivered to the woods yesterday.
The plan is to make our own private car park as the shared car park is only suppose to have one car from each woods.
It's been slow and hard to shift that much rubble plus there is lots of broken glass mixed in which needs to be taken out.
I'll post some more picture when it's done

Making charcoal the easy way

First you need a choclate tin, then punch five holes into the lid.Cut wood to the height of the tin.I used green Ash as it's low in water. We also made artist charcoal sticks from green Willow.Put on lid and place on fire.

After a few mintues steam and smoke should start to come out of the holes.

This after a while it should turn to gas which will flame.After the flame has gone the charcoal is ready. Take off the fire and place upside down so to make sure no air gets into the charcoal and lets it burn.

When cool you should have black gold!

All ready for...er...the BBQ. We made two batches which was enough for 10 people and it was still going for a few more hours. Much beter than that rubbish you buy from the shops and it's easy to light.It took us about a hour to make charcoal.

Autumn colours at morgans wood

A woodsman view

Thought I'd help Ceinach with the blog for morgans wood.
Over the last month I have been clearing spruce trees around a couple of oaks we have a the bottom of the woods. The job was a lot bigger that expected the biggest problem was where to fell the trees as spruce trees are planted very close together. By the car park I've started to take spruce trees down again for firewood, where I've cleared trees last your ground fauna has started to return again. At the moment we are growing hazel trees in our garden and these will be planted in the woods in the next two years.

Arth

Busy Busy Busy

It's been a busy 2007 in all, watching the cycles in the woodland once again, networking with clever people to put together exciting new workshops and retreats for 2008 so please watch this space for news on the following:

Family Activity Weekend
Meditation retreat
Bushcrafting
Sacred Tool Making
Bridgets Forge Retreat

View of the Past - 1879 map of the woodland

The woodland looks very unchanged in 140 years. Morgans Wood was then called Great Copse on the left side of the main woodland. Some of the woodland is registered as Ancient but we continue the quest to discover more about the history and classification etc.

Planning

With the sap starting to again fall to ground and the leaves starting to turn to their golden Autuminal hues, now is the time to start planning the real work. We have now mapped the first area where we plan on clearing the spruce and planting broadleaves in their place. The first area is approximately 35m x 33m. There are eight very mature oak trees which will remain and one Scots Pine. Their canopies cover a fair amount of the space and we will only be planting new trees where they can see the light above them. The first challenge was to plan them at only 2m apart but in the most natural way possible so I used curves which I hope on the ground will provide a staggared effect to provide some privacy and also look the most natural. This done, I then colour coded the trees on the map to show which species would go where trying to imitate nature as much as possible but also bearing in mind how the trees grow, how fast or slow they grow, and providing a boundary which is bushy.

The trees chosen for phase one of the work are Field Maple, Hawthorn, Birch, Rowan, Cherry and Hazel. Most of these species already grow in the rest of the woodland with the exception of Rowan (but they like shade and provide wonderful berries) and Cherry (which provide beautiful flowers and wood).

In all, to replant this relatively small area will take upto 150 trees, stakes and protectors (needed as we have Roe Deer and Muntjak who regularly browse the new shoots) so this won't be an inexpensive venture and we are currently investigating ways of obtaining grants and help with the expense as in all there will be over 1000 trees needed to replace all the Spruce and that's a lot of trees stakes and protectors, not to mention the investment in time for planting them. One saving grace we have is that woodland time is a lot slower than human time and this project is likely to last years as we are restricted as to when we can plant trees to give them the best chance of survival.

Off to the woods again this weekend, after the Bentley Wood Fayre of course where we are hoping to gain some invaluable information and perhaps even the odd contact or two. I think we will be trying to identify all the different mushrooms which are springing up all over the place so looking forward to that.