... a suitcase, a duffel and a backpack. I mean. I was going to be gone for 2.5 weeks (which then turned into 4) so I brought things to do in addition to clothes etc.
I took the train to Edenbridge, and a taxi from the rail station to Bore Place.
Ran into Andrew, first thing, who offered to make me a cup of tea, which was very welcome after the train ride... uneventful as that was.
Surprise, surprise, surprise!
I got settled in. Had a delicious meal that included venison sausages (my first ever) and got to bed fairly early. I hoped for a good nights sleep. Friday the 13th would be a big day - my first working at Fern Hill helping out with the tree felling. I didn't really know what to expect, but was eager to find out.
Met John and the crew at the workshop 8:30 Friday morning for tea before we headed off. The crew consisted of John, Romain, Mike and Nick (my Bushy Wood coppicing buddy).
Even though the sun was shining, it was a chilly morning, so the tea helped to warm us up, from the inside out.
We loaded tools, tea kit, backpacks and lunches onto the trucks and headed up to Fern Hill.
Fern Hill is located at the northwest of the Bore Place property.
The job essentially was two-fold... restoring a 50 year old (predominately) Ash coppice by harvesting most all the trees in the "shaw" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaw_(woodland)). The wood will season for 2 years or so and then be chipped to fuel the huge wood chip boiler that heats the Main House and I'm not sure what else at Bore Place.
This was how it would work...
John and Romain would be felling the trees with their chainsaws... limbing them and cutting the usable wood (anything say 3" diameter or more) into 6 foot lengths. The rest of us would be dragging everything out of the woods... the 6 foot lengths got stacked in large piles at the edge of the field and the unusable stuff went on a huge fire.
Obviously, these were big trees and this was serious business, so there were plenty of safety precautions to be followed. John went over chainsaw safety once again with me and gave me a hard hat to wear. Biggest thing is to stay out of the line of the tree fall.
Chainsaw too.
The first thing the chainsaw guys do after assessing each tree is to cut the "smiley" wedge out of the front which will determine what direction the tree will fall.
Actually, the first thing on a tree that is leaning in an undesirable direction is to attach a rope high enough up in the tree so that the other guys can pull the tree in the proper direction while the chainsaw operator is making the cuts. Most of the time I saw them use a smaller tree (25' - 30' high maybe?) that they had removed the side branches and created a sort of "Y" out of the branches at the top. They had a special way of winding up the rope and positioning it on the "Y" of the smaller tree and then maneuvering it up around the tree they were working on felling.
All that done, the cut is made at the back of the tree, and...
t-i-m-b-e-r!!!
Some trees require wedges to be hammered into the cut at the back... as you'll see in the two video's below. I kind of like this because then you are free of the noise of the chainsaw and can actually hear the tree!
After the tree was down the chainsaw guys went to town de-branching it and cutting it up in usable lengths. Important for the rest of us to be mindful of what they were doing, where the chainsaw was and where they were standing etc. as we began clearing away... as much as possible take what's on top first and be sure not to disturb the chainsaw guys footing!
The area we were working in was pretty brambly... those things have a tendency to reach out and grab your feet... tripping you up. They got me, a few times in the 20 days. Twice in one day... when I was pretty much out of it anyway due to not being able to sleep the night before and struggling to be vigilant and watchful. Thankfully, I did not impale myself on anything in the fall or hurt myself at all really.
Maybe just my pride a little bit.
For the most part I managed to stay out of the way when I was supposed to and not do something dumb to cause a problem for someone else. The guys all watched out for me too.
Thankfully.
Mike went over the fire building and safety guidelines with me...
1) always, always always be mindful of what the fire is doing when you are near it...
2) keep the ground around the fire clear of branches and brambles so you have a sure footing when you are loading the fire.
3) load the fire from one direction - with the wind at your back.
4) as much as possible keep the branches going in the same direction with the bigger end at the side you are loading from... and try to keep them fairly "flat" by removing bigger bits that are sticking up. This keeps the fire nicely contained and the wood in contact with the flame. It also helps keep the fire fairly well contained to one spot (we didn't want to destroy too big a patch of grass in the farmers field) and helps keep too many branches from sticking out all willy nilly and tripping someone up.
4) end of the day, clean up the fire site and it would be ready for the next day. (Next morning, all we needed to do was rake the ash off the top and there were hot coals still underneath... a bit of dead wood on top and most days the fire was going in no time at all!)
So that's tree felling.
I'm sorry I did not get any pictures or videos at Fern Hill.
I was seriously concentrating on being safe and actually accomplishing work!
Here are a couple videos though from Bushy Wood that will give you an idea of what it is like. This first one is John, felling a seriously large tree and hamming it up for us in the process:
This next video is Romain, felling the very last tree:
While it was indeed serious, hard, hot, sweaty and grueling at times there was plenty of laughter shared by all throughout the course of each day.
John is not a slave driver, we took regular breaks for tea all together and had an ample amount of time at lunch to rest and refuel... working until 4.30 or 5.00 each day... ending with just enough time to get the tools loaded back onto the trucks, while we could still see, as the day dimmed.
And most days, one final cup of tea at the shop before we all went our separate ways... to live our separate lives until the next day when we got to do it all over again!
I absolutely loved it, and was truly sad when it was over!
Stay tuned for a couple more posts pertaining to this in the near future!
hugs-
susie
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