DIARY

07.07.10

It's taken a few weeks to get back to anything like normal after the fire. It's a combination of the sheer waste of time talking to insurance companies,tracking down a replacement tractor and processor and a certain amount of naval gazing as I ponder the best way forward. Tom tractor has now been replaced by Tomski tractor, a yukoslavian version of a Massey 135 and about 20 years younger than Tom. Our major task of the last few weeks has been making an oak arbour for Holehird gardens. The finished structure is looking good but it has seemed like I'm rubbing against the grain trying to get the thing finished as event after event conspires stop its completion. One of the happy events was the birth of James and Victoria's second child (George).They are all doing well, congratulations to them both.

Its been a remarkable dry spell in the area, and driving past Thirlmere there are beaches I've never seen before.

02.05.10

Disaster has struck the kiln site at Dalton Crags. I got a phone call from the area forester and then the chief fire officer at 11.00pm on Wednesday night telling me that a fire had broken out near the kilns spreading down a line of brash and eventually reaching the tractor and firewood processor about 25 yards away. When the tractor got going the heat was so intense that the timber stack set alight and started running along that. When the fire brigade got there the stack was well alight. The local farmer Mike Smith was called with his loader to get the rest of the stack out of the way and another farmer brought a silage tanker with water up to the site to put out the fire. I went to a meeting with the fire officer and Martin Colledge the next morning, and we were somewhat baffled where the source of the fire had come from. I had closed the kilns down earlier that day and they were cooling rapidly when I left them. There wasn't any sign of fire by the kilns but it is possible that some tar in the chimneys had been fanned by the strong winds that came up in the afternoon. Anyway a very unpleasant situation and it leaves me without a tractor and firewood processor for the moment. Thats the facts but I'm finding something akin to bereavement for the loss of Tommy the tractor who has been a reliable and willing servant for nine years and survived mishap since 1966.

I must say thankyou to the fire service of Arnside, Sedbergh and Kendal who turned up to the fire and to the two farmers whose help has saved a large proportion of the timber stack and to the local forest craftsmen and area forester for their help.

25.04.10

We are still working at full speed at the moment flitting about the area finishing off the two coups we have been working at Staveley and Silverdale and clocking up a lot of miles.

But there are some high points. I have been making a pair of peeled yew benches for the National Trust at Townend. They requested copies of some old yew benches that were becoming rickety and having looked at them decided they were peeled yew. I’m not actually sure now, the bark may have just dropped off. But the interesting thing was that I found yew peels very well, which I wasn’t expecting. You would think that with it being evergreen and slow growing that the bark would stop attached. A bit of research on the web came up with an essay by a man in the USA who was cutting yew trees that were then peeled by a gang of assorted oddballs for the bark, which was being used in a pharmaceutical experiment looking for a cancer cure. This essay was from 1995, as there doesn’t seem to be high demand for yew bark it must have been a failure. A strange coincidence came to light when Sam Ansell (Rebecca Oaks’ apprentice) was having a family get together which included his cousin and girlfriend. When Sam talked to cousins girlfriend it turned out she was the woman who has been leading the biochar experiment in Italy. The swallows have been three days late this year, possibly due to the northerly winds but they have finally arrived. The first burns at Dalton Crags have been very successful with 21 fertiliser bags coming out of each of them, but the one kiln re-ignited when we took the lid off and had to be shut down another day. This bodes well for the future as the kilns usually take 2-3 burns to settle in.

Spring is in full swing, my son Patrick took this picture of a lamb on Scout Scar

16.03.10

Officially its been the coldest winter for thirty years but I would take a winter like this any time over the usual wet and miserable offerings we usually get. To finish off the winter we have had the most incredible spell of fine weather and we have managed to get on well with the two woods we are working at the moment.

02.02.10

January has been hard work in the snow. We’ve been trying to extract wood at Stoney Hazel

but the tracks have been frozen and we ended up with lots of double handling of wood as we used the little tractor to extract to the ride. We then had to put it on James’ Hilux as this was the only thing that would go up a short icy slope to where we stacked the wood. Firewood deliveries have also been difficult with back roads being iced over. I was imagining myself in an episode of ‘ice road truckers’ going up the Rusland valley over roads thickly covered in ice. We have also been cutting at Eaves Wood in Silverdale for the National Trust.

They have a large grant for renovating coppice and are doing lots of work via a small army of coppice workers in the area. The message that commercial coppicing is good for wildlife and more sustainable is beginning to have some effect with the idea being to get the coppice back into a state that people will cut the wood for nothing or even pay if the quality is good enough. This is going to be a better idea than just constantly paying for coppice to be cut for butterfly conservation , which is done in a way that keeps the stools stunted and browsed and ultimately worthless. The commercial route was how the habitat appeared in the first place when there wasn’t any grants. A good example of this is Dorothy Farres’s Spring wood near Staveley which we have been cutting again (see 2002 for the last time we were there). Colin Simpson’s vision was in-rotation commercial coppice that would be great for wildlife and would be cheap to maintain.

02.01.10

A drier day at the start of December let us get Rebecca Oaks’ new barn extension up.

The process turned out to be painless as she had got a forwarder in to lift the 10metre logs into position. Except for one joint that was the wrong way round so we had to start building past the joint with no pin in to join it all together, it all sat very nicely together. The couple of weeks before Christmas are usually a bit hectic for firewood, luckily most of my regular customers are used to my ways and have got the firewood in well before. Driving round the lakes after the deluge has been interesting with streams diverting down roads and dry stone walls punched through by water running off the fields and piles of gravel across the roads.

The new weather problem has been snow. The pattern I’ve noticed this year is that whatever the weather its usually the wettest, deepest, hottest, coldest or windiest since records began. I think no one bothered keeping records till last year. Anyway snow upon snow has come down to make the final deliveries tricky. On the coppicing front we have finished cutting our latest coup at Stoney Hazel, so after a week extracting masses of wood we will be off to pastures new. Well new ish because after a quick bit of paid coppicing for the National Trust at Silverdale we are back to Dorothy Farrer’s spring wood in Staveley. Happy new year to you.

24.11.09

This month I have been mostly repairing my website. I am sorry for the loss of service, at one point I had no website and no emails and my phone wasn’t working properly either. It was like being back in the eerrrrr well 90s. In the end my website was transferred to a new server which took a dislike to anything with capitals in so it ended up taking forever to get the thing re-jigged back to where it was at the start of November. Back in the real world the rain has been falling with an intensity even greater than is seen at most bank holidays. Delivering firewood has been fraught with trying to find routes above water and I eventually stopped trying.

I also had a phone call telling me my sailing dinghy at Cragwood was afloat and I ended up spending Friday afternoon up to my waist in cold water wearing a pair of cycle shorts I had left in my bag trying to retrieve the waterlogged boat. In the picture we usually launch the boat down a ramp into the lake from beside the boat house. The road trailer for the boat had disappeared possibly floated away (is that possible?) .

In a rather nice sunny spell before the deluge we managed to get the tree shelters in at Holme Park fell. The finished cleft oak shelter look great and in the end were not too difficult to put in. I had been planning to weld up a jig to hold the posts at the correct angle while we knocked them in. In the end we did it by eye and plumb bob.

29.10.09

Its been an interesting few weeks, in particular there was the return of the Coppice conference at the start of October.

It was very well attended with around 60 people there each day and a more practical theme to the talks this time. Walter Lloyd kicked off the event with his recollections of coppice work between the wars and the rather incredible observations on hazel ships fenders while being shot at during D-day. Most of the other talks were more contemporary on the day to day problems of modern coppicing. Well most modern coppicing because it became clear that the sweet chestnut coppicers of Kent and East Sussex are a different breed. This is not surprising as the chestnut coppice trades have been in constant demand and skills passed down in a continuous line, while trade collapsed for hazel,birch and oak coppice after the war and has resulted in new markets having to be found by largely new proponents finding out for themselves how to make a coppicing business work. While the chestnut coppicers are still operating on an industrial scale they don’t think they have anything in common with the rest of the coppice world. Well that’s the impression the two people with some knowledge of them gave. More likely they are too busy making what they have always made and so can’t be bothered, but I’ve found that just talking to other coppicers and woodworkers throws up lots of good ideas. Actually it would be good to talk to them, might learn something. At the same time as the conference Brian and Kay turned up in their enormous lorry to collect the oak bark.

It wasn’t collected last year (not enough bark), so two years worth of bark looked a bit more impressive and we managed 750Kgs this time.

22.09.09

The never ending succession of lows and accompanying rains has stopped at last (probably no more water left) and we have had a couple of weeks of dry and sunny weather. This has coincided with doing the Westmorland County Show for the first time and also the Woodland Pioneers course where for just about the first time there was no rain all week.

The county show was very pleasant and seams to be more a chance to meet old friends than any serious attempt at selling stuff, and also a chance to chat to some interesting visitors. One Irish chap from county Meath was telling me of a craftsman he knew that made nothing but barrows for wheeling peat about. The wheels were solid oak, the arms cleft ash and the finished barrows would last for many years despite heavy work. He would probably have made a lot more barrows if it wasn’t for the pocheen still that also inhabited the workshop.

Woodland Pioneers was bought forward a bit this year after the week of rain last year and managed to fall on a dry week. I was doing two, two day courses this year. After the frenetic scrambling of 12 people last year to get the gate and fence finished I decided on an easier target this year of just doing a stretch of fence and hewing a fence post. Consequently there was a lot of rough tea drinking in the wood and standing around watching someone doing something. Everyone seemed to enjoy it though and the finished fence looks great. Finally I returned to retrieve the shake off cuts from Renny Park to find that mice had been nibbling the plastic knob on the hand brake on the tractor, oh well could have been worse, they could have nibbled through the fuel pipe like they did at Stoney Hazel. As I turn it on diesel pours out of the engine compartment, oh well easy enough to mend, I just wonder what it is about diesel fuel lines that mice like.

31.08.09

30.06.09

20.05.09

05.04.09 The winter has been a lot harder than usual with more frosts and snow, and as a result people have been keeping up a steady demand for firewood. But as usual winter seems to give way to spring overnight. One minute you are wrapped up with snow driving into every crevise then the sun comes out, the daffodils burst out in huge numbers and you are aware of the birds making lots of noise and grabbing moss for their nests. The birch stumps start pumping out sap at an incredible rate and the mud starts to dry up as the trees start taking moisture out of ground. We got our cleft oak fence installed during the last of the cold weather and got off to an ignominious start when we took the Landrover into the field which looked pretty sound near the entance but was incredibly soft further in and we made a huge mess trying to get out. Luckily the farmer over the road kindly got his enourmous tractor to pull us out, the first time I've had to be resued from a mire. . Anyway we got the two fences in and they liked them so much they ordered a load more. While we jump at the opportunity the realisation dawns that we've got to source a load more oak and fit in a hundred and one other things that have been put back because of doing the original fence. As luck would have it Roger Cartwright happen to ask me if I needed any oak as there were loads of windblown trees left from the storm several years ago. I had a look and they are brilliant, obviously been pruned regularly and dead straight. The only problem being that they up hill and down dale. Anyway should keep us in oak for some time. We've also been working a new section of Stoney Hazel. It's always interesting going into a new bit of wood and trying to work out where the extraction routes are. Previous coppice workers have done exactly the same thing, and we usually come to the same conclusions. Owen Jones the swill basket maker works the same woods and was telling us about his appearance on 'Victorian Farm'. The same night he was on he started getting emails enquiring about baskets and courses and now every one of his planned courses is full. We've also got a lot of work on with Rebecca Oaks who wanted some larch felling and dragging to a gateway. The larch is for an extension to her barn buildings. An interesting thing we noticed about the larch was the little red flowers that look like little raspberries. They taste quite nice (well they taste of larch).

20.1.09 December has seen a prolonged icy spell. Quite unusual these days, last year we had about a week of frosty weather and that was it. The sub zero temperatures have gone on for several weeks making the ground rock hard. Unfortunately I received the news that my mother had a terminal illness and one week later she passed away in hospital. My brothers and I all managed to pick up flu in the hospital to add to an already miserable time. So there hasn’t been much done while the weather has been so good. Within half an hour of hearing about my mother I got news from the Italians that their charcoal consignment was underweight and they needed extra charcoal sending to start their experiment. It really was the worst afternoon of my life. Not surprisingly things came to a standstill over early January and I’m only just getting back into the swing of things. We have nearly finished making our big cleft oak fence and soon the fun will start trying to get the posts into bed rock. A few of the Woodland Pioneer people came back to finish off the cleft oak gate we were making and the finished gates are looking stunning. .

1.12.08 Its been a pleasant couple of weeks getting back to some green woodwork after the seemingly endless grind of firewood production. We have been back to the cleaving breaks we set up in Chapel House woods to make a large cleft oak fence order. The process of splitting a large log down using just wedges and cleaving breaks is still something I find magical, and when doing it find it easy to imagine someone doing the same thing thousands of years ago. Well last year at least. The weather while we were cleaving last week was superb with cold clear days, by far the best days in the woods.

Its strange how you get two large horticultural charcoal orders coming in at the same time and shortly after two cleft oak fence orders. Probably followed by most of the population wanting firewood.

18.11.08 One of the interesting aspects of having a website is that its working as free advertising all over the world. I’ve had emails from Africa asking about the design of my kilns, been offered Polish hurdles (quite tempting) and Eygptian orange wood charcoal. When I got an email looking for the price of a tonne of horticultural charcoal to go to Italy, I sent off the price fully expecting the enormous cost of transport to knock the idea firmly on the head. When they accepted the quote I suddenly started thinking ‘what does a tonne of horticultural charcoal look like, how do I send it, how do you export stuff?’ Well a couple of weeks later the answer is:- it looks like 2 high pallets worth heat sealed in coal bags. Sending it seems a pretty fraught process as you wave goodbye to the pallets and they disappear to who knows where. The charcoal is going to a research institute looking into its use on wheat fields. The research into biochar seems to be gathering some momentum and there was an international conference in Newcastle last September. While it seems a hopeful new market at the moment I think as the science matures they will become much more demanding of a consistent product, probably produced by a retort or more industrial process. Just to sound like I’ve been hobnobbing with the scientific elite, I also went to a meeting about the new Windermere Catchment Renovation Project. The highlight was a talk by the director of the Freshwater Biological Association who said that there had been a huge increase in the number of roach in Windermere. You wouldn’t think this was a bad thing but they are eating all the insects and water fleas which in turn aren’t eating the algae (because they’ve been eaten). The algae eventully dies off and drops to the bottom of the lake de-oxygenating the water so forcing the artic char up into an ever narrowing strip of water between the de-oxygenated and the surface water that is too warm. On the coppicing front we have finished our section at Stoney Hazel, here are some before and after shots.

this view looks quite severe but is probably nearer to the correct canopy density for coppice with standards. And due to the extra light and deer fence the re-growth is coming through at great rate.

19.10.08 September has been a busy time for shows and auctions but I’ve only got to demonstrate at one of them. First off was the Westmorland County show where the rain held off for the day (many of the small shows have been cancelled due to bad weather this year) . For the first time ever I watched the junior Cumberland wrestling which seemed to pitch enormous youths against much smaller opposition. It was eventually won by a farmer boy from West Cumbria who looked like he spent his time carrying cows out to pasture. A quick trip over to the auction at York to look at potato bagging equipment for bagging up charcoal which I should have got but after waiting two hours for the auctioneer to get to the lot promptly froze when the auction started and missed getting the equipment for a reasonable price. It’s still strange to see traditional flat cap and string round the trouser knee farmers getting text messages on their mobile “ George is the only one who texts me”. The APF forestry show was on this year (it’s every two years) and I found it very interesting this year. Besides drooling over giant forwarders there was a significant amount of equipment for small woods and also I got to see lots of people I met at the APF in Lockerbie and at the Royal show a few years back. The summer has been incredibly wet this year and most conversations seem to end up as “ I can’t get any vehicles into the wood, onto the field or up a track. At the end of September was a flurry activity as I did the Silverdale woodfair where the highlight was talking to David Bellamy we had a conversation about an experiment he had on one of his first programs where the severed an oak tree which was in leaf and plonked it in huge bath of water to measure the amount of water sucked up. This was followed immediately by Woodland Pioneers, the BHMAT annual event. This year I volunteered to take the returners (people who had been on woodland pioneers before) and with Twiggy's help make a cleft oak fence and gate for Chapel House wood. This was quite an incredible group of people (we had 12 students on the course) and despite bad weather they produced three hand hewn posts a load of fencing and nearly completed two chunky oak gates in the four days.

31.07.08 Mid May saw me on a Coppice Association trip to Estonia. The best one of these trips I’ve been on with Estonia and particularly the island of Saameraa being a brilliant place for wood crafts and great woodlands. There is a much lower density of deer on Saameraa (wolves and people with guns) so the hazel grows lovely and straight and juniper invades the fields like gorse here. We saw a few small craft works making spoons and laminating lots of small blocks together to make place mats and chopping boards. The juniper has an incredible smell which scents any room you have these items in. Andres was our guide round Estonia and it was fascinating to hear about his time under Soviet rule. This ranged from the inefficient when he applied to go to Vietnam and was granted permission (17 years later!) to the rather sinister where a pupil at school doodled an Estonian flag in the corner of his school book and his mother was hauled into the local KGB office to explain how this could happen while the officer cleaned his revolver. Anyway to catch up its school holidays so I’m on short time working at the moment but I have been doing a few more charcoal burns for the brown bag market. On the cherry bed front that I made after Christmas, I've now put it together and lying in it. Its very comfortable and doesn't creek. Even when Moira lies on it.

12.05.08 10.3.08 January was particularly miserable this year with rarely a sight of the sun and huge amounts of rain bucketing down. For large parts of the month I withdrew to the barn where I’ve made myself a new bed out of some cherry boards that I milled up four years ago. Luckily there weren’t too many firewood orders after Christmas as its taking me close on a day a load to extract it out of the mire at Witherslack and then transport it 20 miles to the barn for processing. This coincided with doing the accounts which seemed particularly bad for 06/07 with the vehicle costs (fuel repairs and insurance) virtually doubling for the year. This was probably due to burning at Haverthwaite and Stoney Hazel. As the economics are tight at the best of times its interesting that the location of the kilns can make such difference. However the signs of spring seem to start soon after Christmas. The shoots of daffodils start coming up, honeysuckle comes into leaf very early and the cut birch stumps start pumping out sticky sap. It sounds a bit strange but the smell of the woods seems to change overnight from a dormant decaying smell to a faintly sweet smell. I don’t know if this is wishful thinking or hormones being given off by plant life as they detect the days lengthening. Just as business was seeming a bit slack I got the call to fell trees at a manor estate. They turned out to be very tall and overhanging a very expensive looking walled garden. We managed to get them all down with no mishaps but had a couple of heart stopping moments, one when the tractor with the winch on appeared to be dragged back by the tree falling over the wall. In fact the tree had just got caught behind another tree and the tractor was pulling itself backwards. The second was an ash tree that was very near the wall and I had left a thicker hinge on to make sure we kept control as it was winched over. As winching started the tree began to split vertically and the split wood at the back headed towards the wall eventually stopping about a foot away. They also wanted a large sweet chestnut sawmilling. This was about 3ft diameter and it took us two days to mill it up. Seemingly never ending you start getting an idea of how much timber comes out of a large trunk.

30.12.07 Teaming rain for a week made getting firewood a miserable existance. Luckily it was followed by two weeks of clear cold weather. Great I will move lots of firewood while the ground is hard. It actually took most of the first week of frosts to actually freeze any of the quagmire, when it all eventually hardened up I found that the ruts where so deep that the landrover grounded on the ridge between the wheels. As this was now hard as iron the landrover couldn’t power its way through and I became stuck fast. This happened several times and involved emptying the logs off the trailer, unhitching the trailer, driving Arnold onto firmer ground and then dragging the trailer out with a rope, hitching up again and reloading the logs. You think that’s boring to read, you ought to try doing it several times. On the third occasion while suppressing the desire to scream out loud I turned round to find Alex Todd the National Park head forester standing a couple of yards behind me. He has a remarkable ability to materialise when you least expect it. Anyway after recovering from the shock Alex helped with the whole boring operation. This palava is making producing firewood very slow going and un-economic.One of the benefits of delivering firewood is you get out and about around lakeland, the end of Kentmere valley being a favourite.

28.11.07 The precarious nature of self employment has come back into view over the last few months. Luckily it hasn’t involved me being injured but unluckily my wife broke her ankle on the beach near Whitby. It has just meant more time off taking her to hospital appointments and initially shuttling her to and from work and getting the kids out of the house. Combined with the children taking it in turns to be ill its been a bit of a disaster for getting things done. One of the benefits (?) has been that I’ve been catching up with the accounts. This is pretty depressing and if I ever went anywhere near the Dragon’s Den I would be laughed out instantly. In between wandering around like a grumpy old man I’ve had some good coppice moments. The major one is pretty obvious when you think about it. If you cleave a big lump of wood you get more fence rails out than if you cleave small bits. Not only do you get more rails, but you get less sapwood to take off, easier rails to drawknife and the whole process is a lot quicker.We cleft up a 2 foot diameter log and got 30 rails out oaf it, instead of the usual 4-8. Brian also came up from Devon to collect the oak bark from Stoney Hazel. Three of us have been peeling in the wood during the early summer and got a decent pile together for the tannery. Unluckily after several weeks of dry weather it started chucking it down while we loaded the bark onto Brian’s enormous lorry. This isn’t so good as the active ingredient that the tanners are looking for (the tannin!) is water soluble so I hope there is some left.

24.10.07 September has seen the passing of a coppicing era with the death of Colin Simpson who was 76. Colin was a link back to the times when every farm had its own coppice that provided material for fencing, gates, brooms, sticks , pit props and countless other bits and bobs. Colin himself had started making farm gates when he was 12, as he put it the children of agricultural workers were allowed 3 months off during the summer for the harvest and after 3months he just didn’t bother going back. On the face of it Colin didn’t have much formal education but he was in fact a rare combination of practical skills, a very deep knowledge of flora and fauna and a persuasive communicator. He knew what day the warblers would turn up at Dorothy Farrers spring wood and could tell you the latin names of a plethora of identical ferns and mosses. There was no bluster with Colin and he would impart his knowledge to anyone young or old who would listen. He was happy to pass on his skills and many (including me) went on his introduction to coppice management course where he made sure you understood that doing something was a lot less harmful than doing nothing. His knowledge was such that at the recent coppice conference one of the top scientists from the Forestry Commission was asking Colin about the best way to get hazel nuts to germinate. Before his illness curtailed his attendance at committee meetings he would sit there usually fuming at inaccuracies in official glossy documents and would always try to avoid getting grants for anything for fear of sinking into a morass of red tape and delay, he was very much a man of action. A visit to his workshop next to his house was also an illuminating experience where a stack of beautifully finished walking sticks would be stacked up alongside his latest experiment into finding new products to make from coppice material. His funeral was at Underbarrow church which was down to standing room only with lots of local farming families, people from wildlife trusts and lots from the coppice association. Walking back from the church we walked by hedgerows bursting with rose hips, sloes and blackberries in the warm autumn sun to the Punch Bowl where there was a lot of laughter for Colin’s was a life to celebrate. September also saw the annual Woodland Pioneers week at Staveley in Cartmel. The weather was a bit rubbish but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Every year BHMAT fills the courses very quickly even though they favour new faces for the daily courses and the week has expanded to 40 plus students. This year I was helping Twiggy to teach the rustic stool course as the last throw of her apprenticeship and I am still amazed at the variation of stools that the students produce from a similar single log. We even had a meditation stool being made this year which had a top seat and a bottom plank. The change between the seasons is strikingly quick. Over the years now I’ve noticed that winter gives way to spring virtually overnight and in a similar way autumn appeared instantly with the ashes (what is the plural of ash?) depositing their leaves first having been about a month behind putting them on in the first place. The swallows and other migrants all seemed to disappear at once and the woodlands have become a lot quieter. Witherslack woods where the kilns are have turned out be very wet with springs popping up all over the place and I am now up to my knees in mud. At Witherslack I’ve noticed loads of these speckled wood butterflies. I don’t think they are particularly rare, but its nice to see something different.

2.09.07 The wet summer rolls on, with the woods frequently too wet to get trailers into. The kilns are in Witherslack woods which is flat limestone covered by layer of mud similar to that at Catcrag which sticks in the tread of the tyres making it like trying to drive on ice. Charcoal sales have been pretty much nil since the start of July but luckily there have been some good cleft oak fence orders to fill the gap.A quiet spell had conveniently appeared in time to let me go on a family holiday to Vancouver Island. This is quite a magical place with forests of huge cedar trees, the seas stuffed full of salmon, whales, killer whales and seals. Mountains with bears, cougars, coyotes, elk and racoons roaming round. The indigenous indians must have been pretty cheesed off when europeans arrived and started depriving them of their paradise .They are now being compensated by the Canadian government for the loss of their lands but it sounded like that was causing some problems as well. There was lots of ‘first nation’ peoples art around which has quite inspired me to do something similar. In particular there are some massive modern sculptures made out of single blocks of wood in Vancouver airport which are spectacular. I saw some pictures of their original settlements expecting to see tipis but of course with huge cedars about they would make a basic box frame with pent roof out of big round beams. The roofs were covered in long planks, slightly hollowed out so that the lips at the edges would hook over into the next plank which was the other way up. The size of the trees was quite something, this cedar had a huge burr high up on it. The burr alone had a small woodland growing from it (not much smaller than some patches of woodland I've worked). Finally the woods round Little Qualicum falls were littered with Arbutus (Strawberry tree).

21.07.07 Oak before ash don’t make me laugh. The cuplet that I’ve recited every year appears to be non applicable anymore as despite oaks being weeks earlier than ashes we had a great deal more than a splash. This has killed the charcoal market stone dead for the last month and a bit, the lack of market and waterlogged woods has meant no charcoal burning. Luckily we have had a succession of orders for green woodwork items which has meant we can stay dry in the barn and do something interesting. James and I have been working on sculptures for an ‘alphabet trail’ in Serpentine woods in Kendal. James has really gone to town with his sculptures and has a produced a huge carved rat for ‘R’ that took 4 people to carry to its eventual resting place in the wood. I had a gate to make and went to town with that making my best gate (well double gate) yet. When it came to putting it in I attached the left side of the gate to a tree and then tried putting a post in for the other gate and found that there was bedrock 6 inches down. The organisers decided to just have the one side dangling in the breeze and it looks quite surreal but fits in with the enormous rat and huge yo-yo. The wet conditions have kept the oak peeling well and we have a good pile of bark for the tannery.Here's me peeling the tree that I used for the gate. And cleaving it And the finished gate from the cleft oak. Besides the opening of the alphabet trail I also made a quick visit to the opening of the National Trust's Footprint building at St Catherines which I helped putting some of the roofing shakes on last year. Its a brilliant building combining straw bale, timber frame and cob construction with oak roofing shakes.Now the straw bales have got the lime mortar on the walls have a rounded 'organic' look. The constant rain resulted in Heike Hanso a local tree surgeon from Estonia asking if they could do some work on their small boat in the end of the barn. They were going to take this small ex-Windermere hire boat (14ft long) put a cabin on it, and then take it down the canals to the south coast accross the channel and through the canals of europe back to Estonia. When I first saw the boat I thought he had a screw loose, but they seem to have been planning the trip for several years and you can follow them via their page at www.2meest6hobust4meetrit.spaces.live.com . Their trip got me a bit jealous remembering past boating adventures.

12.06.07

The kilns have now moved to their new spot at Witherslack, one of the best sites we’ve had. Flat terrain good pile of wood and enough room to get the firewood processor in. The access is across a field with a reasonable track but I’ve yet to meet the farmer whose field it is, which has been a source of friction in the past with various farmers asking ‘who do I lump first’. Usually they calm down then and we get on ok. I’ve done my first show of the year at Holker Hall festival demonstrating shake making. Shows have been a bit thin on the ground this year but as a result I rather enjoyed doing this one. The best questions as usual come from small children including one exchange which went something like Me ‘do you know what I’m making here?” Small boy ‘no’ Me ‘I’m making wooden roofing tiles called shakes’ Small boy ‘oh’ Me ‘what have you got on your roof?’ Small boy ‘bricks’ Me ‘wouldn’t you rather have a roof made of shakes like these?” Small boy ‘hmm what happens if its hit by lightning?’ Me ‘house burns down everyone dies’ Small boy ‘ no then’. Must do something about my sales technique. The cleggs are out and biting.

28.05.07 The coppice cam goes international this month as I have just arrived back from an in-depth fact finding mission to Poland. Where I found that Polish beer is both very cheap and very strong. Actually we spent the week looking at Polish sawmills, craft workers and looking at the rather incredible wooden architecture in the south. We were lucky enough to go and watch a craftsman and his wife making wooden strip boxes. He had a home made planing machine which produced the strips. His wife would then weave them into a basic mat which would then be woven round a wooden former. Finally it was finished off with strips of wood round the top edge. He finished off with the stunning observation that the pine logs he gets ( which have to have perfectly straight grain ) cost £70 a cubic metre. This in a land where everything else is about a third of the price here.

2.5.07 April 20th saw the first swallows at the barn. Colin Simpson who was the warden at Dorothy Farrer’s Spring Wood for umpteen years used to say that the warblers would arrive at the wood on April 20th and would insist that cutting was finished by that date so that they could nest in peace, but I think it’s a bit early for swallows. On the subject of weather forecasting the oaks are in full leaf (and peeling nicely) while the ash is still dormant. If the ‘ash before oak you’re in for a soak, oak before ash you’re in for a splash’ is true we are in for a dry summer. Last months heat wave ended rather abruptly with a few days of torrential rain that turned the tracks back to runny mud and flooded Rusland. I ended up getting the trailer stuck and had to winch it out with the tractor. Despite the weather we are now back to two kilns and making good quantities of charcoal but very quickly getting through the wood at Stoney Hazel. Luckily the National Park Authoriy has a big pile of wood for me to get through at Witherslack.I've also been helping James put in his oak walkway that he did for a garden up near Penrith. Looks great.

12.04.07 Its been a remarkable few weeks of dry weather. In a very short space of time the tracks in Stoney Hazel have gone from quagmire to rock hard mud. The wholesaler is desperate for as much charcoal as we can make and I’ve only got one kiln in action. Each kiln full of charcoal makes around £100 of charcoal , but then I’ve got £25 worth of wood going in, and paying £50 for help filling it. Overheads work out around £30 a day so its probably costing £5 to make this kilnful of charcoal. As soon as you do two kilns a day it starts looking a lot healthier but this just seems to be another of the dilemmas of coppice life, risk loosing the wholesaler who takes large amounts of charcoal when I can actually make it or pay to make small quantities. Strangely with such nice weather there have been more firewood orders and after more inefficient scrabbling around for the last bits of firewood its now officially all gone. We also got to sawmill up a nice bit of ash.

3.3.07 The daffodils are out and you can smell the Ransoms as you walk through the wood. Sure signs that spring is underway and we need to get on with making charcoal. Unfortunately I’ve just run out of wood at Haverthwaite and need to get cutting wood to burn at the new location at Stoney Hazel. To get round the shortfall I’m getting adopted apprentice Vince up to commercial speed with his charcoal burning. He has been apprentice to Brian and Louise for the first two years (who I first did a charcoal course with) but they’ve now retired and handed their business over to Vince. They were never particularly full on with their burning, perhaps a burn every 2 weeks and could afford to take there time filling the kiln to get the maximum amount of wood in. Their first layer in the kiln would tend to look like a work of art with graded sticks radiating out from a central point where leaves, sticks and brown ends were carefully put. The rest of the kiln was then filled in a similar fashion with thin bits towards the edges and bottom and the larger bits towards the middle and top. Vince looked slightly baffled that the ‘bung it in and set light to it’ method could work. Watch and learn! Anyway here's the last burn at Haverthwaite I won't miss the track up to the kilns, its steep and verging on impossible to drag a trailer up it.

30.01.07 One of the problems with coppicing related employment is the lack of money means that everything ends up being done on a shoestring and old equipment has to be coaxed into working harder than it should be at its age. Tommy the tractor is 40 years old and remarkably reliable up to now, has started overheating. After consultation with the tractor doctor he diagnosed new thermostat and new water pump needed and would order the parts and come back and fit them. After a week with no word I rang up tractor doctors to see if the parts had come. “They’ve just arrived this morning, unfortunately the fitter is away for a week do you want someone else to do it or wait for him to come back?” “I’ll wait till he comes back”. As the week progressed the cold weather generated a succession of firewood orders. Eventually I decided to do something and set too removing radiators, proping up fuel tanks, dismantling thermostats, removing water pumps all in a rather dark corner of the barn. Next morning I arrive at the tractor doctors with water pump in hand. “I’ve come to pick up the parts to repair the tractor I can’t wait any longer”. “That’s the new water pump in your hand , we came round and fitted it at the start of the week”. I thought all the bits came off easily.

12.01.07 Happy New year to you. 2007 hasn’t had a very good start with constant rain making the woods a no go area. This has meant that the tool shed is getting some work done on it but even this is being hampered because the workshop was broken into and most of our tools stolen. James has taken the loss of around £2000 worth of specialist hand tools and his chainsaw quite hard and is talking of giving up. Its hardly surprising as returns are meagre at the best of times and setbacks like this take some recovering from. I tried recording the coppice cam update on the video mode on my new camera. While the results weren’t very good the file size was 39 mB. Does anyone know how to cut this down to something more transferable? Here is a rare sight of the sun.

STOLEN

Gransfors broad axe with home made leather sheath

Gransfors carving axe

3 veritas cutters including 2inch

Twybil

Clifton spoke shave

Oregon chainsaw sharpening grinder

23.12.06 this time of the year is traditionally the busiest time for firewood but seems to be a bit quieter this year because of the warm weather. Its probably just as well because Tommy the tractor is playing up and overheating despite having his radiator replaced. In the quiet spot before I start in Stoney Hazel I have started on the 'tool shed' a monstrous timber frame construction. Its great fun making enormous mortice and tenon joints. The aim would be to display it at the next beanpole festival. Also I've done a day helping Rebecca Oaks on a slash and burn project at Warton. The aim is to remove scrub from the limestone and burn it on site, because you cannot get a vehicle up there to take the rather nice looking poles out.

4.12.06 Well sorry about that I dropped my digital camera on the floor at home it several bits flew off and the camera hasn’t worked since. I had to wait until my birthday to get another one and I’m back in action again now. What’s happened in the meantime? Well I’ve now completely finished in Sow How which is a relief. I will not work woods without some sort of deer fence in the future. Which is just as well because I've lined up a section of Stoney Hazel woods from the National Park Authority. Its got nice straight oak poles in and a lovely well maintained deer fence round the outside. On the way back from looking at Stoney Hazel I travelled along a valley at the back of Grizedale which had a beautiful view over Esthwaite Water and into the central Lakes. I've been milling up some yew and amongst some great one inch thick boards I've also got these 30inch wide by 2.5 inch boards. The grain on them is incredible.

19.09.06 Back in the mists of time I impregnated birch logs with shitaki mushroom spores. This was pretty unsuccessful as season after season went past with only a few birch polypores appearing on some of the logs. After a couple of years I brought the most likely looking log home and that sat at the side of the house for another year or so. Finally I decided it would be better as firewood and it was duly chopped into short lengths. When I came to move it , covered in shitaki mushrooms. Now shrivelled and inedible. Ho hum. Last week saw the Woodland Pioneer’s event put on by BHMAT. This event seems to get bigger every year due to ever increasing numbers of people coming back year after year. This year there were around fifty people and its initially a bit daunting when you see them in one bunch at the start of the week. By the end of the week I’m knackered but know everyone. I get the attendees to make an oak bench from a single log and I’m always amazed at how different the stools end up from similar looking logs. The teaching bit gets noticeably easier as the week goes on and everyone gets used to wielding razor sharp tools .

06.09.06 The summer holidays have been and gone and the charcoal season has once again stopped dead half way through August. The lull before the firewood season now gives us a chance to get some jobs done and prepare for the ‘Woodland Pioneers’ where I am teaching next week. This has mostly involved putting new handles on axes and adzes and getting in rounds of wood so the participants can make a stool out of a log. Woodland Pioneers marks the end of James’ apprenticeship. He will be the first to pass through the BHMAT apprenticeship and set up his own business. He is wanting to specialise in greenwood furniture and here he is finishing off a low table for his exhibition.

18.07.06 There’s been all sorts going on in the last month. Charcoal is continuing to be in demand with the hot weather , I’ve been to Chopwell Forest festival for the first time demonstrating shake making and I’ve also spent a week volunteering putting shingles on the National Trust’s Footprint building at St Catherines. This has been a bit of trial with shingles going on, coming off and then going back on again. Its got to be right but the roof is a boat shape and the contracters are pulling their hair out trying to get the roof beams right.

08.06.06

An eventful month has passed since the last update. After a prolonged cold spell the temperature has now risen to a steamy level and an element of lethargy creeps in. The weather is ideal for jobs like peeling oak poles and timber framing , but filling charcoal kilns with 3 tons of wood while wearing thick chainsaw trousers can be pergatory. This month has also seen the sales of my new ‘BBQube’ box into its first outlets at Hayes garden world and Grasmere garden centre. Fingers are crossed for good sales . incidently I turned up at Grasmere with a pallet of 60 boxes , ‘no that’s not right ,we ordered 16 boxes’ ho hum must listen to my answer phone more carefully. The end of May featured our ‘Coppice Conference’ which went very smoothly . Probably most useful were the afternoon visits to different woodlands. I walked round with the great coppicing oracle Colin Simpson as we looked at High Wood (which we cut about 2 years ago now ) and then down through a patch of derelict coppice towards Dorothy Farrers Spring wood which we also cut some years ago. While walking through the derelict bit people were saying ‘whats the problem with this bit of wood , there’s loads of trees?’ . Colin was starting to get a bit exasperated with this attitude ( from amongst others the forestry commission and the woodland trust ) as he repeatedly pointed out that the wood would end up with dominant species only and all the underwood would disappear. Colin need not have worried as when we all got into Dorothy Farrer’ spring wood which is now back in rotation the reason for coppicing became clear. The wood was alive with birdsong , particularly willow warblers and was a young vibrant bit of woodland rather than a dark decaying lifeless wood. While looking round the woods in Silverdale I saw a Duke of Burgundy butterfly which are quite rare these days and have noticed more pearl bordered fritileries than the last few years. I have also been to see the early stages of the new strawbale/timber frame/cob wall low energy building that the National trust is constructing and its going to look spectacular. It is a tear shape and I’m hoping to help put the shingles on the roof which should be fun with the sha

04.05.06 Wallop! spring has landed overnight and after the snowy scenes we now have wood anemones , swathes of wild garlic that fill the air with their pungent aroma and the first calls of the cuckoo . I have now had my first show of the year ( the beanpole festival ) which was slightly disappointing . The problem seemed to be the wrong sort of people in that there weren’t many people there intent on buying things for their garden even though there was every conceivable wooden artefact . However the weather was nice and I met lots of old friends . On Wednesday I went over to Stoney Hazel to help out Saul with the last of his cutting of hazel . This is a beautiful bit of woodland up at the top end of the Rusland valley and Saul is doing a good job of renovating it although the hazel stools are now so sparse that it will probably need some planting to get it back to a worthwhile density . After a hard days sawing we stopped off at Rusland church to pay homage to Arthur Ransome . His grave lies in a quiet corner under yew tree looking out over the Rusland valley .

21.03.06 Daffodils have yet to come out in force in Lakeland , further put off by another dump of snow that cut off access to the kilns and woods and closing schools . This has sent me scurrying to the barn to finish gates and fix graders . Talking of the barn another incidence of the strange coppice karma , just when I am at my most cash strapped because money isn’t coming in and I’m buying trailers a bill appears from the National Trust for 2 years back rent . Oh well had to happen sometime . My two brothers came up for some walking at the weekend , and we conquered Blencathra (without oxygen ) . The longer winter has led to the charcoal and firewood season overlapping and the general feeling talking to other coppice workers is that they are hartily sick and tired of doing firewood and would like a bit of peace and quiet to get on making things for the looming craft show season . Despite the firewood we have been steadily producing charcoal and it rapidly disappears as soon as we make it . I had a phone call the other week wanting us to sell them charcoal for £350 a tonne as a place in Felixstowe was making it for that . For this price I feel like buying it myself as we cannot make it for less than £550 a tonne .

07.03.06 I was asked to axe off the spongey woodwormed wood from old beams in-situ at a house overlooked by Ingleborough . Unfortunately the windows were boarded up so I couldn’t see it . The beams were nearly cylindrical by the time I had finished as all the sapwood was removed to leave the heartwood which wasn’t touched by the woodworm . On the whole its been a pretty dry winter but a cold one . The firewood season has been a lot longer than the last few years and its been difficult keeping up with demand . Charcoal season has started early as the first B&Q allocation goes at the end of February , the wholesaler I supply has now taken on my 2 stores and 5 others , so I have had to ship 2.4 tonnes off to him and start burning again . This is a bit fraught when the kilns are up a steep track and there’s snow and ice about . The first burn of the year flared in a spectacular fashion and the charcoal from that side of the kiln was smaller pieces than the rest of the kiln .

30.01.06 It’s a busy time at the moment with a large shingle order for a school in Cockermouth and a weeks felling in a public wood at Arnside all appearing at the same time . Mustn’t grumble about having too much work . As usual the Landrover factor rears its head as the Arnold the new Landrover could detect the possibility of money coming in and cut out at Bowland Bridge while towing a heavy load of bird box blanks . When the AA man turned up after the usual prodding and poking and scratching of head he then proceeded to get a laptop and plug it into a hidden socket under the dashboard . “I’m having trouble communicating with the ECU” . He then removed the drivers seat to reveal something not out of place in a telephone exchange , thick bundles of wires connecting to a sandwich box . No luck there and I ended up being towed into Kendal . It turns out a computer controls everything about the engine and no amount of hitting with hammers will cure it . What happens in darkest Africa when the computer goes down? The weather has been superb this last week and we’ve been down at Arnside by the estuary thinning trees in a small public wood . The first day was a nightmare , despite signs up at 5 different entrances to the wood a pensioner would turn up with dog , feigning ignorance of any signs . The next day we put up more explicit signs and that seemed to work a lot better . The tides were very strange at Arnside last week with hardly any water appearing at all , by contrast this week there will be 10.7 metre tide on Thursday so get down to Arnside for more boring action .

05.01.05

Strangely , in the five years I’ve been doing this job there has been quite noticeable changes in the area where I work . The most obvious has been in farming not surprising as soon after I started the area was hit by foot and mouth . Farmers had a huge amount of extra paperwork to do with every beast having its own passport to keep updated , every farmer will tell you they can’t do without their computer . This year the methods of farm subsidies changed to the single farm payment with extra payments for keeping the landscape in good heart . While this sounds like a good idea in practice it meant that rather than do lots of paperwork the farmers have sold off lots of their stock (resulting in a collapse of the prices ) and laid off any paid help . The constant stream of farmers leaving the industry has led to lots of farmhouses being sold off to rich incomers . In particular Phillip the farmer now runs his farm in the evening and weekends and is spending his days working for a builder installing a hellipad in an ex farmhouse in Troutbeck . The increasing urbanisation of the Lakes is a bit worrying as traditional rural farming methods will be seen as too smelly and dirty for the be-slacked Mercedes drivers that seem to make up a lot of the current incomers . I can see the Lakes turning into a farming museum with fiberglass cows eating plastic grass tended by students dressed up as comedy farmers , still good for the tourists. . I went on a visit to Danny Frosts sawmill and furniture spot up at the back of Skiddaw before Christmas . Danny is obviously very passionate about wood and makes brilliant furniture and has got me fired up again after a bit of a low spot when I cut my arm .

05.12.05 It’s been a few years since we have had such a long frosty spell before Christmas. As a result firewood sales have been brisk. I had an email asking if I had any other weather forecasts after pointing out the oaks coming into leaf well before the ash forecast the very dry summer here. Well no. The only other local forecasting technique was that if you could see Kentmere from Kendal it would be raining in 15 minutes, if you couldn’t it was already raining. Saul the apprentice has unfortunately cut 3 inches into his leg with a billhook which has put him out of action for a couple of weeks, luckily not severing anything important. He was coppicing some hazel in a National Park Authority car park at Waterhead. What was interesting about this hazel was it looked about 10-12 years old but was in fact 6 years old. Very fast growing and the only reason we can think is that they are growing under sodium vapour street lights, I will have to install street lights in all my coppices. Rhubarb the Landrover has had to be traded in for a new model, Arnold the new Landrover ( well 5years old ) goes like a train and pulls trailer loads of wood like they aren’t there . Other improvements are the door locks work and you don’t get a howling draft blowing in round the doors . Its taken me so long to write this diary that in the meantime I’ve managed to cut into my forearm with the 2ft saw blade on my firewood processor . I thought originally I had just caught my jacket on it , thinking phew that was close I looked further to see my fleece had a big slash in it . Further investigation revealed that my thermal vest has also cut a big slash in it ( closer than I thought ) . Moving the remains of my vest showed a nasty bloody mess , actually not bleeding so much but it was off to Westmorland General where a couple of student nurses were treated to the site of seeing the tendons in the arm working ( terminator style ) . I was very lucky indeed as you could see a nice flat surface cut onto the outer tendons , in fact non of them were severed , I found out after a long wait at Lancaster to see the consultant there .He thankfully sent me home with no further surgery . Anyway I’ve got a couple of weeks wait to heal before going back to the rat infested farmyard to do some more firewood processing .

The t-shirt days of summer are starting to seem like a distant memory now , only the age of the pictures on my digital camera is reminding me how long its been since the last update . We have suspended burning at Haverthwaite Heights as we've run out of room in the barn to store the charcoal . Our wholesaler stopped taking it in August , a month earlier than usual despite dry weather . Autumn has seen a few good fungi days but not as many as last year so it must have been drier this year . This haul was gathered by Saul and James at Sow How and includes a massive parasol mushroom . We have managed to get another sawmilling day over at Coniston , sawing up four oak butts with our chainsaw mill and we are also well into firewood season . I didn't expect to sell much firewood this year because of the amount that came down in the storm last January , however we seem to be inundated with orders and have been caught without enough prepared . This job is one of constant surprises and never seems to follow the pattern you would expect . To finish off I have just finished teaching a green woodwork course at the Woodland Pioneers week . The object was to make a rustic stool from a single log and we got some very imaginative stools made including a few with backs on . Everyone managed to get a stool done . One of the more professional turned out to be made by a coppice worker from Dorset , Terry Heard and his son . Terry turned up with a load of his own tools including a small curved drawknife that turned out round legs in no time . On the Friday I rigged up a stock knife so that Terry could give a master class in tent peg making , his record to date is 800 in one day and he was certainly quick even with a different stock knife .

24.08.05 A lot has happened in the last couple of months and as usual I've forgotten most of it however a few things stand out including the business nearly coming to an end as a result of a series of setbacks . It started off quite comically as I was coming out of the agricultural supplies in Kendal and an Irishman said 'I've got your generators for you ' 'not me mate you want to see the shop people'. When about to drive off another Irishman drives up alongside and starts asking me if I want to buy a generator . No thanks I don't need one . Think no more about it . Next day getting back home , Irishman trying to flog a generator to the next door neighbour sees me ,'would you like to buy a generator ' 'you asked me that yesterday ' . For some reason I looked in his van at the shiny red generators and apparently became hypnotised by this bloke because I bought not one but two . After he had left I thought I've bought two generators from an Irishman out of the back of a van just after Appelby horse fair . Strangely my wife did not divorce me on the spot but now has a massive air of superiority while I stump around red faced . After that self inflicted blow my Landrover failed its MOT needing a huge amount of welding . The chasis was so bad that the mechanic actually called me in to decide if it was worth continuing with as he pointed out the foot long hole . This meant the Landrover off the road for 2 weeks at the busiest time for charcoal , a rare dry spell and Booths sending out barbecue recipes to homes round the North West . Just as we needed to get the kilns moved to a new site at Haverthwaite Heights as we ran out of cut wood at Sow How . One of the interesting sides of this business has been well ... running a business and I was quite amazed at how something chugging along quite nicely could seemingly fall apart overnight . I have been very lucky on the whole getting started with this and quite often I find things dropping into place in wonderful way . But these two weeks turned into a nightmare with everything going against the grain . Anyway I seem to be back to normal now , Rhubarb is back and we have got the kilns moved up the big hill into Haverthwaite Heights . This is a nice spot , you have to go across the Haverthwaite steam railway to get to the wood and the background noises to the kilns burning now include the whistles of steam trains . The kilns are up a very steep track ( low range 2nd gear at full throttle to get up) so steep we had to get Phillip the farmer to tow the kilns up with his monster tractor . We also had a tv crew from Border television who wanted to see James the apprentice working with the kilns and the reporter turned up in high heels which sank without trace in the soft ground . On being asked if Border tv was her first job in television as we came back down the steep slope the camera man said it could be her last . ps anyone want a generator very nice 2300 watt 6.5kva red .

23.5.05 Two years ago now Saul and I spent a huge amount of one winter hand axing and adzing a gazebo that was to go in a garden in Burton in Kendal . When we eventually finished it the client decided that the corner of the garden where it was to go didn't need it . Last year we sold the gazebo to a village near Bicester to go over an ancient well in the village . Last weekend we were invited down to the grand opening of the new construction . I must admit I was quite surprised by the community spirit of the village as seemingly most of them turned out for the ceremony which included the vicar doing a short service and local school children singing a song and reading a poem about the history of the well . The finished project has been very well done with reclaimed clay tiles for the roof and handmade bricks at the back of the gazebo and I was really quite proud to have been part of something so wonderful . One of the things that struck me about me previous existence as a computer programmer was that there was nothing solid that you could point at and say 'I made that' . With this gazebo it should see me out !

The website seems to be working very well at the moment as I'm getting quite a few orders for interesting jobs . One of which was a rush order for a beam . This started out as an 8inch by 11inch by 14foot beam , the largest we had ever made and having said we would do it expanded to a monstrous 11inch by 14inch by 15foot beam . The project seemed to be cursed from the outset when having bought a more than large enough wind blown tree from the storms last January on cutting one end off we found an enormous crack so we had to squeeze the beam out of the wood on one side of the crack . When we cut the other end there turned out to be some rot from a dead branch at the top of the tree . Never mind it doesn't look too bad . We cut the beam using our Alaskan mill and I then realised that the sawmill wouldn't go past 12inches deep so I had to set up the rails to do another 'first cut' . Because of the shape of the log I had to ax off quite a lot of wood to get the rails to fit . In dragging the 15foot long sawn beam onto the 8foot trailer with the tractor winch I managed to severely bend the trailer and break several welds as the 500kgs of beam landed . When I got the sawn beam back to the yard I went over it with an adze to give a bit more authentic look and it became obvious that the rot in the top end was too far gone . James and I had to spend a frantic day removing a large chunk of rotten wood and scarfing in a bit of elm that we had lying around that was the right size . When eventually ran out of time and I had to deliver the beam late Sunday after having driven 500miles to North Maston at the weekend . The beam was going to a house at Chapel Le Dale where the cattle grid had collapsed a few days previously so I had to tow it around a (very beautiful) back track up hill and down dale . How the builders will manage to maneuver this enormous lump of wood through a window would be worth seeing . I've gone on a bit here sorry

08.05.05 The beanpole festival went very well and it was great to see so many woodland business' in the same place . Saul had got hold of an ex army parachute which he has made into a shelter for these type of events and it worked very well . The parachute is enormous but packs down very small and got a lot of interested comments from the public . I got talking to an old boy who's hands were in a very bad state as a result of using early chainsaws which apparently weighed loads and had no anti vibration mounts . The largest tree he cut down was nine feet across . Talking of which Saul and James have been on a medium trees course last week and I have been left to me own devices which has meant a lot of oak peeling ( the season started a couple of weeks ago ) . The peeling tool I made at the 'weekend in the woods' blacksmithing course is working a treat and I am very proud of it . The blue bells are magnificent in Sow How at the moment and a perfect day is bark peeling on a sunny day with the bluebells out and the cuckoos calling .

21.04.05 still trying to get some stuff ready for 'The great Cumbrian Bean pole festival' (this Sunday 24th April at Rayrigg Meadow) . Also I've been on a waterways and spilling course which involves stabilising stream and river banks with living willow woven walls. It worked very well ,and if the willow takes properly will result in a living barrier that doesn't rot away .We also seem to be generating some good potential orders for shakes and peeled oak poles . We will also have to get burning again as we are now almost out of charcoal. I also had a meeting with a product designer ( Peter Foskett) who has been coming up with some great ideas for charcoal packaging which at the moment must remain top secret , you ain't heard anything from me right! But they were really good and revolutionary .

2.4.05 There is something about time at this point of the year , another month has wizzed past and everything is bursting into leaf and blossoming . We are trying to get things made in preparation for the Beanpole Festival (April 24th) but the usual problem is events conspiring against me . This month we have had to get some larch trees milled up that I have been given and this has taken longer than expected but we've got a good stack of 8 inch square posts for a timber framing project that I would like to do . We have also been getting a steady trickle of firewood orders which tend to be more trouble than they are worth at this time of year because we have to prepare each trailer load individually rather than having a great pile of processed wood in the barn . Its also been a busy month for meetings including a trip to QES school at Kirby Lonsdale who have been doing a project on the use of fines and have come up with the novel idea of mixing the fines with shredded wet paper and then making 'snowballs ' out of the mixture which then dry out and can be used as fuel for fires . Out in the wood the Ransoms are coming up and every where is smelling of garlic . We have also been cutting some of the biomass willow at Newton Rigg for stick chairs, when you come accross dense in rotation coppice like this you can see how it is possible to make reasonable money at coppicing .

3.3.05 A month goes past without an update , the loyal readership is revolting and sending emails from 'disgruntled of dungerness' and the like . Whats happened in the last month , loads . The major happening has been that Saul decided that he wants to concentrate more on the craft side of coppicing and doing more shows and feels he is better able to do that outside the partnership . It is unlikely this will make much difference to Lakeland Coppice Products as Saul will still be around doing work for us , but it will be more focused on particular activities . Back to more interesting things the weather has been great this month , the rest of the country has had snow but we have had nice cold clear weather with the woods being nice and dry and we have managed to get charcoal burning up in Sow How . The cold weather has led to a resurgence of the firewood market and with the tracks being dry we have managed to get firewood out of Sow How as well . We went to a monthly machinery sale at the auction mart last week and noticed a reasonable looking chainsaw . Saul fired it up and it went very nicely . We decided to have a look inside to see if it had been kept well maintained . It had , at this point the cold got the better of Saul's fingers so I took over putting it back together , unfortunately I trapped the choke switch in the cover ( not realising at the time ) . Subsequent punters were unable to start the chainsaw and Saul got the saw for a knock down price . I'm sorry for the owner but the number of times sellers have had ringers bidding against me at auctions means occasionally its nice to get one back . Today we finally finished the remaining bits and bobs of clearing up house and hotel gardens after the storm in January , including the enormous remains of a birch stump which we have had to winch , manhandle chop ,saw and swear at for a day and a half before managing to get the beast out of the garden . February also saw my first B&Q charcoal delivery of the year to Bolton and Bury and a lot of driving round a large conurbation looking for the stores . The towns all seem to merge with each other and at one point I had no idea where I was ( not even which town I was in ) . Anyway back to real life , here is a charcoal burn getting under way at Sow How. That'll teach you to complain Disgruntled of Dungerness .

30.1.05 Usually all the various machines and Landrovers work without a problem . However when they do decide to go wrong they seem to all decide to go wrong together and usually when you need them to do something . Last week was lovely dry weather and we needed everything to be working to make the most of it . The week turned into a disaster as first the Landrover battery was flat , then we had a flat tyre on the Landrover . Then the little tractor wouldn't start so we couldn't use the winch to get two trees out of a hotel garden . Saul's chainsaw wouldn't start despite changing just about everything on it . The landrover got another puncture . The trailer got a flat tyre . The trailer light socket got the wires pulled out . The jockey wheel bracket got broken trying to turn the trailer in a tight space delivering firewood . The space being tight because the householder couldn't move their car because it had a flat battery . In the end most of the week seemed to be spent chasing problems . However a few things got done , Saul has managed to get the second kiln up into Sow How and James and I have cut the willow patch . We left the willow an extra year to help it get established and its looking a lot healthier . Here's James starting on some golden willow.

16.1.05 Last Wednesday saw the annual humilition by accountancy when old friend Mick the accountant came to finish off the lakeland coppice products books to April 2004 . There are always dark mutterings about not having everything organised and about journal this and posting that . The end result is that I feel like I've been 10 rounds with a boxer but end up paying no tax . The bright side however was that turnover doubled last year and at this rate I might one day pay tax.After the grilling we had a pleasant walk up Fairfield , a brief interlude from wading through areas of windblown trees . The Forestry Commision estimates that half a million trees have been felled by the storm in one day , more than the number cut annually .

10.1.05 I hope you had a good Christmas , just before Christmas I took a one day firewood course for Cumbria Woodlands . This rather exposed my teaching ability and by dinner time I had run out of things to say so everyone went home . They seemed to get something from it , but they could be just being polite . Not a lot happened over the holiday period except the odd load of scrabbled together firewood . However January 8th saw a mighty wind in the Lakes that has flattened an incredible number of trees . Rayrigg woods seem to have been very badly hit with two hotels receiving a number of fallen trees in their back gardens . Catcrag had two trees over the deer fence and a third hung up precariously over the fence . It took most of the morning to get this tree down as we just didn't like going near it . I would imagine that the firewood market will be a bit subdued next winter as just about everyone will be near a fallen tree .Here's a couple of pictures of the devastion in Rayrigg woods .

15.12.04 Firewood season has started and very soon finished again as the massive pile of wood we had has seemingly disappeared overnight . We seem to have picked up a couple of hotels and they chew through large amounts of wood . We have also been hired to do some firewood processing for a house near Winster . They had a huge stack of 5ft long logs which they had stored some years and were bone dry . In 3 days we got through about 12 chords (about 18 tonnes) of wood leaving it all nicely stacked but we were knackered by the end of the three days as each bit of wood had to be pulled out of the woodpile taken to another pile nearer the processor and then moved from the conveyor to the stack . Anyway a happy Christmas to you and my new years resolution should be to do more updates and make it more interesting . Any suggestions . Actually my new years resolution is to make a timber framed tool shed .

28.11.04 We have now managed to finish the coppicing of the coup that needed cutting in Catcrag , we now need to thin out the standards as they are still too dense . We have also been on a 2 day coppicing course with Rebecca Oaks , always helps to get another view on these things .Here is a view of us looking at some nice coppice in Silverdale.

17.11.04 There has been a bit less rain and we have managed to get some more firewood out of Catcrag . We have also been doing some proper coppicing in the other section of Catcrag . This is a second cut with most of the rods going up to Dumfries for a round house thats being built up there . The standards seem a bit thick for decent coppice so we will be thinning them out and we are going to layer the hazel stool to get the density of hazel back up . We have also noticed that the deer are nibbling some regrowth despite the deer fence so we will have to find out where they are getting in . We have also been doing a fair bit of chainsaw milling , including the large cherry tree butts that have ben down for a couple of years now. The planks produced are stunning we will have to be careful to stack them right to season .

01.11.04 the handrails for the fence have now been delivered , these turned into a bit of a nightmare . The rounder didn't work very effectively so we ended up sawing 2inch square blanks , rounding the edges on a router table and then going over them with spoke shaves to get them smooth . Not very cost effective but it gets them out of the way . The firewood season is in full swing now but we've had a lot of trouble getting the good ash out of Catcrag due to the weather . Its been dry for a few days now so we've been busy hauling trailer loads up the slippery slope with the tractor winch . We've been wondering if firewood is actually worth the bother , its heavy , knackers the landrover and trailer hauling it around and brings in little money for the amount of grief involved . The only good think that can be said for it is that it brings in some money during the winter . On a more positive note Brian Farraday turned up at Orrest Head with his truck to take the oak bark down to the tannery in Devon . Brian has been doing this trip for 30 years back to the times when he collected full lorry loads from Bill Hogarth . What else have we been doing ? Well I had a very nice trip down to Dorset to see the Dorset Coppice Group nice people well worth visiting .

04.10.04 A bit sparse on the updates , sorry about that but I appear to be running around in ever decreasing circles achieving not much . We've delivered the first part of the cleft oak fence for the Forest of Bowland visitor centre but we've still got to try and produce hand rails to go up the side of the fence for disabled visitors . This has proved to be quite awkward and I've had to cobble together a rounder by cutting an old wooden plane in half and then bolting the bits back together . Saul has been making another living hut for the winter (after elephant house at High Wood , its now Leviathan house at Dixon heights ) , the ribs have been made from one branch lopped off a cedar in Sow How . Its amazing how quickly the nights have closed in and the weather gone downhill since the last update . Its been so consistentl wet that we must be in for a dry spell some time . Actually we had quite a nice week while I was doing a first aid course a couple of weeks ago. The instructor tried his best to make it realistic and my practice casualty had cut his fingers off with a bow saw , to make things interesting he had an asthma attack , but we soon sorted that out and bagged up his plastic fingers . Hope I don't have to do that in real life! I have just started a weeks teaching at the Woodland Pioneers course , the first time I have done any serious instructing with more than one or two people and its pretty nerve wracking , interestingly the 8 novices managed to spend all day using razor sharp axes and adzes with no problem and then three of them cut themselves with the ordinary hand saw .

09.08.04 It's been a bit of a poor summer for charcoal sales with the weekends being a bit cool and as a result our wholesaler has quite a bit in stock . Luckily there has been a very warm spell and Booths have started ordering again so we may just get a burst at the end of the season . We have now enrolled as a Bioregional supplier and taken on five B&Q stores but it remains to be seen if this is a good idea or not . I still have a sneaking suspicion that we will be charging down to Bolton with smallish amounts . Our peeled oak order for renovating a Black house on Tiree is now finished thanks to Saul and James felling and peeling the 48 thin poles that we needed while I sunned myself in Dorset with the family . We've now started on a large cleft oak fence for the visitor centre at Beacon Fell in the forest of Bowland . As mentioned James has started with us now and it is possible to get through quite a lot of work with three people. Last week however I left them on their own while I went delivering charcoal , when I got back James had been stung by a wasp and Saul had sliced into his finger with his axe ( not seriously though) . The wasps are a bit of a problem in Sow How with 2 nests that we are aware of , and these particular wasps are quite agressive.The same day Saul cut his finger he also got stung twice by the same wasp that flew up his shirt.

11.07.04 The Royal Show went very well and we met up with a bunch of friendly folk from the Green Wood Trust . The other demonstrators were doing some great chairs , hurdles and baskets and we were hewing logs into beams . We had lots of positive comments about the gazebo and we've sold it to a village neat Bicester . We also managed to sell the bench to a very nice couple from Chipping Norton . The last night of the show everything closed (surprise surprise ) and we couldn't get anything to eat or drink but Saul managed to rustle up a vegetable concoction . A storm then rolled in and it chucked it down and blew through the night so we ended up packing up and getting off for a tour of the Cotswolds and surrounding area delivering gazebos and benches .Incidentally we are now producing charcoal in Whitbarrow woods and we are back to producing 220kgs a kiln , this makes a considerable difference from Graggy wood where we got 120Kgs a kiln load.Here's the first burns starting off.

23.06.04 Its been a bit of an extended period in prime barbecue time not producing charcoal but its given us a chance to get through some other orders and we have been busy peg making , hewing a beam and making a rather nice oak bench . Saul has also been up to the Royal Highland Show demonstrating coracle making as a stand-in for Rebecca Oaks and did a roaring trade selling coracle rides on the lake for £1 a shot . We are off to the Royal Show at Stoneleigh next Sunday demonstrating beam hewing if the logs to hew have turned up , could be a tent peg demonstration otherwise .

10.06.04 After a few backward steps we are now making good progress . The last burn has just been completed at Craggy Wood and we have managed to buy 50 tonnes of wood from Forest Enterprise at Whitbarrow . Buying wood in will become an increasingly common activity I think due to a couple of reasons . The main one is that we seem to have trouble cutting enough wood to satisfy all our commitments to charcoal and firewood , also FCS certified wood has enabled us to start selling through Bio Regional to B&Q . We have also got quite a lot of craft jobs on at the moment which we should be able to get a bit more done while we have the brief break between sites (waiting for the contract from FE) . It makes a nice change to be not covered in charcoal , making shingles or tent pegs . While on the oak shingle front , we have been peeling the trees we take for shingles ( the bark goes to a tannery in Devon ) and strangely the bark hasn't been peeling very easily this week . It's a bit early for it to have stopped but we are wondering if its due to the very dry May . Here is a picture of some tent peg making .

20.05.04 It's a funny old game this coppicing , one minute everything is going great and then in the space of a couple of days you seem to be back to square one . We have been chewing through the big pile at a phenominal rate however we have now had the farmer stopping us going up the field in the landrover as he reckons that contractors don't have access . He is now getting his son to take the bags of charcoal down the field with his tractor and trailer where upon we transfer the charcoal to our trailer . Not particularly onerous , but we now start a day of manually lifting 3 tons of wood and 300 kgs of charcoal with a stiff walk up a steep slope with all our equipment . The second bit of bad news came when the wholesaler told us that the charcoal we are producing from this wood is so light that he is having difficulty getting 3kgs in the bag , so we are now busting a gut making something that the wholesaler doesn't particularly like. Its not all bad news however as Alex Todd the head forester for the national Park has managed to get the woods FSC certified so we can now start selling to Bio regional as well . The brown bags have been going particularly well as we seem to be picking up outlets that Chris Jefferson used to supply ( Chris having now gone to France ) .

09.05.04 Another busy week , we seem to be generating a lot of work at the moment , which is nice . Last week we only had four burns going due to the bank holiday and we had a couple of days making spoons , bowls and oak trellis for Sauls weekend demo at Heron Corn Mill in Beetham . The squirrel man is trapping grey squirrels in the wood in the hope that the reds will reappear and prevent damage to the trees ( a group of greys can strip huge amounts of bark off trees killing the trees ) and let us have a couple to try barbecuing . There wasn't much meat on them but they tasted very nice ( a combination of chicken and pork) .

01.05.04 Spring has well and truly sprung now , there are huge swathes of wild daffodils at Sow How woods . They are nice little dainty numbers and ordinary daffs look a bit brash by comparison . We have moved the first kiln into Craggy Woods which was no mean feat . The woods are very steep and the kiln had to come in uphill through a steep field and then over a wall . We experimented with pulling the kiln up attached to a washing line sized bit of very long rope , the other end was tied to the Land Rover which drove slowly down the hill . This worked pretty well and I was amazed by the strength of the 6mm polyprop rope . it did stretch a fair bit though especially when the kiln got stuck behind a stump . The rope stretched …. And stretched until the kiln finally got enough energy to get over the stump , it then set off up the hillside like a polo mint on a bit of string . On the subject of rope I was at the selection day for the B.H.M.A.T. ( Bill Hogarth Memorial Apprentice Trust ) and the afternoon was spent at Walter Lloyds doing amongst other things - rope making . Besides making rope out of herdwick wool , Walter also started pulling straw rope out of straw bale . This was quite a bizare thing to witness , no tools were needed and the resulting rope would make a good festoon at Christmas . Talking of the BHMAT selection day I somehow ended up with not one but two apprentices . It seemed like a good idea at the time but I'm now wondering how we will survive on the pittance that coppicing provides . However they are good people so its worth perseveering with. Also on the business side Lakeland Coppice Products is now a partnership , one small step towards coppice domination .

13.03.04 The sawmill ( an Alaskan Mk3 chainsaw mill ) has arrived and last week Saul and I went up to High wood to plank up the sycamore that we felled last winter . After a bit of practice we soon got into the swing of things and were able to plank up some short ash and oak and produce a 6inch square 8 foot oak beam in a couple of hours . This was with using the standard cross-cut chain that came with the beast of a chainsaw that we use with this mill . Other developments have been a series of meetings to try to start a charcoal co-operative amongst burners in the area . Trying to come up with something that will suit all concerned is looking tricky , but with lots of grant money around ( especially for groups ) we have to try . Also the wild dafs are finally out at Sow How .

26.02.04 Another glorious day in the wood , although hard work clambering up and down this bank all day . Woods in Cumbria tended to grow where the land was no use as pasture for sheep , ie steep banks and crags I've yet to find a flat woodland here . Luckily the compact tractor and winch is invaluable to drag the wood up this slope .

24.02.04 Sorry for the delay in updating the diary , the coppice cam finally gave up after another soaking in my top pocket from the flooding that we had a couple of weeks ago . The good news is I've now got another digital camera , about the same price as the original and three times more sophisticated . What's happened in the last month I hear you say . Well a fair bit , most of which I've forgotten , we are busily cutting our way through the first area of Sow How and we've had the first burn this year today . Lancaster man has taken away a ton of charcoal that we burnt at High Wood last Autumn ready for the new season and after a very wet spell with lots of flooding it is now very nice and sunny and every where is coming to life .

23.01.04The Christmas break seemed to be never ending this year partly due to us going away in January in an attempt to keep the children occupied during their never ending holiday . However we are back in earnest now felling at Sow How . Saul has been doing his chainsaw course and has now changed his tune from ' I only want to fell trees with axes and bow saw ' to something akin to the Texas chainsaw massacre . This is a bit of a slack time of the year as far as income is concerned , most of the firewood is finished now and there is still a couple of months before the charcoal season starts up . I've got an order for bird boxes but that is being effected by someone taking all my shingle off cuts from Rayrigg woods , presumably for firewood. Trying to make the best of the remaining bendy bits of cleft oak has driven me close to insanity . I could do with a design that is more forgiving of the warping . While talking about firewood the firewood processor has developed a big split in the conveyor which is needing some welding doing but the blacksmith doesn't seem to be getting on with it .

29.12.03 Its been frantic before Christmas with the firewood orders coming in thick and fast . The massive pile of wood in the barn has nearly all gone and I need to proceess the pile of ash logs that have been stacked in the yard for most of the summer . We've started loading the firewood using a bucket on the front loader of Tom tractor which is a lot less tiring ( after a day doing 4 deliveries I've lifted around 6 tons of wood ) but is not overly quicker because the bucket is quite small and the tractor has to do a couple of 3-point turns to get out of the barn . We've also agreed to buy a pile of around 60 tons of wood off the National Park Authority at Craggy Wood . The wood's been there nigh on 2 years and some is going soft and the site is extremely awkward to get in and out of . We pondered long and hard about wether to touch it seen as we have a good deal of wood to cut at Sow How but the price was so cheap we decided to chance it and will now have the added complication of another site working 30 mins away from our main site . We have started now at Sow How and one of the first features to come out from under the bracken was this charcoal burning platform . I had been looking around for a another place to put a kiln so we didn't have to cart wood to far and then found I was standing on one !

04.12.03 We have now nearly completed the move to Sow How . One kiln is in there and the other is spending a holiday with Phil for a couple of months so he can do some burning before his new kilns come. This has been a bit of fraught time logistically as Sow How is half an hour away and we have had to move the kiln , the lal' tractor and Saul's caravan. The wood is up steep roads all round and the landrover was starting to overheat pulling the tractor up the steep hill to Gummer's Howe. We then had to pull the caravan accross fields to the wood and finally shoe horn the caravan into a very picturesque spot overlooking a stream with the help of the winch . We've marked up the first area to start work on ( this wood is more singeling of oak coppice rather than proper coppicing ) . Back at High Wood we need a hard frost to be able to get the last bags of firewood out , hopefully in the next few days . Tom traactor will then go to the barn to process the pile of ash from Catcrag thats there before tootling down to Sow How. Here's Saul's caravan in its new home .

17.11.03 the weather has now turned distinctly damp . The ground round High Wood is saturated and we are having to pick our moments to extract anything heavy . Luckily there is not a lot left to do and if we make most of it into charcoal that will be light to extract . Saul was struck with auction fever and has bought a caravan for £60 . He has been busy gutting out the insides and putting in a woodburning stove . We have made another recce to Sow How our next wood to work and can't wait to get going on it . We had a visit today from Martin Clark of Clark Mactavish and a group of Cypriot foresters . We showed them the little wood we had left and some shingle making and then for a treat I thought we would give them some bacon cooked by dangling in the kilns chimneys . The result was foul and I'm now worried that the Cypriot forestry service will cut off diplomatic relations for trying to poison their boys . Sorry , apparently it tastes better if you wait till the end of the burn . Barry the veteran helper has had to call a halt for the time being due needing an operation on a furred up artery which should be done fairly soon . We wish him a speedy recovery (get back to work imminent death is no excuse).

29.10.03 Its still pretty dry and we've made good progress churning through the wood piles in high wood to get the best part of it cleared by the end of October . We have been doing a steady 2 to 4 burns a week to get charcoal into store for next year and we've been experimenting with getting the firewood into bulk bags ,which is working well. We are fast getting to the point where we need to burn Saul's cabin down .

13.10.03 The fungi has been superb this autumn . Now there has been a bit of rain they have come out in force . This little meal was collected by Saul and we spent several hours trying to positively identify them before we ate them . Even so I reckon the trepidation that you might have got it wrong tends to take the shine of eating them ( the Penny Buns tasted ok but the slipery Jacks had a constency like snot).The shingles are finished now but its taken me the best part of a day to stack them on the pallets nicely .

06.10.03 It's a bit cold today with frequent showers however the shingle show must go on . We are on the last lap of the shingles and it's amazing the difference between how easy it is split the shingles out of 2 trees growing next to each other . Some are just impossible with little knots lurking inside , while something that looks knotty on the outside can split nicely .

29.09.03 The lovely dry weather is starting to feel like a distant memory now as it has hammered down all today while Saul and I tried to empty 2 kilns at High Wood . We need to have the timber in here processed by the end of October so we can't really pick and choose when we burn . To this end we've built a temporary hut to look after the kilns . We are getting towards the end of the shingle order now , the daily record now being 130 by Saul . The news of the shingle order is spreading far and wide and the National Trust are interested in roofing a new straw bale building with shingles . Here is a picture of the charcoal burners pitstead at High Wood.

09.09.03 Shingles,shingles ,shingles now up past 1000 . We aslo took the opportunity while it was dry to get some more wood up the greasy slope at Catcrag and one of the kilns is now set up in High Wood to start burning through the major pile of wood up there . Saul is making a re-appearance from France at the end of September and Barry has recovered from high blood pressure so things are looking up .

08.08.03 Yet another big delay , its been newsletter time and charcoal sales have been going bonkers . The new kiln has finally arrived now I'm on the last few cords of wood in Seatle woods and these need burning quick as the Wildlife Trust has started making noises about removing the piles of wood in High Wood before 31st October . This is combined with a big order for shingles , the need to get firewood prepared and to keep the charcoal wholesaler happy for the last few weeks of the season .Just when you need a trailer with crane the grant is turned down and Barry the aged helper is suffering from high blood pressure and having to take a rest. The insurance company is talking about putting up my employer liability by 5 times and the mother in law has had a mild stroke putting her into hospital . But besides that everythings fine . Saw a green woodpecker last week . Very nice , and the roe deer in Rayrigg woods have a lovely russet coat at the moment . Here is a picture of the first ever double burn with Margaret and Maureen in full smoke .

04.07.03 There has been a steady 2 burns a week at Seatle and I've now started making progress towards the big shingle order with a couple of oak trees felled and the bark peeled for the tannery , with the peeled poles for rustic furniture . I've been helped this week by a chap wanting to learn how to manage woodland . I'm not sure I'm teaching him much about woodland management but he is doing sterling work moving piles of wood and today he's been helping to make shingles . This is turning into a bit of a nightmare as we've spent most of the day splitting off 16inch shingles which are a harder work than 12 inch shingles and you don't get so many from a disc because they have to be thicker to avoid running out to soon and making a short shingle . Oh well a bit of perseverance and we will soon be up to speed.

24.06.03 Maureen the charcoal kiln has now moved to Seatle woods to finally convert the 20 piles of wood that I bought back in Jan 2002 . On the whole the wood is in good nick and being alder should make good charcoal . The first burn went ok but I could of done with more sand to seal it off . Its nice to be in a different wood but its got problems in that the wood is scattered all over a marshy area and needs man handling with a barrow to get it by the kiln . I've also got an order for 4000 oak shingles so I'm running around trying to organise the wood for that , luckily there is still some of the excellent Rayrigg cleaving oaks left .Here is the kiln down at Seatle (pronounced sea-tul) .

04.06.03 the updates are getting sparse ,but I seem to be getting overwhelmed with office work . Amongst these are answering emails from every corner of the globe trying to sell me charcoal . The list now is China,Bolivia , Eygpt and Australia (spot the odd one out ) . All this stopped anyway as the Cray supercomputer at the heart of Lakeland Coppice Products was hit by a persistant virus that started sending out hundreds of emails to people I'd never heard of and casually went through my directories giving files different extensions so the operating system didn't recognise them . Eventualy managed to get rid of it . Whats this got to do with coppicing ? Well the latest from the cyber pitstead is I spent all yesterday taking to a nice girl from BBC North West tonight . She took massive amounts of video , presumably for all the different options on the digital channel(press the red button to pat the kiln with the left hand ) . She also came down to Lancaster with us and filmed me delivering charcoal to E & S . If this is ever relesed it could give 'Take the high road' a good run for its money . Whats this got to do with coppicing , well I also took the gazebo to the Silverdale wood fair where there was lots of positive comment but no one with the pockets deep enough or garden big enough for it . The Landrover has detected money coming in and decided to have a new cross member and steering box . How does it know?

12.05.03 Another week of charcoal burning . Its getting to be routine now . Empty and fill the kiln on Monday , burn on Tuesday , Wednesday do craft stuff , Thursday empty and fill and Friday burn . Chill on Saturday (oh no that's getting a bit Craig David ) . Looking at a new wood on Sunday up near Gummers Howe thats so big I could end up there for three years . Lots of nice coppiced oak , but the down side is they want paying ( if only a nominal sum ) for the wood extracted .

01.05.03 April was pretty eventful . It started off badly with a depressing day trying to sell charcoal to shops in Blackpool ( "well it will have to be cheap to beat this stuff I've got" ). This was followed by a phone call from a place in Lancaster that wants as much as I can make . This was quickly followed by a trip to Ireland looking at woodland management , coppicing and crafts there . The sad thing is there appeared to be very little , though looking at some of the woods there was obviously quite a bit done in the past .This is the other members of the party looking at a playground in Mount Shannon with a hut which has shingles made out of pallet wood . They might not last long but they look good.

05.04.03 The good weather continues except for a brief blip on Tuesday when it chucked it down for most of the day . I've at last started on the deer fence round the willow patch with some expert help from Barry . Today I've been making 2ft long tent pegs to anchor the railomatic chainsaw mill that I'm getting from Richmond . I quite enjoy making tent pegs its seems to be quite therapeutic .

26.03.03 Its been a couple of weeks of ups and downs . I had a visit from the Ethnobotanist of Kew gardens who came to take pictures of the kiln in action . She actually bought the first bag of charcoal of the year . I also heard that Cumbria Woodlands were aproving a grant towards a chainsaw mill . However on the downside I took the two adzed beams to York Auctions and got less than the cost of the trees that went into making them , which is very dissapointing . I might try some at a Kendal auction and see how that goes .Anyway the weathers nice .

17.03.03 The weather is superb at the moment . Better than all of last summer . I've had the first charcoal burn of the year , which unusually didn't start very easily . It was quite late on before it got really going and the result was only about half the usual amount of charcoal . Saul is heading off on his travels , but before he went we traveled over to Brian Crawley's woodland to convert a couple of oak trunks into beams . Its good being able to go somewhere with no power tools and produce nice looking beams .Here is a picture of the Crawleys and Saul manouvering a large oak trunk down the Queen's highway .

02.03.03 As usual February has sped past and the weather has been glorious . Its been full tilt to get the gazebo finished and it looks wonderful . We've been cutting a few of the Rayrigg oaks for shingles and long lathes . Unfortunately the man at Ackenthwaite has decided the corner of the garden where it was due to go is too nice and sunny to put a gazebo there so if anyone wants a hand hewn and cleft gazebo ( could be made into a lovely shed ) let me know . I've also had to vacate the firewood barn while the cows are calving and thats taken quite some time . Its amazing how much rubbish you can generate in 6 months . I also had my enormous ash burr taken away for a short time as the garage it was seasoning in was demolished and carted away . I've also been back into Catcrag to finish off the felling there , still about 30 trees left to go . Must try and update more often .

03.02.03 Dorothy Farrers wood was cleared in time for the volunteers to come in and plant the hazel saplings last Sunday . It was a miserable day with snow and sleet but around 40 people turned up to help and achieved a lot between them . Today was spent back in the barn doing jack rafters for the gazebo . We finished those early and headed up Borrowdale for a bit of sledging .

11.01.03 Clearing up the felled wood is progressing at a pace and we are quickly running out of space to put it all in . The l'al tractor has been doing a wonderful job winching up all the stems but started playing up on Friday when it got an airlock in the fuel line . This was cured by sucking up diesel from the tank , but it tastes horrible . Here is a big pile of oak for beams .

08.01.03 Happy new year to you and yours . We've now finished the felling in Dorothy Farrer's top wood and today we started clearing up the trunks that are littering the woodland floor . This came to an abrupt end when there was loud hissing and the tractor tyre went down . Saul and I spent about an hour trying to pump it back up with a footpump and I was convinced that the tyre was getting harder . Saul was sceptical and when I turned the tyre over and there was a half inch gap between the tyre bead and the wheel so was I . Ended up taking it ATS to be reinflated and checked for punctures . Luckily there was non . Weather has been brilliant , cold and clear and the mud is frozen solid .

Diary 2002

Diary Nov - Dec 2001

Diary Aug - Oct 2001

Diary July 2001

Diary June 2001

Diary May 2001

Diary April 2001

Diary March 2001

Diary Nov 00 to Feb 01 p>