Birch, Scouts and Coracles - the result

Way back at the end of July I helped the Liphook Scouts to cut some birch rods on Stanley Common, one of the commons I help to manage, from a patch of scrub I've been leaving intentionally to harvest at a useful size. The scouts were about to go on their annual camp, this year on the river Wye (just down from Symonds Yat) and their aim was to make coracles and race them on the river.



I know this part of the river Wye (just down from Symonds Yat) having been camping and canoeing there since I was young, so I was keen to help their plan. Very kindly the leaders sent me some pictures of the scouts making the coracles and the race on the river. The coracles only needed to work once so a light birch frame sufficed covered in plastic sheeting.



The coracles look quite ungainly out of the water but once in it they seem to do the job nicely.


Though I think I might need a slightly larger one these days. In these days of health and safety paranoia it's good to see that the scouts are still allowed to make and do things, so well done the Liphook Scouts - and I look forward to getting them to do some more scrub clearance on the commons as well.

Marley Common - all Beltied Up

Earlier this week the National Trust released three young Belted Galloway calves onto Marley common. Marley common is on the northwestern (frontier) corner of West Sussex, just to the south of Haslemere. I help manage one part of Marley common for the Lynchmere Society and over the last couple of years the Society and the Trust have been working jointly to prepare for the reintroduction of grazing on the common.



The calves were released by Dave the NT Bladcdown Head Warden, Sarah Bain the chair of the local NT Blackdown committee and Michael Shaw, chair of the Lynchmere Society. Once persuaded to leave their comfy trailer by Dave they shot out and disappeared into the nearby gorse scrub.

The common was last grazed in the mid 20th century and since then the heathland has been suppressed by the growth of scrub woodland. Bringing back the grazing is an important tool in restoring the commons to a mosaic of lowland heath and wood pasture and increasing the biodiversity of the site.

But nowadays we can't just release cattle as we would only a few years ago. So we have been clearing a fence line and putting in fences and gates to prepare for the grazing over the last year. The fencing has been built using chestnut coppiced from local NT woods and prepared and installed by local coppice workers.




The young Belted Galloways are well suited to the rough grazing and should help us to keep the scrub down. The use of Belted Galloways or 'Belties' is particularly welcome as it's only a few months since the last of a herd of Belties established by the late Peter Burkitt on the nearby Lynchmere Ridge ceased grazing the fields.



For them to get accustomed to the common a temporary electic fenced enclosure has been built. After a couple of weeks here the young calves will then be allowed to roam over the rest of the common until they are taken off to winter on the nearby National Trust meadows at Shottermill.



Unfortunately I managed to make a classic mistake. I was in a hurry to take photos and then get back to a job, but when I later looked at the photos it was clear that I have loads of the rear of the cattle and none from the front. Mainly because the young calves took very little time to move off and get down to the serious business of grazing. Never mind. We're lucky that Dave, the NT head warden managed to prise these calves away from the NT herd at Woolbeding and we are looking forward enormously to working with them and the others that will soon join them to establish a new herd on Marley.

North Norfolk in November

(Warning - this post contains virtually no greenwood content apart from gratuitous images of wooden boats, huts and even a wooden barrow)





I took a new toy with us, a dongle for mobile internet access hoping to be able to catch up with some posts. But unfortunately the North Norfolk coast is beyond the pale. In our cozy little rented cottage on the edge of the salt marsh by Brancaster Staithe I could only pick up an occasional signal. The view of Brancaster marsh from the windows more than made up for the lack of internet though.


Luckily for us the weather was great allowing us to walk along the long local beaches and look at the wildlife - and sometimes, as on Brancaster beach - the wildlife looked back at us, in this case a curious seal gazes back at the visitors. I think they call this taking only photos - leaving only footprints.



With the low sun angle and clear light I couldn't resist taking loads of photos. Here a very low tide reveals the stern of a wreck on Scolt head with an offshore windfarm in the distance. Something about the juxtaposition of old and new fascinated me. The soft focus is caused by the extreme telephoto and my cold hands shaking a little too much. It was November even if it doesn't look it.


The combination of coastal landscape and boats is my favourite as you will see from these photos.





I only have room here for a small selection of my extensive library of boat pictures from this holiday. This the fish quay at Brancaster Staithe on a full tide, a crazy collection of ancient and not quite so ancient fishing boats and their equipment.


We bought some local mussels and oysters from fishermen on the quay. These local fishermen are reknowned for doing all the sorting and cleaning of the shellfish by hand. Understandable, as almost all the machinery in the area looks as if its been broken for a while (Pot, kettle and black come to mind here!). Here they are using a wooden barrow and a riddle to sort the mussels which they bring in from their beds in the creek. A very sustainable approach and one that I instinctively appreciated.



A high tide on the staithe (quay) covers the marshes and leaves a pile of crab pots out in the middle of the creek

Red fishing boats are bit like red tractors, I just have to take a picture.

These beach huts are on the dunes along Brancaster beach, though they face inland towards the marsh.


The sky in Norfolk seems a lot bigger than we're used to in Sussex, something to do with the open landscape I think.




As the tide runs out miles of salt marshes are exposed. A rich feeding groud for millions of sea-birds.


At this time of year thousands of geese are arriving from Iceland, Greenland and Spitzbergen for their winter holiday. Quite a spectacle in the morning and evening as they fly in loose formation or as a large flock takes off. I was lucky with the light here as a line of geese flew by the sun through the edge of the cloud. I'll leave the rest of the bird photos for another post.



I had a lot of trouble deciding which photos to include so I'll subject you to just one more fishing boat in the evening light, sort of.

Off with the birds....

We are off in sunny Norfolk for a few days of coast walking around Brancaster. Something resembling a normal service might resume around the end of the week.

The Butcher, The Baker.....the Candlestick Maker?

A chance encounter at the recent Burley cider pressing weekend led to a couple of interesting photos.


Apparently the owner of this candlestick grew up and lived for many years in Buckleberry Green and remembers the Lailey workshop * in the village. He thought he had something made by George Lailey in the attic and said he would look it out when he got home. The photo is on an A4 sheet of paper which gives some scale to it.


This photo of the underside shows the characteristic signature and is dated 1946. I have heard of and seen his bowls but I've not before seen a candlestick. Is this a common Lailey item? How and why did he make candlesticks? After this chance encounter I am left with more questions than answers.

*Edit - In reading this post I notice that it's not very self explanatory. George Lailey was the last in a long line of bowl turners who worked from their shed workshop on Buckleberry common between Newbury and Reading. H.V.Morton in his eponymous (oooh I've wanted to use this word gratuitously for ages!) work in search of England (1927) recalls a meeting with William Lailey at the workshop and includes a description of both the polelathe and the bowls. George Lailey worked until shortly before his death in 1959 and his tools are now in the collection at the Reading Museum of English Rural Life.

Firewood & that poem again

A break in the rain allowed me to get a load of firewood processed over the weekend. The logs are naturally seasoned over the summer and I wanted to get them in before more rain started to soak them. Cutting up the logs in the gentle autumn sunlight I was reminded of the 'burning wood' poem. Different versions abound, the one that I know of is this..

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year
Oaken logs burn steadily
If the logs are old and dry
Chestnut 's only good they say
If for long it's laid away
But Ash new or Ash old
Is fit for a Queen with a crown of gold

Birch and fire logs burn to fast
Blaze up bright and burn too fast
Make a fire with elder tree -
death within your house you'll see
It is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread
But Ash green or Ash brown
Is fit for a Queen with a golden crown

Elmwood burns like churchyard mould
Een the very flames are cold
Poplar gives a bitter smoke -
fills your eyes and makes you choke
Applewood will scent your room
With an incense like perfume
But Ash wet or Ash dry
Is fit for a Queen to warm her slippers by

There isn't a lot more to add really, the poem says it all. I don't get a lot of ash though I use every scrap of waste from my turning and greenwood work. I do get a lot of birch which I mix with old oak and beech and this gives a good result with the birch building the fire up and the oak or beech to keep it going.

Strange this version doesn't mention hazel, is there another verse that I'm missing perhaps?

The poem contains a lot of useful lore. The best oak is from old windfall trunks which are propped slightly off the ground. The sapwood can rot off but the heartwood will be just ready to burn. But beech will rot surprisingly fast and not last more than a few years so it's best after just a year or two. Of course birch rots very quickly and needs to be used or stored inside within a year.


I tend to saw up the logs into rounds and bring them back to put under a tarp until I split them. Splitting logs is very therapeutic exercise and with the right tool and a steady rhythm an hours work will split a goodly pile of firewood.


In my view the right tool is a splitting maul. I split a few rounds using a maul and I hope the photos give an idea of how effective it is,



Here is the head of the maul. This is my favourite one with a wooden handle. The gaffer tape is not a fix but a precaution I learnt from a couple of local coppicers. Inevitably the handle hits the wood occasionally. The gaffer tape absorbs the blow and prevents the handle splintering extending its life. I prefer a good wooden handle, less vibration than a poor plastic one.

The weight is the same as a sledgehammer and the cheeks of the blade are very wide which reduces the likelihood of the it getting stuck. The tail of the blade allows it to be rocked out of the wood in the event it does stay in the cut - I've never managed to get one stuck. These days I don't have to use wedges at all for firewood splitting, it's normally fairly clear if the wood is knotty enough not to split and I just saw it into shorter rounds.


Another load of logs ready for the fire. It feels good to have a supply of dry firewood laid up ready for the winter.

A big fan...of dried apple....

When I heard what Christopher (my nephew) and Rich(my brother in law) had been upto with some discarded computer and mobile phone parts I thought I should let them have some space on this blog to tell us how it works...so thanks Christopher and Rich, I'm off being distracted by some Landrover maintenance so meanwhilst... cue.....

A big fan.....of dried apple....

One way to prolong the shelf life of fruit and vegetables is to dry them. If they are dried until crisp and brittle, they will keep for a very long time indeed. If they are partly dried, but still remain pliable, they should still keep for at least 2 months or so.

Drying can be done in an oven with the door partly open (110 Centigrade, Gas Mark 1/4). That should take around 8 hours for apple rings. But it can also be done in an airy room, in which case it takes several days.




This year, the apple drying season happened to coincide with replacing a noisy computer fan. In an inspired piece of recycling, the old fan was connected to an unused phone charger, and used to blow warm air from the radiator over the aple rings. The charger provides enough power for the fan to be effective, but it turns slower than in the computer, so it runs smoothly and quietly. The new fan assisted drying seems to reduce the drying time by at least a day.





Discolouring of fruit, like apples, can be prevented by dipping in either lemon juice (3 Tablespoons in 1/2 Litre water) or Ascorbic acid solution (1 Tablespoon crystals in 1/2 Litre water) before drying.

So the steps to making dried apple rings are:

-choose unblemished apples

-peel, core and slice into rings (less than 5mm thick)

-dip in the lemon juice solution and drain

-dry apple rings on wooden kebab skewers

-store in an airtight jar
-regularly check and discard if there is any sign of mould

Thanks to Rich and Christopher for showing how apparently redundant computer and phone parts destined for landfill can actually be used simply for something useful. Add a solar array and it would be sustainable as well. I have a cunning plan for using this system to help some paint dry - should be worth watching :-)

A load of bowls...

A comment from Paul Atkins on the Bodgers forum (a really useful resource for all those greenwood questions you didn't know you needed to ask) has prompted me to take some photos of my recent bowls - bearing in mind that my recent bowls =almost all my bowls. The bowls here are from Sycamore, Birch and spalted birch. The one bowl I made from Gean (wild cherry) was sadly stolen at the Weald Wood fair. Still something of a complement I suppose.



I foolishly made the assertion that I'd been turning 9 inch bowls using chainsaw starter cord on the lathe mandrel. In measuring the bowls I discover the largest one so far is 8.5 inches. What a dissapointment. Still it's not the size that counts. Perhaps I should measure them in cm to make them sound bigger? No, I can't bring myself to do that.


I only turn local English native woods, preferably from trees I've felled myself. It's become a bit of a thing. I'm breaking the rule at the moment as I've just rediscovered some American Black Walnut which has been lurking in the yard for around 3 years and it's still surprisingly soft and wet when turning. The wood came from Kew Gardens when I demonstrated there with the APT and they let us have some of the wood from the fantastic tree which had fallen over. Worth breaking the rule for I feel.



I hope to finish the bowl on Saturday (it's in a plastic bag overnight to prevent it dring out) but there are a lot of distractions. It will be interesting to see how the colours of the wood turn out.

Distractions Abound

I've been distracted by lots of urgent jobs recently. Some are quite small but others are proving troublesome and prevent me from getting on with more important work on chairs and bowls. A typical distraction that did get fixed recently was a seal on the hydraulic ram for the trailer we use on the commons.



It's not been dismantled in decades and it took Richard and I some hours to get it off and even longer to get at the seal. But it will be good to be able to use the trailer over the winter, at least Roy will be pleased with me. Fingers crossed this is one distraction that won't need doing again for another few decades.

Lynchmere Commons - Visiting Volunteers

I spent this weekend working on the Lynchmere Commons with a group of volunteers from Southampton University Conservation Volunteers (SUCV). They worked with us earlier this year and somehow we managed to convince them to come back for more.



The Weather on Saturday was appalling. The kind of determined rain which seems light for a short while but after a couple of hours has completely saturated everything. But I brought out the splitting axes and some determined firewood splitting soon got things going.



The task for the day was to clear an area of birch saplings opening up a path and we got stuck into the work.



The felled saplings were used to reinvigorate one of our woven dead hedges protecting a new hazel coppice area.




A good fire helped to drive off some of the moisture over lunch and we sat in a circle steaming with gloves suspended on sticks to dry out. With an effort we managed to light one bin to show the charcoal making process and demonstrate how to make a simple charcoal kiln with an oil drum.



On Sunday the weather was entirely different and we worked amongst the big pines up on Marley common to clear scrub from regenerating heathland and make an access track for future work parties.



I demonstrated making half sized besoms and some of the group had a go themselves before we went for a walk to look at the South Downs from the edge of Marley Common in the fading light.