Forest Schools At Home

First off I'd like to say thank you to everyone that left a comment about my washing machine troubles. I'll do a post about how it was resolved tomorrow, but I'm always so impressed with the response I get here, I love this little blogging community we've built up!

Now on with today's post.

My eldest daughter , who is currently in reception at the village school, does a initiative call forest schools on a Monday afternoon at school. She absolutely loves it. 

I think this is a great idea where the kids get to go out and play in nature, they're encouraged to explore and climb trees and the sessions can be as simple as collecting leaves and as they get more older they even have camp fires. The only downside is that they're required to wear gloves at all times (I'll rant about that another day) and they only do it for the first couple of years at school before "real" learning takes over the timetable. 

Both my girls love being outside and this is something I love to encourage (as it's where I like to be as well). With the darker autumn and winter nights it becomes harder as once we're back from the school run it's already drawing in.

So last night I decided to take the girls out for an hour before tea. My sister-in-law, Helen, had been over all day looking after the children whilst I did some roofing so she came out with us and as my wife just got home from school she looked after the baby inside (he's full of cold).

I asked them if they wanted to make a fire so they picked a spot in the future pig pen. they cleared off a small area and then used their torches to find firewood and kindling.

I then lit the fire (after a couple of attempts) and we all sat round and talked about what we could cook on it.

I bought out one of my bushcraft cooking pots and some popcorn so we we popped some of that once the fire got hot enough and I gave the girls a couple of glow sticks to play with. I think this is a great way to make sure they''re not afraid of the dark! 

From unpopped...

...to burnt in seconds!

 The pop corn burnt, but it didn't matter. The girls loved sitting and talking about things and it was great to be out there with only the fire as a distraction. 

My younger daughter was getting cold and restless so Helen said she'd take her back in. My eldest then asked me:
"Is it alright if I can stay out with you and watch the fire go down daddy?" I think my heart melted a little bit when she said that!

So we sat on the dirt and watched the flames die down and talked about everything and nothing.

When we got back to the house she wanted to get the fire wood with me for the log burner and kept telling me what a fun night it was.

A great thing to do with the kids and something I want to start doing regularly. I think that sitting round a fire like this is in our DNA and it's a great way to spend quality time with ones that we love.

Who else just loves to sit by a fire outside? 

Pollarding Willow

My brother sprang a nice surprise on me this weekend again with a visit with his chainsaw. He's buying a house and wants to make sure he does some jobs for me before he need to be working on his own place (and so that I'll also be available to help him when he gets it).

The big tree inthe middle is an old willow tree leaning into the field.

 Looking around the fields we decided that the one oak that needs a lot of work doing to it was too big of a task to do on a Sunday and he'd possibly need another climber with him, so we settled for some willows on the property line. 

The whole hedge is overgrown and neglected but provides a nice barrier so I'm not going to attack it too much, but there are a few trees growing out over the field that need attention. The one willow was very rotten in the middle and would probably fall if left for too many more years. We decided to pollard it, so new growth would be produced at the top of the tree trunk (away from rabbits) and in this way it would have a new crop of wood on it in a few years time. 

Trees used to be pollarded for many reasons, to produce a leaf hay to store food for animals in the winter, to produce timber for different things like basket making or hurdles and now people pollard to produce an attractive shape for their trees. 

It needed climbing to tackle it so not a job for me!

The tree pretty much finished with Dave just roped into the last branch

The tree finished, this should regrow well and produce some more fire wood in a few years time

One pile of firewood

Even the smaller branches get used for fire wood when I'm cutting it up

The second pile from another willow

The piles of brash ready to be burnt when it's dried out a bit.

 As well as this willow Dave also managed to do another, much more awkward willow and a few small ash that were growing from the base of a much bigger tree, adding to the pile of future firewood.

Hopefully all this wood will go some way to provide for next years heating (once I've got it cut, split and stacked) and although I know it's not a great wood it still burns well in our wood burner if it's dry. 

Anyone else been pollarding trees for firewood or other reasons?

Branch Out Of the Oak Tree

With some heavy winds at the weekend one of our oak trees suffered the loss of one of its limbs.

 Typically this is the only tree that we've done some major work on trying to preserve, but the damage isn't too great. It amazes me when what seems like a small branch falls out of a large tree like this, the branch is as big as medium tree! Huge amounts of wood are in these trees! I'll do a post on the nine large oaks we've got here at some point.

I'll have to get the chainsaw out next weekend and log the branch for some of next years firewood and then get my brother to climb up and tidy it all up a bit.

Anyone else having to do work to try to stop their old trees falling apart?

Firewood From Work

As many of my regular readers will already know, when I'm not a stay-at-home-dad, I go off to work as a self employed carpenter. It's a job I really enjoy and it has a few perks. One of which is taking all the waste wood and off-cuts home

The pile was growing slowly...

 I'm quite diligent at bringing these off-cuts home. I always tidy up each night before I leave where ever I'm working and I bring the wood home each night and chuck it in my lean-to shed on the drive. This does not look very tidy and I sometimes wonder if its worth it. 

I had an afternoon yesterday chopping up all these bits, making sure they'd fit on our fire before being put into the proper woodshed. Turns out there was quite a bit there! Mainly pine with a mix of oak, popular, sapelle and walnut.

Chopped up ready for the fire.

We shouldn't be short of kindling this year! 

Anyone else have a job with a low budget perk?

Hybrid Willow Coppice - Two Plots Planted

With my talk of planting a hybrid willow coppice some family (smallholder) friends said that they'd started to plant one last year and would I like some cuttings. They planted around 700 cuttings and as you have to cut them back after the first year they had plenty of wood spare.

 They gave me around 200 cuttings which is plenty for me to be going on with. It's two different varieties Q83 and Chinese.

 This is enough for two out of my five plots that I'll be growing on a short rotation coppice (SRC). So last Saturday I marked the two plots out with 1 metre spacings so all the cuttings would be going in at 1m x 1m square (which is what I've read is recommmended on some websites).

 I put the cuttings in by making a hole with a metal bar (an old muck rake tine) then pushing them into the wet ground leaving about 2 inches showing. I plan to mulch round it all quite soon with wood chip, as I'm meant ot have a few loads coming my way, this should stop it having to complete with the grass and keep other weeds down.

My little helper did get a bit distracted towards to end of the job though!

Hopefully I should see some growth in the next month or so. I've got to get the airgun charged up to make sure I keep the rabbits numbers down, as apparently they don't react well to being chewed by the white tailed little blighters (mind you what tree does!).

Anyone else planting trees for firewood at the moment?

Moving Firewood

 Last Saturday, between the rain showers, I managed to get organised with the rest of our firewood.

Moving firewood the easy way

As the ground was quite dry I decided to move all the pallets of wood I split in the spring up with the tractor. There's still some to split so I stored these in a separate pallet as a job to keep me warm in the winter (all the big difficult bits unfortunately)! 

Firewood split and stored in pallets covered with a sheet

It's not the prettiest way of storing firewood but it means I can move it easily and the bottom layer won't rot on the ground. I do have the first load of wood stored in an old shed but until I can get planning to build some more buildings this is looking like my best option.
Five pallets cut and split. I'd say three of these can be burnt this year (the tree was felled last year) and two need another year to season (which I hope they will in this storage - I might drill holes in the sides of the pallet collars to let the air circulate more), I've marked them up ready and I'm already planning where more of our firewood is coming from.
Anyone else have ideas for firewood storage?

An Hour A Day

To keep on top of the work on my little small holding I've adopted my new ethos, which is to work "an hour a day" on it. This can be any job from gardening to fixing household appliances.

I always want to do more, but the trick is not to burn myself out as I have quite a full day anyway.

Although I have Mondays off to spend with my little girl, I do normally end up working on a Saturday, just moving my weekend forward one day. During my normal working day I tend to get up just before 6, do my chores, have breakfast and leave for work by 6.30 so I can start at 7.30. I then work a full day as a carpenter, finish just after 5 and get home just after 6 (I've no idea what 9 to 5 is like as I've never done it). I then spend time with my little girl and wife, have some tea before putting her to bed (the girl not the wife). This is when I go and do my extra hour.

 

Splitting wood seems to be a task that never ends but for some reason I love it.

In truth it can end up being more than an hour but I do seem to be getting a lot done lately.

I've split piles and piles of wood, planted loads of seeds, maintained tools, weeded the drive, cleaned out chickens, etc.
Big jobs can still be done at the weekend, and most of Sunday is normally dedicated to this, but getting rid of a lot of the smaller ones in the week makes it all more manageable.
Now if I could just get to bed before 11 I'd probably find getting up a whole lot easier!
How does everyone else manage their time to get things done?