If a tree falls over, and there’s no-one around to hear it,
does it make a sound?
Well it certainly does if our countryside team has anything
to do with it.
Over the last couple of weeks we have been felling an area
of Scots Pine in the New Forest, in order to
revert the land back to acid grassland.
The Pine we were felling has all grown up naturally, seeded by
neighbouring pine trees, and had got to the extent of encroaching over a large
proportion of an area of acid grassland.
Scot’s Pine trees are a native British tree, but they are native to the
North of the country and to Scotland. In the South they have mostly been planted
for commercial use including before and during various wars throughout our
centuries, when wood was needed quickly and we didn’t have time to wait for
slow growing broadleaves like Oak.
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| The site we were working on after day 1. |
Don’t get me wrong, I love the sight of a striking Scots
Pine, standing alone in the middle of a heathland bathed pink in the glow of
sunset. However I also realise that they
need controlling where they have taken over other natural and rarer habitats
such as heathland and acid grassland – take a walk on any heathland and you
will undoubtedly be able to spot the Pine saplings coming up through the
heather.
So Dave Johnson summoned as many of the countryside team as
could be spared to come and help with the felling and extraction of the
timber. We also had all our countryside
volunteer groups helping out with removal of the brash and we got a good system
set up.
Those of us chainsawing would fell a section of trees (far
away from each other, don’t worry!), cross cut the trunk to length and cut off
all the brash and branches (called ‘snedding’).
We would then move across to another section of trees and
continue felling, whilst the volunteers would come in to the previously felled
section and take all the brash we had snedded and assemble it into a big
pile. This pile could then be picked up
by the Avant (a mini telehandler type tractor machine) and taken up the slope
to the bonfire.
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| The Avant at work |
The Avant was also used
to pick up the cross cut lengths of timber and stack them in accessible piles
ready for the timber crane to be brought in to pick them up. The timber is being sold for biomass fuel.
It was hard, sweaty work – chainsawing in temperatures
upwards of 20 degrees is a very warm business.
My chainsaw trousers with their all round padding protection felt like
individual leg saunas and the sweat was continually dripping off my nose as I
worked, thanks to the constant weight of the chainsaw. At the end of a day we all looked like we’d
been down the coal mines and it got to the stage where Dave and Mike were
bringing in 8 litres of water to drink a day – much more prepared than I was,
with only 2 water bottles.
Despite the heat, it was enjoyable. I enjoy felling larger trees as you get to
use various methods to fell it the way you want it to go. My favourite is the ‘sweep cut’ involving
sledgehammer and wedges. With a tree of
a certain size – normally if the trunk is wider than the length of your
chainsaw bar, you can use this method to ensure it is going to go down the
direction you want it to. Otherwise its
sheer weight can mean it will just sit upright on your saw and trap it or there
could be a slight lean or distribution of canopy that will shift it another
way.
So you cut your front ‘gob’ cut as usual (like cutting a
slice of watermelon) out the front of the tree, facing the direction it will
fall.
Then you can bore in with the chainsaw behind this cut,
parallel to it, and bring the saw round the back of the tree, continually
cutting, so you are ‘sweeping’ the cutting edge round and cutting through the
back and middle wood (ensuring you don’t plunge the cutting bar through the
hinge of wood behind the gob cut). Halfway
round you can stop, put in a metal wedge in the half you have already cut and
then continue cutting round until you are once again parallel to the hinge of
the gob cut and you have essentially cut away the remaining holding wood. This is where, on large tree’s, its own
weight prevents it from falling over as it can just happily sit upright so you
put in another wedge to join the first and then, using a sledgehammer and a few
choice words, you whack away at the wedges, driving them into the back cut
until they are enough to slowly tip the tree….and with this little bit of
encouragement, the weight of the tree is then enough to carry it over whilst
you calmly walk away, out of reach of the tree should it happen to bounce and
kick up. Great fun!
Of course sometimes a tree is so heavy and so stubborn that
you can be hammering away for a good 5-10 minutes as I was for one tree, and
this gets pretty tiring and sweaty.
However, if you get it right, they always go over in the end – even if
you end up lying on the ground in an exhausted coma for a few minutes
afterwards.
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| At work - and yes, we cut down those stumps to ground level! |
So we worked our way across the site and bit by bit, we
edged our way further in and up the slope.
Progress was quicker some days than others as we had to ensure we tidied
up as we went along – so trees felled, snedded, cross cut, brash burnt and logs
piled up, so we didn’t end up felling trees on top of trees and making what
would have been a huge mess to try and clear up afterwards. We also had to take into account where
everyone was working and if we had volunteers helping, make sure that they were
at a safe distance from us and that we were each then far enough away from the
next chainsawer. The poor avant broke a
couple of times, her electrics gave up at one point as the front armour was
cracked and broken and there was so much rubbish that got inside (not all from
this job) that it affected the wiring and connections. She was promised brand new armour and
protective grills and so, at 7pm one evening she was coaxed back to life by an
engineer and the show could go on.
We were racing against the weather as we could only do the
work and extract the timber whilst it was dry – the site gets very wet and
boggy in damp conditions and it would wreck the ground too much if we were
working in there in the rain. This is
also why we have started the work in September as oppose to October which is
when the traditional felling season starts – we had to take advantage of the
good weather and it was late enough in the season not to be impacting upon
birds.
One bit of wildlife we did come across was this
caterpillar. Found by Anne one of our
volunteers, it was a fabulous creature with really grippy legs that took a bit
of effort to peel off yourself. It is a
Pine Hawk Moth caterpillar and after we all had a good look at it I put it back
on a pine tree that I knew we were not going to fell – so it could pupate in
peace.
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| Pine Hawk Moth Caterpillar - see the black spine on its back end, always a sign its a Hawk Moth. |
After 2 weeks hard at it we have made a good impact – there is
still more to do, more trees to be removed which we will continue with when
Dave gets back off holiday. Hopefully by
then the weather will be a bit cooler so we don’t all get quite so warm when
chain-sawing – although having said that, I always keep my fingers crossed for
a late Indian summer…
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| We left feature trees like this, which are visually striking and good deadwood habitat. |
