coppicing – Coppicing Suz

What to do with Brash?

It’s been a while since my last post. You may or may not have noticed, but there was this big virus thing and then the whole world turned upside down for a moment, so its been a bit chaotic recently. Luckily for me, however, I live on a farm so the time at ‘home’ gave me the chance to really settle onto the land and practice a few new skills.

The farm has a small coppice and they have allowed me to work on it for the last two years. Even though it is heavily overstood (lots of big trees above) there are still some very nice trees to work with.

However, because it’s a restoration project we always end up with big piles of brash.

The question of what to do with the brash is usually answered with a chipper or a fire. However, it has always seemed like a waste of material to me and throughout my apprenticeship I’ve been interested in other uses for it.

This year I thought I’d have a go at making a ‘rustic’* fence with it. Many of the branches were not good enough for pea sticks or bean poles but were still straight enough and long enough to be able to weave with once the side branches had been removed.

Two fences have been made on the farm over the last two months. One to seperate the football pitch from the growing beds and one to help my big white bus blend into the background in its new temporary spot on the field.

The first fence needed to be sturdy so I put stakes in the ground, about 4ft long (1ft in the ground) and 1 1/2 feet apart, then screwed in a rail at the bottom to hold them all together. This rail also holds the weaved material off the ground so that the brambles can be easily cleared around the bottom of the fence. The long bits were weaved and then the fence was finished with some binder quality lengths to create a top rail design.

The second fence didn’t need to be as sturdy but did need to cover the white parts of the bus so in this case I used the more brashy ends of the branches to create a thicker screen. I took two or three branches and squished them so they made an elongated shape and weaved them together, alternating the direction of the weave every two lengths. This made a lovely bushy screen that still had the delicate dried buds attached, making a lovely design feature.

I’m very grateful to one of my sponsor businesses, The Stick Smith, for teaching me the basics of willow weaving on a large scale. We did several garden fences when I was working with Dave and I picked up how to create an even and thick weave and finish off the job nicely with a little pruning.

My next fencing project is for a community project in London where I will be fencing off an area of fruit trees. If your ever down at the Lordship Rec in North London come and check it out!

*Top Tip: ‘Rustic’ can be applied to anything that looks a bit rough but is charming because of its roughness.

Inner City Life – Inner City Coppice

One of the more romantic thoughts I’ve had over the years is that one day, after all my travels, after all the things I’ve learnt in the world, that I would be able to return to my home and use my new skills to benefit the community in some way. Its the crux of the hero’s journey.

Most people however, myself included, don’t really fancy moving back home. Especially when that home is in the middle of a big smelly city with extortionate rent and house prices. However, because I’m reliant on my home being able to move – I live in a minibus – I periodically find myself back at my childhood abode in North London while my own home is at the garage.

I’m having one of those homecomings this week and in a wonderfully serendipitous way have come across a lovely little coppicing project in a park near to where I grew up.

The park is called The Lordship Rec and is a city haven for humans and non-humans alike. After a tremendous amount of work and passion from the local people, the Friends Of Lordship Rec managed to get a substantial amount of funding from the National Lottery. This has allowed them to transform the park from the dilapidated green space of my childhood into a thriving centre of activity with a number of different habitats for wildlife, including a small copse.

The row of hazel trees with Broad Water Farm Estate in the background

The hazel trees in this ‘copse’ (the name for an area of coppiced trees) look like they were previously a hedge but have not been managed for a decade or two. This has lead to big bushy trees with dozens of branches and stems crying out to be coppiced. Although the strip only has about 30-40 tree in it they still offer a chance to demonstrate coppicing to the local community and give them a chance to have a go themselves.

Right next door to the park is the infamous Broad Water Farm that was became known nationwide during the riots in the 1980’s. Since then money and energy has been invested in the site and with the effort of the Broad Water Farm community and the local council its become an almost crime free area.

Keeping fit cutting all these 20 year old stems with hand tools

Even so, as with all areas, there are still a number of teenagers knocking about finding entertainment in spraying graffiti and making small fires. As well as these bored teenagers are a number of residents suffering from the mental health problems that often come with modern city life and who could benefit from spending some time outside.

After speaking with a local housing support officer its clear that there is scope for some interesting woodland projects at the park that could really benefit the community at Broad Water Farm and the surrounding area. As well as the hazel trees there is also a small woodland that has lots of work to be done. So this could be a great spot for a little social forestry project. They also have a cafe with spaces that can be hired out for workshops in a straw bale building. While its early days for me, and taking groups out on my own is still a bit daunting, this looks like it could a be great future project to get involved in.

In the mean time I’ll be helping to get these lovely hazel trees back into rotation with a volunteer or two and bringing the skill and knowledge of coppicing back home to my local community.

(Note: Special thanks to The Friends of Lordship Rec, especially to Sally Haywell, who is in charge of the orchard in the park, and has been enthusiastic about getting the hazel back into rotation and letting me have a play.)

Split Hazel Baskets

Belated happy new year to all!

It’s been a slow start to the year with lots of time needed for resting and recovering from back to back bugs. But now the end of the month is here I’m back on track and ready to begin the year in earnest.

It’s not all been long naps and lemons and ginger tea, I have also been pottering away and making lots and lots of split hazel baskets.

The technique, historically popular in Wales, was shown to me over the summer and since then I’ve been hooked. Every part of the process is enjoyable and has a unique set of skills to learn.

Using a hazel rod to make a basket can be very efficient. Every part of the stick can be used to make different aspects of the basket such as the frame, the weavers and the ribs, so, apart from a pile of shavings, you’re not left with much waste. This is handy because suitable hazel rods for basket making are fairly old compared to their willow counterparts, which in my opinion, makes them a much more valuable resource.

The best sticks for making hazel baskets are the slow growing sunshoots that grow on overstood hazel (hazel growing under heavy canopy cover from other trees) and so these can be up to 10 years old even though they are the same width as a 4 year old rod grown in the sunlight. The thing to remember is that an overstood hazel tree needs its sunshoots, so to protect the tree from damage only one or two rods can be taken from each tree, and only if they have a few others to keep them going.

I’ve been working in miniture mostly so that I can save even more resources. This often means I can practice making a basket with just one rod. its more fiddly and takes a bit longer to prepare the material but they turn out well and look cute. The one issue with selling this kind of things is that because it is smaller customers assume it will be cheaper. This isn’t the case at all as it takes just as long to make a smaller one because of the fiddliness!

If you would like to know how to make a basket then I can highly recommend Lewis Goldwater and Zed Outdoors youtube video on how to make a split basket. It is a mega video at about 4 hours long but well worth a watch and has a timestamp in the description so you can go to a specific part.

Later this year I will be working with Ruth Pybus who is a master split hazel basket maker and also hope to display some of my baskets at the Oxfordshire Basket Makers annual basketry exhibition.

Getting People Back In The Woods

For many human beings the woods were our natural habitat. Our ancestors spent thousands, if not millions, of years in this environment and so our senses are designed to cope with the ever changing sights, sounds, temperature and light that we experience in the woods. Its no wonder we can go a little bit loopy when we’re stuck in the relatively static environment of the office or the school room that contrasts so starkly to our natural habitat. Our senses don’t have enough to do and the energy is often redirected to mental rumination and stress.

Its not big news that a walk in the woods makes us feel better, but now we have the statistics and evidence to back this intuitive knowing and in Japan a practice called Forest Bathing has taken off and spread across the world.

The removal of clothes is not necessary to forest bathe, although what you do in your private woodland is up to you, instead it is an energetic bath, reducing neurochemicals such as cortisol, reducing heart rate and even effecting people with diabetes in a positive way.

So because of this a number of people are taking the baton and organising workshop and events under the banner of Social Forestry.

20191008_114907 — Rob teaching us about woodland management

Social Forestry is a fairly new term and is still deliciously being defined, but the gist of it is to get people back in the woods, not only for the wellbeing of the humans but for the wellbeing of the woodland habitat as well.

This latter part is important. Forest schools and bush craft workshops tend to use the woodland as just an outdoor classroom space and the management of the woodland is sometimes not considered. This can lead to woodlands being damaged.

For example, if a group goes into woodland and it has a mix of conifers and young hardwoods such as oak, birch or cherry, the younger, smaller, hardwood poles will be easier for a group to clear. However, in this case, the management plan might be to return the woodland to a mixed deciduous wood and so it would have been more beneficial to remove the larger, albeit more awkward conifers.

On a recent course at the Centre of Alternative Technology Julia Walling and Rob

20191009_154023 — Using a pole saw to trim the bottom of conifers to allow more light into the woods.

Goodsell ran a Social Forestry course and took us through all the ways we can get people back into the woods, engaging with the environment in a meaningful way while benefiting the woodland itself. Julia focused on the mindful aspects, inviting us to think about what makes us happy, how a woodland environment can fulfil these needs and showed us practical tasks to facilitate mindfulness. Rob took us on a more practical journey through the kinds of tasks groups can do to help manage a woodland, such as scything, trimming branches and clearing bramble.

Of course there is an ultimate practical task that groups can do in the woods – coppicing!

Coppicing has the potential to be used by social forestry groups because it is a practice than can be done with hand tools and no previous experience. It is highly beneficial to the biodiversity of the woodland and so you can enjoy a whole range of positive feelings from doing a good deed as well as spending time in a relaxing environment.

It is a sign perhaps of how chaotic and disconnected society has become from nature that we have to periodically flee to the woods to cope with it. Forest bathing is a way to treat the symptom rather than the cause, but maybe if we’re all feeling little less stressed and a bit more centred we’ll be able to come up with better ideas on how to shape our society in the near future to one that suits our woodland natures better.

Turning Into A Basket Case

The truth must be told… My name is Suz and I am a basket addict. It’s been two weeks since my last basket and I’m already having withdrawal symptoms.

I made my first willow basket a few months ago at the Greenwood Centre with the lovely Rachel Evans of Wheatcroft Willow and the group agreed to start with a more advanced type of basket, an oval shopping basket rather than the easier round basket. At first I didn’t understand the pattern at all. I felt a swell of frustration rise up but persisted and under Rachels’ fine tutelage she got me past the first hurdle and I left the weekend with a beautiful shopping basket.

It is a sign of an excellent teacher to be able to guide eight or nine people in making a full blown oval based basket, especially as some of us were first timers, and then have them go away with something decent. I know this because, since the course, I have had a go at teaching and although I understand the technique and can make a reasonable basket shaped object myself, teaching others to do the same takes some skill.

My first attempt was to run a bramble basket making workshop at the farm where I often visit. Everyone was eager to learn this skill, and cut back the ever encroaching brambles, and with only four others it was fairly easy to get the basic techniques across. However, my second attempt, at the crafty Treehouse Festival, things became a little more tricky. Firstly, we were using pieces of willow from a tree that hadn’t been pollarded in a while so all the lengths were trimmed from this years growth meaning they were short and branchy. Secondly, everyone wanted to make a basket! I kept the group down to seven but that was still a tough amount of people to work with, especially as I was keen to make my own basket as well.

The art to teaching is to keep calm. It requires projecting confidence onto your students and giving them the patience that they need to give themselves as they learn a new skill. It requires empathy as one remembers ones own frustrations and keeping them focused on moving forward. It requires the right language and turning that language into visual instructions. No one will understand what you mean if you say ‘now this bit goes into this bit’ – as I soon discovered. It also required a never ending enthusiasm to answer the same questions over and over again. But with all that said, I loved every second. Some people even went away with something that looked very much like a basket. Both of these opportunities were invaluable and were great steps towards doing something I really love to do – to teach.

#Evolvetheforest 2019

To say that the Evolve the Forest conference was a success would be an understatement. The conference, organised by the Royal Forestry Society, ArtdotEarth and Timber Strategies and hosted by Dartington Hall, managed to do something that not even the organisers were sure they could pull off as they brought two seemly opposing worlds together: commercial forestry and art.

At first it seems like an odd combination but there was a common thread, namely our relationships to trees and woodlands and the threat that they currently seem to be under.

From a forestry perspective a tree is a crop. It is grown in large quantities and harvested for economic and resource based reasons. We all rely on wood and wood based products in our homes and going forward we may rely on them even more as we reduce our plastic usage and find other ways to create energy through biomass. The seemly chaotic climate along with the increased threats from pests and diseases are a serious issue to this industry and organisations such as Forestry England are thinking hard about alternative trees and ways to grow them that will cope in an uncertain future.

The artistic perspective brought in the emotional aspect of our relationships with trees and woodlands. It’s undeniable that we have been enamoured with trees for a very long time. They are present in our myths and our stories and hold a special place in the hearts of many cultures.

It is this emotional response to trees that can be helpful, and sometimes unhelpful. My own perspective has changed dramatically since I became a coppice worker. Before, as a city dweller, I’d bristle at the thought of any tree being cut down. But now I understand that a woodland is a living entity, and the individual tree is a part of that entity along with thousands of other lifeforms. Even so, respect is due to the individual tree and allowing a certain amount of emotion and reverence for the life of that tree influences the decisions that are made about it.

Illustration of a tanner using a draw knife to remove oak bark

The question of the conference seemed to be; how do we bring both of these perspectives together to create a culture of respect when managing woodlands and harvesting timber? To encourage Each of the delegates were invited to step outside of their comfort zones and go to a lecture they may not be familiar with and that represented the ‘other side’. There was a delightful moment when a grey haired gentlemen working for Forestry England gushed at how much he had enjoyed a particular lecture and that it wasn’t something he’d usually engage with. Later on I saw the same gentleman enjoying a performance piece by Tom Marshman – We Need to Talk About Bambi, and I over heard him afterwards reflecting emotionally on the deer that he’d had to cull, a necessary but clearly not heartless act. In another conversation an artist lamented over the need to kill deer at all and the forest manager student next to her explained why it was necessary to protect our woodlands from over browsing.

These were the moments that made this a very special and unique event, an event that will hopefully be repeated again in the future and perhaps include a speaker on the benefits of supporting coppice workers and the woodlands they manage.

My First Coup

Well, the bluebells are out in force, the leaves are bursting into life and I am exhausted. So it must be spring! With my first coup nearly finished and ready to enjoy all the lovely sunlight it can now receive I am ready to settle down into making and selling mode.

I’ve been really lucky to have three woods to work in this winter and each have offered a different experience. Iain Loasby showed me how the professionals do it – well finish it, because I actually missed the cutting part – and then I got the chance to work in a fairly productive woodland in Worcester filling real life orders for real life clients. Finally I was able to put my heart and soul into a little coup in South Oxfordshire where I have been given to chance to practice everything I’ve learnt.

It was a very small and very over-stood so was more of a restoration project rather than a fully functioning coppice. Even so, there has been a chance to sell a few products and have already sold some bean poles in the farm shop. I also have plenty of pea-sticks if anyone is interested!

The hazel is quite sparse in this coup so I’ve layered some of the trees. This will hopefully increase the density for the next cut. I’ve also left small piles of wood to rot down and turn into habitats for the local small mammal population. The chickens also seem to like to use the brash piles as secret laying spots.

All the material has been put into a hedge around the coup so that over the next year, once the material starts to dry out, we can use it for firewood and kindle, as well as making pretty fences and other various crafty things.

I’m shattered but its been great fun and now I get to think about what I will make!

A Nice Day Out

One of my passions in life is getting people back into the woods. It is so important, not only to encourage people to spend time out side, and away from cities, but also to get people working outside.

As a consumer culture we often experience the woods as just another nice day out. But this kind of relationship can create a sense of seperation from our enviroment and bring on feelings of detachment. We become outsiders peering into an alien landscape meant for other living things that we call ‘nature’. What we seem to have forgotten however, is that we are part of that natural environment! Before the onset of agriculture, and more recently indistrial civilisation, the woodland was our home for thousands, if not millions of years. But fear not. This sense of oneness returns when one engages directly with the woodland environment through hard graft. The primal instinct and ancient connection reemerges.

With this all in mind it was an absolute delight to put on my first community coppicing event. For one unusually sunny February day 14 people had a chance to get their hands dirty and bring light and warmth back to the woodland floor, as has been done so previously for centuries.

Even better was the attendence of a local scout troop! In the era of ipads and social media it was encouraging to see the focus and enthusiam of these children as they engaged directly with the work. They loved it so much they were keen to know when they could come back again! And, with the help of the other adults, all children left with complete sets of fingers, which I was very pleased about indeed.

Coppicing is a perfect way to get people back into the woodlands and learning how important it is to manage this type ecosystem. A coppice expects to be cut, and the more we leave them to overgrow the more, ironically, we damage the environment. A coppice also lends itself well to volunteer work because of the simplicity of the work and the tools that are used. Anyone who can use a pruning saw and some loppers can get involved. And the more we get people involved the more we can send out the message that we have a great solution to managing our woodlands in a sustainable way and providing our communities with amazing, high quality wood based products.

New homes for Baby Trees

Now that the coppicing has finished, the layering is complete and the standards have been felled it is time to introduce the baby hazel whips to their new homes.

Iain plants whips, alongside layering branches from existing stools, to increase stock density. At the moment, in this particular coup, the density is about 3m on average between each tree. Iain would like to get this down to 1m. Having trees growing this close together will push the hazel to grow faster and straighter as each stem reaches for the light. It will also manage the light that reaches the woodland floor, as after 3 or 4 years, after the hazel has grown tall enough to block out the light again, the woodland floor will start to become clear of brambles and this preps the ground for the upcoming cut. Once the hazel is coppiced the bramble free floor will give the flowers the warmth and light they need to germinate, and it will also be easier for the coppice workers during the coppicing.

Some people disagree that planting is a good idea. This is mostly due to the unknown origin of the whip and the possibility that it won’t be acclimatised for the area. Although the whips come from the UK they may come from very different climates. Some of the trees in this years coup for example didn’t loose their leaves until the middle of December. This suggests that the whips came from a more northern climate than their southern cousins and were still waiting for a colder cue to loose their leaves. This was slightly problematic when making pea sticks and faggots as these products are often requested without leaves and so required some vigorous waggling to remove them.

Best practice is to use the stock already present in the coup to ensure that the trees will be acclimatised to the microclimate and are certain to flourish that soil. It also reduces the chance of new diseases being introduced to the area. However, when you are restoring coppice and need to increase the stock density filling the spaces with layering would require using more of the stems that could be potential products and they may not even root.

So whips provide a quick way to increase density and so far, apart from last year perhaps because of the hot weather, Iain has had a good amount of success with the them.

It is also a lovely task to do and if these babies are looked after well they will still be growing in that very patch of land in hundreds of years time.

I am now a trained killer (of trees)

As most of my friends will tell you, I am a raging hippy at heart and one of the conflicts I have about being a coppicer is the idea of cutting down trees. So this week the internal conflict has been at full volume as I’ve been learning how to use a chainsaw.

As someone who grew up in a city and only experienced woodlands as a ‘consumer of

the woodland experience’ I had no idea how much management, and cutting, occurs in a woodland. The thing that I am beginning to realise is that woodland ‘management’ from humans and our ancestors has been going on for so long that the very ecosystem has evolved around human activity. It expects us to clear small parts of the forests periodically so that certain flowers will grow. It expects us to burn things and thin areas out. We protect it from diseases and invasive species, yes so that we can get materials for ourselves, but this is a symbiotic relationship. The relationship has only changed extremely recently to a parasitic one since we’ve been turning wood into money instead of just useful products and materials.

With that said, chainsaws still feel a little too imposing. But at the end of the day they are a great tool to have if you ever need to cut a tree down or cross cut logs.

During this week we’ve learnt all the basics of chainsaw maintenance, felling cuts and all the health and safety stuff that goes with cutting huge bloody trees down. One of the common issues with cutting down conifers in plantation woodland is getting a ‘hung’ tree. A hung tree is a tree that you’ve cut but has been caught up in the nearby trees instead of falling to the ground. This happened on most of my cuts and there are several ways you can deal with it.

One of the ways is to lightly ‘feather’ away the ‘hinge’ with the chainsaw. I know. ‘Feather’ and ‘Chainsaw’ don’t really seem to match but in some circumstances, plunging straight in with the chainsaw will pinch the saw between the tree and the stump, so when one ‘feathers’ with a chainsaw you are lightly brushing the wood with the saw so that it doesn’t get trapped. When you feather away a hinge you leave about 20% of the hinge attached. The hinge is extremely important as it gives the feller a certain amount of control and predictability over where the tree will fall. If you take the whole hinge off too early it can topple in an unexpected direction.

Once you have a peg you can then use a pole or a felling bar with a hook to lever the tree to one side. This, however, doesn’t always work. When you’ve tried every other option thats safe to use – surfing on top of it is a no no unfortunately – then its time to get the winch out as we did today.

I’m happy to say that I won’t be cutting too many trees down, unless they are well chosen standards to bring more light into a coppice. However, using chainsaws for coppicing is another thing all together and I look forward to seeing how that all works in the near future.