High tension in Littleworth wood

Its been a while but was back again in the semi natural ancient woodland of Littleworth nestling on the hills which look down on Snowshill.   Over the winter quite a bit of thinning and coppicing had been carried out in a selected area of the wood. Also  management of  scrub growth in the rides was done so as to encourage habitat diversity of the woodland. This is a continuation of good woodland management carried out by Martin over the years coupled with the creation of a number of protected 'compartments' {with ~5 year life cycle} and upkeep of woodland boundary fencing/walls. The job this week with Martin was to build a new compartment with deer fencing around the prepared area to both benefit plant & wild life and as a by product eventually provide good quality hazel. The advantages of setting up compartments is evident by the healthy plant growth in existing compartments. This stems from having a more open canopy which provides more light intensity for ground plants, protection of young plant growth from hungry deer or clumsy humans and preservation of dead wood for habitat diversity {insects especially!}.

early purple orchid

deer fence in construction

wood anemones

Anyway back to the job in hand, we arrived in the wood heavily armed with some of my favourite tools: the monkey strainer, the drival, gripples, the mighty metal pole and a really heavy coil of high tensile wire for the two wires to support the deer fencing. The 26 fence poles and fencing were already on site so all we needed was some decent weather and a careful eye on the spring plants carpeting the compartment area ie. didn't want my big feet crushing the wood anemones, primroses, emerging bluebells , Herb Paris, Ransoms, Tway Blade orchid,  early purple orchids. 


Soon discovered that when uncoiling high tensile wire you can easily let it get out of control and then stress levels mount as you try and untangle  it. Good news is that there is a technique to lay it out flat over long lengths, but can't reveal such ranger dark arts here! Having laid out the ground wire, applying tension to it with the monkey strainers,  we got down to positioning the poles and defining the compartment area. Further good news was the ground wasn't as rocky as Sherborne! but 20 plus fixed poles later energy levels were depleted. Up to this point the weather had been perfect and the predicted rain/snow hadn't made an appearance. Unfortunately as we prepared to install the top wire late afternoon the heavens opened and the days work brought  to a close. 




After having such good weather with Martin I shouldn't have been surprised as I set out for a day with Mike at Sherborne to encounter a mini snowstorm but amazingly as I neared Sherborne the weather once more improved. So instead of facing near arctic conditions I was soon overheating as I tackled the first job of the day splitting wood from the recently restocked wood piles in the nursery area. The afternoon was spent planting  more ash saplings where I rediscovered more stony ground which needed to be penetrated to receive the ash roots. Once more Maddie, Mike's springer,  proved to be of no help and even worse I learnt not to trust the usually sound advice from Mike that 'the soil should be easier to dig here!'.