Back to the woods: Thinning and Laying!

Maddie getting stuck in

Thinning in the West Belt,  just down from the A40

With some relief it seems the St Jude storm, the main 'force' which passed South of our area, caused no significant/visible damage to Sherborne's trees. So Wednesday it was all go for my first thinning of the season in the West Belt continuing the work from last November. A beginning had been made over the weekend so Mike had a good idea what needed felling. After a good start, where the trees were felled to the ground with relative ease, the work became more challenging. This was due to the felled tree getting held up with the canopy/branches of nearby trees.  Consequently I was rapidly re-acquainted with the key techniques to bring such trees to the ground. The large tree lever came into its own with rolling the trunk or levering from the trees base ,  if this failed then dragging the tree backwards using a convenient piece of cordwood as a lever, or a combination of all.  Lunch time arrived all too quickly and in surprisingly pleasant weather I relaxed down by the Sherborne Brook. It was to be a day of singles where one egret, heron, buzzard, swan and merlin plus a peacock butterfly were on show.

The afternoon was spent back in the West Belt where a couple of surprises were in store.  The first was Maddie attempting a 'tunnelling '  technique for felling a tree which I suspect was her playing rather than helping. The second was Mike choosing to go 'off piste', and as our thinning meant we had reached the eastern edge of the West Belt, he decided to carry out some hedge laying {hedge planting being my only experience of building hedges thus far}. So with some nifty chainsaw cuts of the existing line of shrubs and with me with pole hook to bend the cut shrubs over to form the hedge, we soon had the start of a natural hedge formed. Quite impressive I thought but the hedge laying was bought to a halt for the day due to some overhanging branches blocking our progress and requiring a pole saw.  So it was back to thinning to complete a constructive days work.