This log store keeps on needing filled (as they like to grammaticise in Scotland).
At the moment I seem to be mostly cutting and moving wood around. The logs above are old. From about 3 or 4 years ago cuttings. Straight-grained and ash, but no longer use for much else than fire logs. I’m needing to move them out of the Bodgery wood pile to make room for more recent stuff, like this ash I collected this morning at 7:20am.
Here it is in the wild, on the canal bank. I had to do a 90 degree right-hand turn from a busy trunk road into a fairly narrow field gate opening, hence the early hour.
You can see why one of them was taken down by contractors to the canal trust, going hollow. You may be able to make out a shiny round label on one of the logs. It has a number on it and shows where there is a geocache. I could see the stash between the roots. This is going to cause a few people some consternation when they come hunting for it. Seemed a pity that some of the good-sized straight-grained stuff was going to end up as logs or rot away.
Making progress with this beech limb, the wallers can get at the repair work now. Hope they do a lot better job than this mess, a bit further along the road:
Right next to this is a rather jauntily leaning beech tree, that really ought to come down before it falls on the road. I’m finding out about closing the road for a couple of hours to take it down.
I guess it got a bit carried away with splitting its stem, and then the SW gales have been at it.
The wood on the left is where all that action is. The wood is gradually creeping up the moor side, you should be able to make out the stems of the silver birches climbing up the hill toward the sky-line. Well at least it used to be all silver birches, but now things are changing a bit.
Here’s a pretty well established oak tree (with ivy creeping up it). And in the back ground the underwoods are starting up – small holly bush, good and green in Winter.
Ah Winter, we are on its tail end here, but my walk was peppered with hail showers.
I was leaning over here to get a look at yet another tree that’s fallen on top of a wall needing removed (as they might say…). One benefit of living in a valley is that you can see what weather is coming next.
The build up of the new woodland now also includes some ash, here are a couple of little saplings.
See how the floor is changing as the canopy of this beech tree fills out and blocks the light. That’s bilberry bushes retreating.
Here’s some more regeneration; an oak tree which has almost died with dead branches sticking out of its canopy. But regeneration is coming along with lots of new growth closer in to the stem of the tree. It almost looks like one tree behind another. Known as a stag’s horn oak when those dead branches poke out of the top.
Back at the ranch, hedge laying is finished, just need to burn the brash.
And functional things like guttering, doors, electricity and drains are all coming along at the outstead.
Flying Shavings 
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