We’ve had a good winter. Just after Christmas we’ve had a spell of frost and snow – which actually stayed around for about two white weeks. Unusual for our coastal patch of the land. Magical.
But It is March now, and spring has come early. The hazels have been adorned with their yellow tussles for about a month now and while we might still have the occasional morning frost – we’ve had more sunny days than most on the British Isles. And with the lengthening days the light of the sun is getting increasingly warmer…
But allow me to turn back to the winter and bow – it’s been good for the land to rest. And to dream the next spring long before the swelling of the buds and the rising of the sap of the trees. And this winter has been a quieter season in the woods than many of the previous winters. We would usually hear our wee woodland echoing with the sound of the chainsaw while the trees are dormant in the cold months. But the last two winters there has been much less of that.
For various reasons we did not get a felling licence in time, so the only trees which got cut and stacked for next winter’s firewood, or pulled out to be milled, have been trees which were blown down by the frequent autumn/winter storms we’ve had. And when I listened to the silence of the absent chainsaws, I saw that it was good. It was good to give the woodland a break.
Mind you, all the cutting we’ve done in the previous 10-15 years has been to turn a neglected tree-plantation monoculture into a healthy, biodiverse woodland. Overdue thinning out of trees which crowded each other. Also the creation of glades to let light onto the forest floor, so that we can plant oak trees and hope for a new self-seeded generation of the surrounding Scots pines. (Did you know that there are 227 different species of living creatures which live exclusively in and off Scots pines ?)
And creating healthy edges to our woodland by removing the mostly fallen lodgepole pines, and planting lower growing species such as rowans, hazels and birdcherries that support a lot of wildlife. Commercially useless but, according to permaculture, the places of greatest vitality in our woodland.
We have done a lot of this work in the previous years, including planting some 4000 trees! But I have wondered for a while now when we might reach the point of over-managing the land. It is a delicate balance – carefully enabling some kind of ‘rewilding’ of this introduced woodland that was planted by human beings in an ancient landscape of sand dunes.
There is also the much-debated issue of how to continue what we have started in some areas of the woods. And I sense that we have not arrived at the ‘right’ answers to that yet. So, I am grateful after all that life has made it so that we needed to pause the felling of trees in Wilies Wood.
You might ask what we have done instead, during those cold months ?
Well, we seem to have more and more work for our topper and the brushcutter – cutting back the regrowth of gorse on grasslands, firebreaks and tracks. Both tractor and brushcutter had ‘health issues’ in the autumn, so there was plenty of catching up to do with that kind of work.
The big machines have come out again to extend the ‘bare sand area’ we created last year – by a bit less than we had originally expected, as the discovery of badger setts limited the scope. And I am grateful to those in our community who made us pay attention to that.
Our felling licence application is being processed right now, but the felling season is over for this period. Co-creation with Nature demands that we only cut trees down when they are dormant. A sign of respect for the natural world, and so that we do the cruel deed (of cutting down a tree) with as much kindness as possible.
Now is the time to welcome the first buzz of insects in the air, to watch the buds swell and the blossoms & leaves bursting forth. We have hung up more nesting boxes and our winged friends are busy preparing for their next generation.
While it would not be unusual to have another cold spell here and even some snow before Easter – Spring is here to stay!
Enjoy!
Kajedo Wanderer,
FHT Land Steward