Activity: Coppicing of Small Trees
Weather: Overcast, mostly dry but quite wet underfoot, chilly!
This week we were out on the Auchincruive Estate doing a spot of coppicing. This involved clearing some trees (mainly birch). Working in small groups we were equipped with hand-saws and bill-hooks to take down small trees and open up the canopy of the woodland.
Coppicing is extremely rewarding as it maintains the beauty of the countryside, by allowing more light and space into the woodland, it means that certain trees will be able to grow and ground plants like ferns can spread throughout.
At the side Blog Authors Paul & Crystal worked on, we removed small birches and willows to allow a particular willow more room. There were many things to watch out for while working in this area - the ground was slippy and muddy as it had rained recently, it was also uneven and sloped slightly, there were a few trip hazards by stumps from previous coppiced trees (this is why when coppicing, the trunk should be sawed as near the ground as possible) and the brambles roaming the area are not pleasant should you find some attached to your person!
Because the area has so many trees close together, once a tree has been felled, it may not fall neatly to the ground ready for processing, instead it will make things slightly more difficult by getting caught up in the branches of a nearby tree. In this case, we would need to pull from the trunk of the tree foot by foot until it was free. To process a felled tree, we saw off the top of the tree to put in one pile to rot down as part of the habitat and we cut the rest of the branches off using the bill-hook and saw the rest of the trunk into manageable 6 feet long sections to go in a separate pile.
