Months of good weather has meant a lot of being outside and not very much sitting inside at the computer. So often, while out and about or working in the woods, I noticed things worth writing about, but somehow didn’t have the inclination nor discipline to open up the computer for anything other than the most essential tasks. ”I’ll write a couple of posts when the weather breaks” I kept saying to myself. But of course the weather held, and it’s still fabulous. So resolving that the weather will stay good for another few weeks, today I took a walk down to the young plantation and remembered to bring my camera. Here’s some of what I saw:
Not long after the trees were planted (1995) we made some bridges across the ditches to make real easy access to the forest. We put chicken wire over the timber so they wouldn’t be slippy. Normally in March the timber is coated with slime and moss, – but look at it now. Completely dry. In 30 years of living in Ireland I don’t ever remember the ground being so very dry at this time of the year.
The vegetation has been utterly beaten back by first severe flooding; then heavy snow falls; then severe frost for a prolonged period, and now you could almost say drought. Ideal conditions now to get in and do some pruning before the vegetation begins to grow.
Check this out…. No gum boots! Imagine being able to walk out into my very low-lying, usually swampy alder forest wearing just sneakers on my feet in the middle of March! Incredibly dry underfoot.
I passed over the now dislodged big bridge that crosses from the wetter, alder land onto the bank of the higher and drier, oak, birch, hazel part of the forest. This heavy bridge was lifted off its anchorage by the floods back in November. It weighs a ton and will take a couple of very strong people to put it back in position.
While I was crossing this bridge I heard the unmistakeable sound of mating frogs….thousands of them. I could see them in the distance from the bridge but of course as soon as I crept nearer they, quite rightly, vanished out of camera range. We have four ponds along the wettest area of the forest. Some we keep clear of weed but we leave this large pond with grass and only clear away the brambles from around the edges. It makes a perfect breeding pond for frogs. If you look hard you can see some of the slower frogs in the bottom left corner. The grassy surface was swarming with hundreds of frogs until I crept over with my camera. I know, I know, – I don’t have the patience to be a wildlife photographer!
Love is in the air. Spring has arrived…… today anyway. Although experience tells me that there’s bound to be some more weather to come before ‘May is out’.
No related posts.
Tags: Jan's Farm Forest
What a lovely post Jan and thanks for sharing all your photos. I too was out in my wood today and couldn’t get over how dry it is. So hard to think how liquid the soil was in January when ten of our almost mature sitka spruce fell over. I also couldn’t help noticing that some people had lit fires on the lower slopes of the Blackstairs mountains nearby to burn the bracken and encourage new growth for the very few sheep they graze up there. Hard to look at all that smoke against the clear blue sky but its also I suppose the reason why the forests that once were in this area long ago are not going to come back anytime soon.
Having posted a comment I see my name and contact address invites me to post others. I note the remark on soil firmness in forest vs muddy fields. At the time of the recent floods I resurrected a thought I had way back, to the effect that the flooding of a river basin is probably related to the extent to which the upper reaches, which collect more rain, due to higher altitide, are forested. I have always felt that forestry probably delays run-off, and sends a higher proportion down into the ground-water, via the subsoil being broken up by the root system. This is merely an experimentalist’s hunch. I remember devising an experiment, involving finding a mountain valley where one side was forested and the other wasn’t, and organising to measure the stream flows during a downpour. But I never got around to doing it. May I ask, has this ever been quantified? If so, it should be in the catchment planning agenda, and on the agenda of those promoting the farm-forest link.
Hi Roy,
Thanks for this. I don’t know if this has ever been quantified or not, – but it does seem to be well documented over very many years. I refer mainly to the flooding we have witnessed through the press media when severe flooding has wiped out homes and villages in tropical countries. The last one I remember hearing about where 200 people lost their lives, was in the Philippines. It is commonly known, and usually reported in the aftermath of flooding, that tree cover lessens the impact of heavy rain on soils. Their roots absorb and hold water, and as you say create permeation in the subsoils, thus relieving the pressure which further reduces and often prevents flooding of the lower lands. It irks me to think that Ireland is still buying unapproved timber from countries in Asia where the effects of deforestation can be so devastating. ATB Jan