An abundant display of ash seeds in October 2008

Ash seeds generally take 18 months to germinate, so do the sums, – it’s now 18 months on. How exciting is that?

Look about you and I’m sure you’ll see those little ash seeds of October 2008 now sprouting up all over the place as perfect little ash seedlings. In their millions!

They're coming up in my wood-chipped garden paths;

They’re coming up in their thousands throughout the mowed grassy path down to the lake;

They’re pushing up through the long grass;

And of course they’re popping up all over the forest floor.  Ash seedlings, in their countless millions across the whole country, offering a future to Irish Forestry that has never been more timely.  They carry the potential of creating beautiful, uniquely Irish landscapes as well as supplying a range of timbers from superb, top of the range firewood right through to prime quality, attractive joinery timber, not to mention the lucrative hurley market that is still largely supplied to Ireland from Holland and Wales.

Ash doesn’t grow easily as a monoculture ‘crop’ but seems to lend itself to self- seeding and growing up through mixed forests in groups or patches. Many sitka spruce plantations would be ideal pioneer forests, if thinned skillfully, to bring in valuable ash trees.

Young self-sown tree heading for the light in a sitka spruce plantation.

While I was down at the Cabin woods photographing the seedlings on the woodland floor, I noticed I wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on them:

A big fat hare checking out the proliferation of ash seedlings.

Our woodlands are managed with plenty of ‘wild’ areas, so losing ash seedlings to hares is something we have learned to live with.  But with so many seedlings coming up like weeds this year, there will be plenty for everyone.

I had gone along not thinking I would win any award, as the woodlands I had entered in the Biodiversity section are young and not very developed yet. I was so pleasantly surprised when, after the awards were passed out, my name was called at the end to receive the Special Judges Award.

The RDS/Forest Service Irish Forestry Awards play a great role in encouraging people involved in growing forests to keep up the good work and they help us all increase our standards just that bit more.  Any woodland owner can enter.  Check out the RDS  website.

Here’s what they said:

Judges Special Award Jan Alexander

“Finally our last award of the evening is the Judge’s Special Award.  This Award is intended to give recognition to the exceptional skill and dedication shown by a either an individual or group that the judging panel have encountered during their inspections. This Award is intended to recognise their achievement and also to provide encouragement to many other aspiring foresters who are considering planting trees on parts of their land.

I am pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s Judges Special Award is Jan Alexander of Bawnboy, Co. Cavan.

The judges were very impressed with the work that has been carried out on Jan’s plantation and by the “close to nature methods” that are being applied in the management of her forest.  The judges also noted the minimum interventionist approach that Jan has adopted and the fact that no chemical weed control was used on the plantation.

Since Jan moved to Ireland from Australia in the late 1970’s she has had a profound impact on the Forestry sector here, through her work both as founder of Crann, Ireland’s leading voluntary tree organisation dedicated to the promotion and protection of our trees, hedgerows and woodlands to her current position as chairperson of Pro Silva Ireland.

Jan’s passionate interest in Forestry has been an inspiration to all and she has been one of the driving forces behind the planting of broadleaf trees in Ireland.  It is in recognition of her major contribution to forestry both at a local and national level in Ireland that the judging panel has chosen Jan Alexander for this year’s Judge’s Special Award.  I would like to call on the Minister to present Jan with this specially commissioned trophy from the award winning Irish wood turner Seamus Cassidy.”

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’.

White wonderland. - Scene from the window.

For the last four weeks we have experienced amazing weather for Irish standards. Everything frozen and white.  The trees looked so beautiful.  It brought many hardships with it, and many of us had to change the way we usually did things. For us on the farm, filling water for the cattle (and for neighbour’s cattle) became the main occupation for many days.

One of our cows in her cozy shed, waiting for water to be fetched from the lake.

How quickly the lake edge froze over again after we had smashed through it to draw water.

Refrozen ice at the lake edge.

We took time out to walk on the lake when it was so solid.  We saw foxes and hares out running on the lake, but too quick for my camera.

Gabriel rambling back across the lake.

For me, apart from the hardship of extra tasks, it was a special time of pause for reflection  Not just about the year ahead, but also about the wonder of it all.  How just a few more degrees, one way or the other, can make such a huge difference to our world. 

I was fascinated to watch the way frost builds up tiny, glistening layers over the twigs.

Little circles of warmth beneath the evergreen Douglas fir trees dotted through the Cabin Woods create access to a leafy food source for birds in an otherwise frozen, white environment.

The bird feeder is a popular spot when all else is frozen solid.

But the ground feeding birds need hedges and trees to find their food.

A wagtail and a blackbird feeding and sheltering under the hedge during harsh, frozen weather.

……. And little patches of wildness…..

This is where the humble bramble really proves its worth. Just look at the shelter offered for small mammals and birds under this patch of bramble.

Our 'little' bullock setting off on an adventure down along the hedgerow to the frozen lake.

A frozen scene down at the lake edge.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

One of the hares here on the farm in winter helping itself to some nice protein rich beech buds.

Well, – that’s a slight exaggeration, – but we do have a permanent family of hares living here.  The hawk usually helps keep the numbers down in the early summer. Probably many people would shoot them. End of problem.  End of food for the hawk also. I like to see the hares and enjoy observing their antics throughout the seasons. The presence of wildlife in a forest can be challenging, but to me it enriches our lives in so many ways and I am always learning something new from them.

Hare damage to the soft bark of the fast growing lime tree happened after the tree sleeve had been removed.

This summer I set myself the target of removing all the tree sleeves from the Cabin Woods. The trees are now ten years old. I bought the tree sleeves second hand from Joe Gowran of Ashling Woodland Development, who had used them for five years before I got them.  They’re made of tough material.  One of the selling points of the tree sleeves was that they would disintegrate after ten years and I had thought they would have long given up by now, but only about 50% were being torn apart at the seam as the tree outgrew the sleeve. The other 50% were still gripping onto the tree and during this very wet summer many of them had filled up with water.

Ten year old ash tree bursting open the seam of the tough tree sleeve.

So I learned that I’d have been better to remove the tree sleeves at an earlier stage. Usually the narrower part of the young tree trunk growing out at the top of the sleeve is much thinner than at the base of the tree.  So it looks like there’s plenty of time to remove the sleeve.  But I found that as the base of the tree filled the sleeve, water filled up the sleeve and the trunk was consequently standing in water. Time to cut the sleeve off and free the tree. They were full of slugs and slime and all manner of wetland insects.  But no damage was done and after a couple of weeks of dry weather I can hardly notice the marks from tree sleeve.

This tree is a good size to remove the tree sleeve

And the other thing I would have done differently had I known, would have been to pull out the steel rods that support the sleeve after a couple of  years.  By then the tree itself could have supported the sleeve and the rod would no longer have been needed.  In most cases if I wasn’t strong enough to pull out the rod, some strong man could.  But after ten years some of the tree roots have knitted over the rod and even Hercules himself wouldn’t be able to pull them out. So those rods had to be hack sawed off at the base, having first scraped back the soil to get in as low as possible. Not much fun.

Steel rod from the tree sleeve stuck in the ground and impossible to now remove. It now has to be hack-sawed off at base.

If the tree sleeves are removed at 5 – 7 years instead of later, there might still be risk of hare damage.  But the damage will usually only be to  a few trees by then and the damage is not fatal, as you can see in the top photo of the lime tree.  We’ve also found that if branches of the trees the hares go for are pruned and left lying at the base of the tree the hares will go for the nice fresh young bark of the branch and will leave the trunk alone.  We do that here in mid-February before the ‘March Hare’ activity sets in and so far it has been very successful.

Hare damage on one of the branches we cut in February at the base of the tree we wanted to protect. It works!

Thomas Baker and me in the alder wood that Thomas and other volunteers pruned last summer.

Last summer I ran an informal workshop on the farm on the subject of tending young woodlands. About twenty people turned up on the Saturday morning.  The deal was that in the morning I’d show people through the woods and offer what I have learned about tending the woods.  After lunch we would do some pruning of alder in the ‘new plantation’ by way of exchange and to get some ‘hands on’ experience.

It was great fun, but of course less than half the people stayed to help.  That didn’t matter, I was just glad so many people came.  One of the people who stayed on to help was Thomas Baker, a young man who was doing work experience/ voluntary work at that time on Dan and Becky Hillman’s small holding near Mohill.  Such a nice young man and he really seemed to enjoy the work.  We had a good conversation afterwards and off they all went.

Thomas Baker pruning some small alder trees in the 'new plantation' early last summer.

Since then, not much has happened in the new plantation, except of course the trees have grown.  It was planted in 2003, so it’s young yet. Niall Miller (Fuinseog Woodland Crafts) has gone in to the higher ground each year and cleared brambles where the oak and birch, scots pine and hazel needed help. I felt the time had come to go in and take out some of the faster grown trees here and there to give space to some of the slower oak and Scots pine.  I was kind of putting it off because the task of getting in there seemed too much. But of course when you put off a job like that, especially given the growth rate in the Cavan/Leitrim area where I live, it rapidly gets worse. And then as if by magic I got an email from Thomas Baker saying he and a friend would be staying in the area during the summer break and they’d love to come over and meet up and do some work in the woods for a day.

Thomas and Gerry who volunteered their work in the 'new plantation' recently.

When they arrived I was on my way to a funeral.  So I just showed Thomas and his friend Gerry into the area where I wanted to start and they set to work.  I was gone several hours and when I came back there was a beautiful new patch of sunlight pouring into the forest where Gerry and Thomas had worked and the way was clear into the rest of the forest.  They’re no slouches. They had done loads. It was just what was needed to get me back in there.

Thomas and Gerry standing in the new light after their work in the 'new plantation.'

The atmosphere was bright and cheerful where the two boys were working. Their arms were scratched from the brambles, they were sweaty from the hard work and they were simply happy to be thus engaged in the woods. Their clearing and pruning was of a high standard and they seemed as pleased with their work as I was. I was so grateful for their help, which came just at the right time.

We had some lunch up at the house and had a chance to catch up.  Thomas has had a fascinating and very educational time for the last eight months staying at Prickly Nut Wood in West Sussex with Ben Law.  He’s been learning the art of coppice management; making tools and rustic furniture from what comes out of the woods, and timber house building. He goes back now for another few months.  It was clear to me,through listening to Thomas, that the course offered is very practical and that it has not only taught him a plethora of new skills but also helped to nurture the interest that he had when I met him just over a year ago.

Thomas is pleased so far with his decision to leave out university study from his career choice. He felt that there is a lot of good learning to be had outside the university and that it was often broader in its scope, more practical and offered more work opportunities later in the ‘real’ world.  Gerry is new to woodland work, but is developing a keen interest in it.  He is very attracted to the idea of owning some forest and learning to live in it, manage it well and put to use the variety of materials that come from woodlands. They were both doing some work with Peter Cowman in Roosky learning the skill of cobb building. There’s so much good stuff available these days. Our conversation just never got around to the ‘doom and gloom’ subjects that have become so fashionable lately. Off they went with vows of keeping in touch and well wishing all round.

Since the visit from Thomas and Gerry I’ve been in the ‘new plantation’ (someday I’ll find a proper name for this 6 acre forest!) nearly every day.  Gabriel and I have cleared a little path along by the main drain/small canal for easy access and Gabriel is slowly clearing the four ponds of all the heavy grass and bramble that is growing over them.

Gabriel clearing out the grass and bramble from one of the ponds in the 'new plantation'.

I have marked some trees for felling near the ponds to let in more light.  We have done more pruning and I’m taking out some trees as I make my way along the rows. Often all it takes to get moving in a new area is a little interest from someone else, – well, a little sweat also helps. A helping hand is worth a thousand times more than good advice, is the old saying.

Cathy Fitzgerald visited here a couple of days after the work had been done so I couldn’t wait to bring her down and show her this section of our forest that she had never been in.  It’s a place I love being in now.  Plenty of light and I can see what I’m doing in there now. Thanks lads!

Cathy Fitzgerald and I admiring the healthy young trees in the 'new plantation' on my farm.

PHOTO OF ME AND CATHY IN WOODS

The fast pioneering alder trees have really put on growth and the Cabin Woods were again getting darker and darker. New light needed to come in and some thinning needed to happen.  I marked four trees and when Niall Miller came to help out with some other work, he felled the trees and harvested the firewood for me.

Niall Miller getting ready for some more sawing. Working in woodlands is what Niall has done most for more than twenty years.

When we planted this woodland ten years ago we put in four different varieties of alder: common, grey, red and Italian. It’s a good chance to see how the different species have done.  I favoured any native alder that came in by itself and now there is a reasonable variety of stem sizes in this very young woodland. The alder varieties all have different characteristics. One thing they have in common is that they all grow fast.

Four trees were cut: Grey, common and Italian alder. Notice the different colours of the freshly cut timber.

The beauty of owning small, young woodlands is that the ideal ‘little and often’ guidlelines for thinning can be easily applied. Now the crowns have more room to fill which means that the increment or growth will be kept high.

A few days after Niall had been here I had a visit from my good friends artist Cathy Fitzgerald and sculptor Martin Lyttle. Martin and Cathy were telling me that their own little alder woodland also needs thinning as the canopy has again closed over. You can read about their conifer forest in transformation on Cathy’s blogsite.

Cathy & Martin standing in newly made light after thinning in the Cabin Woods

Notice how bright it is in the woods now that the little bit of thinning has been done. By now the brambles are completely tame and there is very little to do in this small woodland except fell some of the larger trees every couple of years. There is a little regeneration of ash and alder coming in, despite the family of huge hares we have resident on the farm. It should be enough.

It’s truly amazing to walk through this area now and experience just how firm the ground is after all the torrential rain.  Before the trees it was very wet and rushy. Much more productive under trees and a wonderland to walk through and enjoy at any time of the year.

Narrow strips of woodland don’t generate enough shade to keep the brambles down and the fence along the lane has become overgrown with a big strong crop of them. I’m constantly having to cut them back to allow tractors and my jeep to get down the lane. Their desire is to knit up the bare ground and turn it back into forest.

Brambles eating up the fence.

I decided to go in and do a bit of clearing in order to keep the brambles at bay and also to prune up some of the trees. I wanted to go at a slow pace and enjoy the work. Tough gloves, thorn proof jacket and jeans, loppers, secateurs and a fold up pruning saw. I left the slash hook behind in the shed, as there is a chance at this time of the year that there still might be a nest in use.

Within minutes I was noticed by the most observant of the bullocks.

Our cattle are pets.  Three bullocks and three cows. They keep the fields as fields. They provide wonderful dung for the garden. And we just love these wonderful big gentle creatures being here. One of their secret wishes is that the fences that keep them out of the woodlands would magically disappear some day and they could walk in and have their fill of the lush leaves and sweet wild herbs, including brambles. So of course when I started pruning the trees these two spotted the action and guessed there might be something in it for them.

Two of the bullocks enjoying a feast of ash and oak leaves from the prunings.

 In times past I’m told that people would collect ash leaves throughout the summer for cattle feed through the winter months. The cattle love them.

Our little black bullock licking up every leaf with his prickly long tongue.

Here on this farm I’m always trying to strike a balance between what we want to achieve, ie beautiful, productive woodlands that offer shelter for the fields and what the birds and creatures who live here want, ie lots of wildness for cover, homes and food.  There was no hurry. I wanted to enjoy the work and going slowly like this means I hear any warning call from small birds whose nest I mightn’t have spotted during my preliminary search. Underneath the brambles I noticed the tracks of hares that lead to their little hiding places. 

Hidden beneath the brambles, a cosy, leaf-lined sleeping place for the many hares that live on our farm.

Three Hours Later……..

The work I’ve done on this top section of the little strip of woods is quite drastic. I wanted to really blitz that corner and clear out the fence really well. I’ve tried to keep some cover for the birds by heaping the brambles in the centre and linking the piles up with the hare runs. The freshly pruned trees look so bare, but I know even by the end of this growing season the crowns will fill out, settle down and there will be new growth appearing on the floor again. 

The fence reappears, trees pruned and brambles heaped up for bird cover.

I’m always astonished by the ever enduring desire of the earth to cover itself. And how efficiently and quickly it does it, when let. When I finished this corner of work I had to go to Carrick-on-Shannon to collect something. On the busy main street, with people walking everywhere, I noticed this familiar little plant growing between a stone wall and the harsh pavement:

Tomato plant sneaking in on a busy pavement in Carrick-on-Shannon

It’s little message of the earth’s abundance offered a cheery counterpoint to all the doom and gloom talk on the radio on the drive to Carrick.

Hazel catkin braving the snow

Out walking along our avenue yesterday I noticed many of the hazel trees have released their catkins.  To me, this is always the first sign of spring.  It’s amazing to think that in this freezing, snowy weather, beneath the surface the soil is beginning to stir.  The trees are the first to notice, and they let us know that amongst all the doom and gloom talk, – spring will arrive again this year.  Nothing short of miraculous.

 

Hare tracks criss-crossing in the snow

And another sign of spring is the behavior of the hares.  There are about six hares living around the house and ‘home field’.  They’ve been chasing one another and generally displaying the joys of spring.  Look at their tracks criss-crossing in the snow.

 

Hare nibbling the buds on beech sapling

As much as I love to see these wild and free animals, – they play havoc with the trees. Here is a hare right outside the sitting room window helping itself to a few of the little buds on my beech trees. Our attitude here is to protect the trees where necessary with tubes or chicken wire. Where it is not practical to do that we just allow the hares to do their bit of damage.  Plant plenty and a variety of species.  A few losses are worth it to see these extraordinary creatures up close.

 

Oak tree at the edge of the frozen lake

What a wonder snow is and how it transforms the landscape.  The trees show yet another side of their glory when they are coated in white.