Martino Newcombe and friends

Word just in from Martino Newcombe and Tom Nixon of Trojan Horses that we can see them and their magnificent horses at work this coming Tuesday night at 8.30pm, RTE 1, on Ear to the Ground.  Do some home work by checking out their blog site in advance of the programme and you’ll begin to really understand why these two guys have such belief in writing horse logging back into the Irish forestry story. Fantastic work.  Enormous commitment. And I’ve no doubt it will be fantastic viewing on Tuesday night.  don’t miss it!

Cathy Fitzgerald in the recently thinned alder. Look at all the rich flora starting to come into the new light.

Cathy and I worked on “The Local Project Revisited” back in 2006. During this time I visited Holly Wood for the first time.  Then it consisted of rather poor sitka spruce that were planted by Martin’s father  about 20 years ago.

There were some alder coming in along by the road boundary and I thought they would benefit by some thinning.  We marked a few of the alder and Martin cut them out.   Cathy and Martin were so inspired by the effect of this simple thinning exercise that they asked me back to mark the rest of the forest the following year.  

But Cathy is a natural networker.  She invited about ten people from nearby to come and learn about this simple method of thinning and she even filmed the event as part of her ongoing documentation of the evolution of their woodland. Check out her excellent blog:  ecoartnotebook.  She has loads on forestry and related subjects and it is well worth a browse. Chris Hynes of Lightfoot Forestry was one of the people to come to that impromptu workshop and he carried out the harvesting and extraction of the timber the following year using his iron horse. But there’s no need for me to tell much about the process as it’s all on Cathy’s site.

Cathy is a networker extraordinaire, so the tree marking exercise turned into a documented workshop in her woodlands

It was great for me to see the woods last week and to notice all the changes that the extra light has brought in since the thinning operation.  About 20% of the spruce were taken out and this action has really bump started the whole forest to get a move on. 

Thinning let new light into the forest which bump started a whole new cycle of growth.

Cathy and Martin built a timber house some years back right inside their woodland. The woods provide a tranquil setting and their house is well screened from the road and very sheltered. They have cleared a small area around the house for a vegetable garden, workshop, sheds, etc.  The thinnings have been stacked neatly near the house for firewood for themselves, plus they sold a few trailer loads to help pay for the work.

Cathy and Martin's timber house peeping through the trees. Notice all the bright little ash seedlings dancing into the woods in the new light.

It was Cathy who first encouraged me to start writing down my observations about forests. When I didn’t, she twisted my arm and taught me how to work a blog site. As I said, – she’s a compulsive networker and firmly believes that by sharing our skills etc., the wheel doesn’t have to be re-invented.

As I was driving off along their winding, narrow driveway I wondered if their woodland is called Hollywood because their dog is named Holly or because of Cathy’s film making ventures. I’ll have to sit on that one for a while.

Here's Cathy with one of the hundreds of ash saplings that are coming into her woods. (The umbrella is for the rain, - not the sun. Even though it's called Hollywood, - it's Ireland, not California!

It is just a pure stand of sitka spruce. There were two lines of poplar in it, but no other broadleaves apart from the occasional ash that had moved in of its own accord. The soil is fertile and the trees have done well in this section.

This is how the forest looked before thinning

Here’s how the marking was done:

Using biodegradable coloured tape, the trees for keeping were marked in yellow and those to be felled were marked in red.  I tried quicker methods, but ended up back with the tape.  Tins of spray paint are commonly used for marking trees, but I really didn’t like breathing in the fumes and wasn’t too sure that the used tins wouldn’t end up in landfill. Using a paint tin and brush was too messy and also time consuming, as really all sides of the tree need to be marked so the person way up on the harvesting machine can see the marking clearly from whichever direction he/she is coming from.

Trees were marked with red tape for taking out

I selected trees of good, straight form with finer branching.  I tried to select a mixture of sizes, some large trees, some small and some in between.  I didn’t pay much attention to spacing.

The site was not cultivated prior to planting. The trees were planted directly into the ground and the site is relatively sheltered. All these factors mean that the risk of windthrow is slight. Even so, I looked for well rooted trees to keep.

It would not be practical to mark a first thinning in this way normally.  In the next article I’ll tell you about the system that is more commonly used.  But I wanted to mark out a couple of the sections myself just to practice getting my eye in and to be able to compare some marked sections with some where the system is used.

Second section after thinning

There will always be ‘mistakes’ made in forestry thinning, but I think the greatest mistake of all is not to thin. Just look at these optimistic little ash seedlings hoping for some light to be let in so they too might grow on and fully express themselves.

Optimistic ash seedlings bathed in new sunlight