Preparing for chipping at Pit Wood

Preparing for chipping at Pit Wood 

Walking around the rectangular field at Pit Wood has always been relatively easy. A hedge cutter and mower can get around two sides. Getting a tractor and trailer round the other two sides, would have been problematic.  If it could be done then brash from the felling could be dragged to the nearest edge of the wood, and long trunks piled up ready for loading on a trailer more efficiently. Over hanging branches and a couple of corner trees have been cut away, and lined up to make loading a chipper as easy as possible.

Typical mess, the only tidying up that has been done is to enable the next tree to be felled.

The brash is piled so the thick end of the branch faces the chipper. If the end of the branch is clean, with no thick side shoots the chipper should be able to draw the branch through the machine bending or breaking any small side shoots as it goes. The Aspen tends to be long and straight so should go through easily with little handling. There are some Scots Pine branches from a wind break by the ditch. These are contorted and complexly branched, and will take more manual effort as they are shorter and may need more cutting up to go through the 6" chipper.  They had to be removed to get a tractor under them.

Tomorrow the chipper comes, fingers crossed. The chipper man came down this morning and was very complimentary about both the woods and the way I had piled the brash. Which was pleasing, so should be good tomorrow. If I had realised he could have got a trailer down a row I could have saved myself a lot of time, not that it matters. The two photographs are from the track at the side by the Wind Break.  Top photo the scots pine. The one on the left is mainly Aspen.

Most of the brash has been piled at the north end of the rows . It needs moving so that anything can move in or out of them!

The main stems are being left and can be collected later. They will go into piles when the brash has gone and it is possible to move.

The north end of the plot. Stacks of brash at the end of the rows can be seen on the left.