Easter 2011 at Cutler´s

Easter 2011 at Cutler´s turned out to be almost like high summer; temperatures were up to 26 degrees C for a few days, until an easterly wind brought lower temperatures but it stayed dry and rain was nowhere to be seen. The ground is now so dry that our woodland tracks are like concrete. In all of this I was attempting to plant 200 Nordmann Firs, as future Christmas trees. Luckily, they were rooted in Jiffy bags and not bare rooted. The ground in the paddock, where we were planting was so hard that we had to call Alex in with his tractor and rotovator to break up the top 25cm of earth. We watered the plants in well but I can only now hope that rain appears soon.

The warm weather had also brought the adders out to bask in the sun. One young adder, about 1 year old got ran over in our farmyard by someone and while watering in the Christmas trees another, this time fully adult adder appeared about 1 metre in front of me. After I stood up straight, he seemed to have second thoughts about me and disappeared into the long grass under a fence. We almost stepped on a third snake the next day in the woods.

The bluebells were in full bloom over Easter and the woods were carpeted by a sheet of blue. The area next to the A252, which we cut back earlier this year for logs, was particularly impressive and consequently was a big draw for people passing by car, many of whom stopped to walk through the area and take photographs.

There have been a couple of cases of poachers shooting deer in Cutler´s recently. In both cases the deer was left by the poacher - I can´t quite work out the draw of shooting deer only to leave the carcasses to the foxes. Anyway, any poachers which are caught will be prosecuted and have their weapons confiscated and destroyed.

We also managed a trip over to Wilderness Wood in East Sussex to meet Chris Yarrow who has been converting sweet chestnut coppice to high forest for some time now. The high forest will then be managed in future as continuous cover forestry. This is something that I am keen to follow at Cutler´s, as the market for coppiced sweet chestnut, other than for logs, is basically worth almost nothing. Sweet chestnut grows quite well at Cutler´s and we have discovered that the market for well grown sweet chestnut timber is specialized but can be very profitable, as not that much exists. Apart from local interest, there is a certain amount of interest from continental European markets for British sweet chestnut timber, as in the UK we have not had the same incidences of disease that have occured in warmer climatic zones. Anyway, to come back to Wilderness Wood, it is now run by Chris´s daughter Joanna Yarrow and it is an excellent example of what a multi-functional woodland can be. They get around 30,000 paying visitors per year for all manner of activities; childrens birthdays in the woods, barbeques, Christmas trees, walks and many other things. It took Chris 30 years to build up the business of Wilderness Wood but it is now a model of what can be done with enough initiative. http://www.wildernesswood.co.uk/

Apart from the above photos, please click on the "Images of Easter 2011" page in the right hand column to see more pictures.

Plastic, Metal & Stone

After the storm of 1987, Cutler´s was heavily replanted with ash, black walnut and wild cherry. Plastic tree shelters were used to protect these trees against deer browsing and rabbit / grey squirrel damage. These tree shelters were meant to biodegrade with time but unfortunately they have steadfastly refused to do just this. The consequence of this is that we now, over twenty years later, are faced with the cleaning up of these seemingly many thousands of shelters, both from the ground, if they split and fell off as they were supposed to, or worse still, off the tree if still attached to the stem of the tree. In the case of those still attached to the stems, they are a collection point for water, which rots the bark, or all manner of other things which fall down the tube - we even found a dead squirrel stuck down one shelter. The clean up has until now taken all winter and we are still nowhere near finished. We think it may take years still to eventually clear up last shelter. Perhaps the moral of the story here is "Never believe what´s on the label".

Some time ago I came across a number of numbered corrugated metal sheets and pieces of roofing felt laid out on the ground in a remote part of Cutler´s. I assumed these to be reptile shelters i.e. places where slow worms, lizards and adders would crawl (slither?) under if disturbed. After a little research and e-mailing various reptilely people, I found out that these were part of a reptile survey being carried out by Kent University which has been ongoing for the last four years. They had got a little lost, as they thought they were on the Forestry Commission land of King´s Wood but I think if I can help the survey in any way then I will and the shelters can stay where they are. If you do come across these shelters, please do not disturb them or turn them over as this would disturb the inhabitants.

It was while in the immediate area of these reptile shelters, that I recently came across a somewhat mysterious stone. The stone is under some yew trees in the corner of the boundary of Cutler´s Wood and is engraved with the letters "CH". The back of the stone has three flat surfaces and on the top front is a small hollow as shown on the photograph. I have found another worked stone in Cutler´s at a circle of flint stones affectionately known by myself as the Druid´s Circle. What the origins of this stone are and to what (or to whom) "CH" refers is a complete mystery. If anyone has any ideas, I´d be happy to hear them.

Felling in February

We have been felling trees in several areas of Cutler´s during the last few weeks. Two acres of mixed woodland have been felled for the firewood market, we have felled and brought back into rotation 1 acre of chestnut coppice with some good post and rail fencing material as a result and we have felled 15 stems of older chestnut which were stored on around 35 years ago. All the older stems were shake free with some premium quality resulting which we hope will go for veneer and the furniture industry. There has been some interest in this higher quality material for export to France and Italy, where historically chestnut has been used more than in the British market.

Despite the sometimes awful weather of the last few weeks, Spring is on its way, with the bluebells 8-9 cms out of the ground.