Saturday 7 June 2008

Roll out the barrel

One of the things I want to do this summer is to try making some small charcoal kilns out of oil drums, just to produce a bit of charcoal for our own use. I'm not there yet, but the materials are now in place:


Tim's been up in the week with a log splitter by the look of it:and the last of the oak butts have now been milled, leaving a nice flat space, which could come in handy for visitor parking and further timber storage, if we prevent it growing back up: There's still a lot of oak firewood to be split and extracted, so it'll be a while before the wayleave track can be restored.

In the wood, things are growing really well, with the rain and warm weather we've had. Some of the coppice stools have grown up to 2 ft now:
and a chestnut stake I used to hold some logs back in January has decided to sprout. I'll be interested to see if the base of it has roots when I pull it up!
This one's my favourite though - an old pollarded chestnut that used to have several large stems on it. With the stems cut off, the pollard has come back to life as well as the stool!
Meanwhile back at home, Tom's decided that it's time he learned to sit up at the table during dinner time:
They're both enjoying their new box full of fresh grass seeds too:
Mike

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