Sunday 26 January 2014

Rotten trees in the roadside hedge

The fencing contractors employed to install the wire stock fence, on the roadside of the orchard site, cut back some of the hedge bushes. This was fine by us. They needed relatively straight lines of sight for the fencing process which involves tensioning the wire. 

However the trimming back exposed several small trees of up to 15 cm (6 in) diameter which were rotten through to the core. I was able to push these trees over by hand. They then fell down the embankment into our field site. It would not have been good if winds had pushed them in the opposite direction on to the road. It is yet more urgent work needed to tidy the woodland on the embankment. The rotten trees were mostly Elm and Hawthorn. I'll collect the rotten trunks and store them either on the embankment or in a corner of the field so any wood boring grubs inside are not disturbed.

We'd intended to do this tidying work during November and December of last year but the temporary loss of my driving licence (a single 30 second blackout) has greatly impaired our ability to transport equipment to the site. Hopefully the Government officials will decide I've been punished enough for the single isolated health event and return my licence to me. Otherwise progress on the work of setting up the orchard will be impaired. It is unlikely the orchard will ever generate enough income to pay for the extensive use of contractors. There's just a couple of months left before the birds nesting season starts which will put a stop to any major works in the woodland.


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