Weekend 15th/16th October

Spent part of Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the hill in the coppice. I was own my own for most of it so didn't get as much done as I'd hoped (I was joined for a few hours on Sunday by Jim whose wife was sewing with Gilly in Bream); nevertheless got a fair bit of bracken and bramble cleared. I also put some tarps over the wood stacks in the Charcoal Camp for the winter.



















Whilst pulling the bracken we found a pleasing amount of Hazel saplings doing OK, despite the monster bracken cover shading them out. Sadly, most of the ash saplings had succumbed to the lack of light. Some replanting will be needed...

On a positive note, I have been intensively 'weeding' a small patch just below top orchard for a little over a year now and it is really showing positive signs of how you can beat the bracken: there is a healthy amount of grass and a covering of foxgloves coming up.

Found a few saps that I didn't know were there including what I think is a lime tree or Gilly thinks it could be a Sallow, What do you think?:



















During the November work camp, if I get an hour of two, I might try and remove the bracken I have pulled and burn it in the charcoal camp so to expose as much of the coppice floor as possible to encourage other woodland plants, other than bracken, to grow.