Charcoal Camp - Things to make 2012 # 1

There are a few 'bits' I would like to add to the charcoal camp to make it look and work better: to start with I would like to make a few windbreaks to shield the birning heaps from the breeze which helps the heap burn more evenly.

I don't have any C16th illustrations of these but below is a illustration, from 1879 showing Charcoal makers in Epping Forest, on the right hand side of the picture you can see some rudimentary windbreaks made of poles interwoven and filled with branches. These seem to held by poles bracing them against the wind.



So we need to retrieve a number of hazel lengths this winter to make into the frames and then in the summer we can use bracken to fill the gaps.

As it is a slow day at work today I have even made a little model, from coffee stirrers, of what the finished article might look like:

I know I really should get out more!

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.