If You Should Go Into The Woods Today

Last week the stroppiest of our three milking cows, Angelica, gave birth to a gorgeous dark brown calf named Hazel. They are kept together for the first few weeks. Whoever approaches to get a closer look is greeted by a warning moo as the mother steps forward to protect her cherished baby. And in the wee hours of Wednesday morning Hyacinth, the eldest, followed suit. Hers was a male calf which we prefer as they bulk up larger which, not to put too fine a point on it, means more meat for the freezers.  Female calves, should they happen to be a Jersey (which we never know in advance as the Jersey mothers are artificially inseminated with random semen), may be lucky enough to be selected as a future milker and hence live a long happy cow life, perhaps twelve years or more. This happened to Daffodil last year. Otherwise in two years or so they will have grown large enough for a trip to the slaughterhouse. 

I haven’t had much chance to get acquainted with our baby cows yet as I’ve been out on a five day low-impact woodland management course run by Monkton Wyld community, a few miles towards the coast from here.  That’s ‘low-impact’ on the environment rather than on your joints, as my aching limbs can testify after a couple of hours felling and processing a birch tree with only an axe and a two-handled saw. 

The course was packed full of practical information on how one might go about managing a woodland, there not being a single best way of doing it; handy tips on the sorts of things you can create and sell from a woodland; and lots of actual getting out into the woods which you see with different eyes once you’ve studied its management plan and are able to tell where different sections require various treatments - selective thinning, or planting new types of trees, or removing invasive rhododendron and laurel, or just doing nothing at all. This latter approach is apparently quite fashionable these days - “re-wilding” as it’s known - but actually it can simply cause the woodland to get so thick that no light reaches the ground and wildlife is forced to the edges.

Learning to handle and maintain tools was a key component of our tuition. We spent a whole evening sharpening the axes, billhooks and saws. We laboured in Monkton Wyld’s huge woodshed, sawing the big beech logs into chunks using the two-man saw, splitting them into pieces with an axe, and then stacking the firewood in such a way that air will continue to circulate through.  We “snedded” (lopped the branches off) some fallen trees at Tempest wood with billhooks, taking care not to sned ourselves in the process. 

If you happen to be in the firewood business and don’t know what to do with all the offcuts that aren’t sellable, charcoal is your answer. We spent a very chilly but fascinating few hours making the stuff in an oil barrel with a hole cut along it lengthwise. You simply start a fire in it and slowly add more wood whenever the thick white smoke subsides - “feeding the dragon” - until it is completely jam-packed. This can take a long while so best to do it with some friends, or a Sudoku puzzle. Then roll the barrel over into a six inch deep pit with the hole facing down, packing the soil around it tight so no air gets in and no smoke gets out. Come back the next day, check it is cold to the touch, lay a large sheet next to it and roll out the fresh charcoal. It will need sorting into different sizes and bagged accordingly. Exceedingly satisfying and pleasingly dirty. Then it’s time to get your friends back for a barbie, slaughter the fattened calf (Hazel’s a bit skinny yet) and throw on a few steaks!