I had a good day on the land today - starting the process of clearing a 10 metre strip on the border, which is a legal requirement for fire safety in this part of the world.
I had some help from a guy whose worked in forestry for a couple of decades, and it's been a great day working alongside him as he's a very useful source of knowledge.
We started off on the Northern boundary which consists of cork oaks and pine: he got busy with his chainsaw to take out all the larger brush while I dragged it out, piling it up at the bottom of the slope to make an enormous hugel bed:
(Tidying it up is for later in the week!)
I then went back and used the Stihl to clear the smaller brush - the Stihl's good for anything up to about half an inch thick, while he started taking out some of the smaller trees.
We got a LOT of brush out of one relatively small 10 metre strip (actually I think we may have gone more than 10 metres in places) - there was so much tinder box material in there that it took a couple of run throughs:
- chainsaw to get the larger stuff out, dragged out
- Brush cutter to get the smaller stuff out, dragged out
- Then go back through and take out the smaller trees.
This is what it looked like to start with:
This is the end result:
There's a few young oak saplings and hawthornes that now have a chance to breath - and that's basically the plan for this section of the land - just let the oaks come back naturally, and plant a few more - you're allowed oaks in the 10 metre border strip as they don't burn easily apparently.
We're still not done with this area - we need to rake it through, but affter than it's just a matter of planting a few acorns and whatever other helpful and fire resistant shrubs I want here, something to research!
I've also got a nice emerging wood pile already - we're leaving in the thicker pines, but there's a lot of thin densely packed ones that need thinning out...
Overall I had a great day!
I think this is the kind of thing that works so much better with two people - had I been doing this on my own, it would have been depressingly slow going.
We worked at a reasonable pace, with plenty of tea breaks along the way and the day just flew by, it was 16.30 before I new it, and that was enough for the day.
back to it tomorrow! I think I'm getting a lesson in how to maintain my brush cutter, it's so damn useful working with someone that knows a lot more about this stuff than I do!