Pollarding and fencing
In the corner of our vegetable plot is a large willow tree which I've been meaning to reduce in size for a while - willows grow quickly, especially when their roots are next to a stream, and I also would like to see if it regrows some thin stalks suitable for making into baskets and other things. Here's how it looked this winter:
As I don't own a petrol chainsaw (they scare me rather, and in any case dropping such large branches in one go would have destroyed a few of our new-ish fruit trees) I decided to start by climbing up into the tree and cutting down the branches by hand with a Bahco pruning saw - which is an excellent tool, cuts through 10cm trunks in a trice and safe to carry while climbing up or down. It turns out that one tree contains quite a lot of wood:
The larger trunks are piled in the background, they'll eventually be firewood for our woodburner once they've seasoned for a year or two. The smaller stuff isn't much use for anything so went on the bonfire, but the medium-sized (around an inch or two thick) seemed too useful to burn, so I stripped all the side shoots off with a billhook - I have a Suffolk pattern billhook which I bought as a 'vintage' item from eBay as it's rather difficult to buy a decent modern one. This left me with a large pile of sticks which the kids had a lot of fun making dens with, but I needed to find something slightly more long-term to do with them. The fence between ourselves and next door had blown down in the recent storms, so we decided to make a woven willow replacement:
It's entirely possible this won't last more than a few years, but it was a lot of fun to make and of course the materials were free! Here's the finished article:
I also asked a neighbour who isn't scared of chainsaws to tidy up the stumps of the willow, which is now looking a lot better:
As I don't own a petrol chainsaw (they scare me rather, and in any case dropping such large branches in one go would have destroyed a few of our new-ish fruit trees) I decided to start by climbing up into the tree and cutting down the branches by hand with a Bahco pruning saw - which is an excellent tool, cuts through 10cm trunks in a trice and safe to carry while climbing up or down. It turns out that one tree contains quite a lot of wood:
The larger trunks are piled in the background, they'll eventually be firewood for our woodburner once they've seasoned for a year or two. The smaller stuff isn't much use for anything so went on the bonfire, but the medium-sized (around an inch or two thick) seemed too useful to burn, so I stripped all the side shoots off with a billhook - I have a Suffolk pattern billhook which I bought as a 'vintage' item from eBay as it's rather difficult to buy a decent modern one. This left me with a large pile of sticks which the kids had a lot of fun making dens with, but I needed to find something slightly more long-term to do with them. The fence between ourselves and next door had blown down in the recent storms, so we decided to make a woven willow replacement:
It's entirely possible this won't last more than a few years, but it was a lot of fun to make and of course the materials were free! Here's the finished article:
I also asked a neighbour who isn't scared of chainsaws to tidy up the stumps of the willow, which is now looking a lot better: