Practical Coppicing –Sat 4th-Sun 5th October 2008 – Darren Hammerton

[Sustainability Centre]

Learn the management and ecological aspects of coppicing including how to restore derelict hazel coppice and cut in-cycle coppice safely and efficiently. There will be plenty of practical work using hand tools and you will be shown tool techniques, care and sharpening methods. Bring along some sausages!! Please contact Raina on [email protected] or 01730 823166. Please look at our website www.sustainability-centre.org for more courses.

(EDITOR) I have edited the title of this post with the correct dates, (October instead of Sept)

thanks Davetb

Tracy

[davetb]

These dates are wrong. The weekend is 6th & 7th September. Sounds like a good course.

Can you revise the dates as I'd be interested. Cheers, Dave

[davetb]

Hi,

Just checked your website and realised it's October, not September.

Would love to come - will contact you soon.

Cheers, Dave

[tracy]

I edited the title of the post Davetb, thanks for spotting the date error for them. I hope you enjoy the course and maybe write something for us about what you learn?

Tracy

[Chris]

Darren will be using our wood for this course. You will be able to see what happens when coppice with standards is left for about 40 years without coppicing, what happens when it is brought back into rotation, and some that has been kept in rotation. I think the latter is the stuff you will be cutting. We also have ash and hazel coppice, and examples of metal and plastic deer fence.

You will be busy during the course, but if anyone is interested in looking round the wood at other things and wants to come early I can arrange to show you points of interest.

Chris

[tracy]

Chris- or anyone else- what does happen when a coppice with standards is left for 40 years without coppicing? Many of us are buying woods that are not being kept in rotation and it would be interesting to know.

Is there a point at which a coppice should not be brought back into rotation, because it has become a high forest type?

Tracy

[Chris]

There probably is a point at which it is not worth bringing the coppice back, but this will depend upon how long the land has been under coppice and what has grown up.

In our wood, although there are a lot of standards among the coppice, there are still a lot of stools left. If the standards are cut, more hazel seems to come up as well. We think this wood has been coppice for a very long time; there is evidence of ash coppice which might be 1000 years old and hazel that is several hundred years.

We are also keen to keep the coppice as we have dormice and a lot of coppice wood flowers.

Chris

[Underwoodsman]

As Chris says a lot depends on what has happened, not only since the last cut but during the previous cycles. In our wood, the hazel was cut in 1964, and the ash coppice was due to be cut in 1971, but was not done as the management changed; this means that the areas with ash coppice in are begining to look like high forest (70 to 80 years old) so could be left as such. But, and it is a big but, ash coppice starts to fall apart at 70 to 80 years old as rot sets in at the base, so we would have ended up with over stood hazel coppice crushed under a pile of fallen ash; so we decided re coppicing was the answer here. If those trees had been maidens ie. single stem trees, we would have had to think a lot harder as the history of the site would have been different. We do in fact have one area where this has happened as it was platationed in the 1950s, here we will go for continuous cover thinning.

John W