Making tracks with brash

[Rich]

I think spruce branches and conifers in general must work better than broadleaf for brash mats and tracks. The fc article says as much, the problem I've found and I'm felling birch, alder, hazel and chestnut is that the branches tend to wander off into 3 planes instead of lying flat(er) in 2 as with most conifer brash. Think how big a pile of broadleaf brash gets if you just dump it on top of each other, not exactly easy to drive over! I'm experimenting by chopping my piles of brash with the chainsaw so they are in small pieces (and about 10% of the volume!). I've got a nice mixed aggregate of chopped up brash which I'm hoping will make a fine track, once I've spread it out.

Rich

[tracy]

Look forward to hearing how it works Rich!

[Rich]

Here's some pictures of the track I made from my brash earlier this year

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/greencaveman/BrashTrack#

It took a lot of work, chopping it all up and moving it, but you can drive over it nicely and it is protecting the soil. It didn't work so well on the steeper slope down to the stream, (hence the brick hardcore!) I also left a couple of chunky stumps in the ride to winch myself out if/when I get into trouble!

On reflection, I'm not sure I'd do it again, it was nice to find a use for the brash instead of burning it and it will eventually return to the woodland soil, but it meant a lot of extra work and though I haven't played tennis for years, the action of holding the weight of the saw up for so long with my left arm has given me tennis elbow, lucky all the other work we do in the woods is akin to a bit of light dusting!

Rich

[Darren]

Same here rich. A lot of hard work with little gain. I found the brash doesn't really work on the wettest bits. Going to fill in the ruts with hardcore.