Hi, I am Emma and I am new to this forum.
My partner and I have taken over the running of his parent's farm, which is in East Sussex. We have taken the whole farm into the Higher Level Stewardship scheme and we are hoping to be running some 'forest school' inspired school access later in the year, as well as diversifying into a bit of 'glamping' to bring in some much needed cash!
We have 6 parcels of woodland on the farm ranging from some small semi natural ancient woodland blocks, a couple of small ex plantation blocks and a bigger hornbeam wood which we are going to start coppicing. We had a guy in last week to help us develop a woodland management plan with the FC for our HLS agreement.
We are very enthusiastic about our woodlands, and want to make the most of them, whilst preserving the biodiversity, but we dont really know alot about it to be honest. We have several friends who are helping us as they have forestry experience and qualifications, so we are on a steep learning curve. Our first task is quite mammoth - we are felling about 400 trees as part of an archaeological preservation of a scheduled monument - quite hard going. If anyone wants to come and help us pile up logs and burn snedding they would be most welcome!!!