Coppicing Tasks

Unfortunately I missed a coppicing training day organised by the YWT Lower Aire Valley volunteers and Leeds Coppicers, but I still got the chance to practice some skills on the follow-up work days and quickly picked things up from the other group members.

Over the last week I've attended two sessions at Townclose Hills reserve near Kippax.  We started by planting a five new 'standard' trees - a mix of cherry and oak - within the hedge that was laid recently.  These look rather forlorn at the moment, but I'm sure will soon grow and add some interest to the hedge.

We then moved up into the woodland and continued the work that started on the training day. The woodland is being traditionally coppiced to remove scrub and harvest useful wood. This is being done in blocks, so that some areas of the woodland are opened up whilst others are left untouched and continue to grow.

This is a mixed deciduous woodland.  The trees include hazel - which provides a really useful wood products - and sycamore, which is less useful. There were also areas of hawthorn scrub to contend with.

In coppicing, the tree is cut back almost to ground level. The stool that is left will sprout and re-grow in the future, providing a new harvest of wood in around ten years time. Wood that is cut off is then processed into various products. This sorting process can take longer than chopping down the tree.  The photos to the left illustrate the process. Depending on the length, width, flexibility and species of the wood, these could be:

• beanpoles - tall and straight
• fence hurdles - long, flexible and may be slightly bent
• stakes/fence posts - sturdy, straight
• garden canes - shorter, thinner, straight
• firewood - anything else

This was bundled up and will be removed from the site. The remaining brash was collected and laid downslope in three lines of breakers as a sort of dead hedge. This will eventually decompose down but forms an edge to discourage people from walking across the site, and also provides some shelter for wildlife. Robins were already making use of this while we were working.

A couple of pleachers were laid from some of the hazel standards. This is a technique similar to hedge laying, but a branch is cut and laid into bare ground where it should sprout and form a new stool. Following on from the hedge laying course, I managed to do a couple of these on my own.

Today I spent the morning at the Roach Lime Hills reserve. It was a beautiful early Spring morning with views over Leeds.  The group continues to do scrub clearance work on site.  Hawthorn and blackthorn scrub is starting to encroach, so large areas of this are being cut down to restore the area to grassland. Unlike the coppicing, the wood is not good enough to do anything with, so it is burned on site.

Despite the prickly thorns, it was nice to do a task in good weather and enjoy the sunshine.  Leafhoppers were very active as we were enjoying a mid-morning break, and we had a few new volunteers in the group to chat to.