Trust - A tale with a moral
Arwyn Morgan ponders the concept of mutual benefit.
Trust is often lacking from the world we live in. In fact timber merchants are often blamed for raping the woodlands, and where woodlands of beauty and value exist, a forester often receives praise for excellent work in the forest, whereas in fact most of the work was done in those woodlands generations before the forester set foot in them. It has been my privilege to work in the forests of Wales. Unfortunately many of the better forests were cleared with the break-up of many of the estates, so many of the woods that we enter have already had a
proportion of their trees taken out.

Veneer and prime planking were the main demands from the 50s to early 80s, although nearly every town in South and Mid Wales had a mill capable of cutting industrial or mining timber, which provided a ready outlet for the poorer grades available from the second lengths and tops. The result is that many of these forests lack large veneer and clear grades of trees – but markets change. Where, in the past, character grades were left behind to act as some kind of forest cover, these are now in certain circumstances as valuable as prime planking grades.

With most of the wood we harvest, we mill it and make finished products out of it. We are therefore regularly on the lookout for certain features, or character, which the large merchants would not want. Unfortunately we are finding that many woods are being managed
by foresters, who have limited interest in the broadleaf areas. They are only really concerned where there are large areas of conifers, with their associated large clearfells, and so many of these broadleaf areas, especially the smaller areas, are allowed to stew in their own juice. If large trees die or fall, they are just left for the bugs. Although this might be fashionable with the grant bodies and numerous self-interest groups, in reality I do wonder as to its professed benefits. Some would have us believe that, by letting all trees become senile, gradually die and rot, we are approaching some ecological Utopia. The reality is that such wildwood conditions have not existed in the majority of British forests for many hundreds of years, especially considering that wood produced the chief fuel prior to the start of major coal mining in the late 1700s and early 1800s. A result of the current fashion of leaving plenty of deadwood has been the massive population rise of the platypus beetle, which isn’t good news for felled logs or to over-stressed oak trees.

The combination of non-proactive woodland owners and foresters who have little interest in broadleaves and a ‘follow the crowd’ mentality, all means that quite a bit of usable and beautiful timber is left to rot and become bug food. The reality is that there is no difference
from a bug’s point of view whether it eats poor quality or valuable timber. A straightforward solution is to leave behind poor quality deadwood as wildlife habitat, while taking out any timber of value. The net result of this is that the woodland owner gets at least some form of income from his broadleaf woodland, rather than the usual total drain on his finances. Many woodland owners have a deep love of their forests and trees, and any opportunity that they
can have to get some sort of income to help with their management is to be encouraged, rather than denied.

This brings me to a particular time when the skidder had been idle on a site nearby as we were waiting for the water levels to recede. When the forester phoned me up about this job I was immediately interested. I had walked the wood some two years ago with the owner, and
upon seeing all the fallen oak trees, many of which no longer had any sapwood, I had expressed an interest in buying them. As some work needed doing in the wood, the owner had told the forester to get in touch with me. I went for an inspection, map in hand, on a wet Saturday afternoon. It turned out that certain softwood needed thinning, the conifer sawlogs needed taking out, and some mixed broadleaves needed thinning.

Also included were two areas marked ‘clearing’. Slightly confused, I offered to buy all the fallen oak, situated all over the woodland, and take down some 80-foot tall Western hemlocks which had sustained some damage in the past, and overlooked a neighbouring house. As it happened, the hemlocks had in the past received some bark scuffing at their bases, and this in turn had introduced rot into the bases. Although up to two feet in diameter, it was better to drop them now under full control rather than let the rot extend and perhaps have them flatten the nearby house at some future date.

I didn’t mention that all the oak was on steep banks. A considerable portion of the wood had been felled in the mid 70s by one of the larger merchants, prior to its sale to its current owner. At the time a caterpillar tractor was used to extract, and the tree lengths were laid out in a nearby field, where they were all loaded up onto pole wagons and taken away. Even 30-odd years after the felling we found a few stumps which were over five feet in diameter. It boggles the mind as to how the forest once looked. Older cutters had warned me as to the considerable shake found in the oak on the higher reaches of the bank.

So John and I, with our fuel and saws, traversed the steep slopes on a seek-and-find mission. Wherever we found a fallen tree we would round it out and cut off the root plates. As many of the trees pointed downhill, considerable caution had to be exercised to ensure that the root plates wouldn’t fall on top of you. Some of the butts were cut a bit high, just to allow enough wood left onto the stump to support the root plate once it was cut. We likewise cut the considerable hazel around them, to form clearer extraction routes. At least then when the tree lengths would be winched out there wouldn’t be vast amounts of hazel semi standing and smashed – far better to coppice them there and then.

Although the site was extremely steep, the banks were crisscrossed with many tracks running across and diagonally, but lots of these were made many years ago with a small bulldozer and now, due to runoff, some were quite narrow. This is where the old County skidder nearly slid sideways down the bank while winching out some stems. Thankfully there was a hazel clump just there, and it saved me and my skidder. The front tyre was on one side of the clump, and the back tyre on the other. After a few deep breaths, the wire rope was fixed to a secure anchor, and the tractor was winched back onto the track.

The main track leading up the bank had been severely eroded where it came down to the loading bay. After some work with the skidder’s blade the erosion was partially filled, but despite this, due to the extreme slope, we were finding that although being fully up, the blade at the front of the skidder would dig into the earth as we came down. After three attempts, it could be seen that the blade was digging deeper at every descent, and the last thing I wanted was the skidder to end up stuck on its nose! From then on we had to go the long way round until we got an excavator to improve the skid road.

One day the owner stopped by to explain his long-term wishes for the woodland. Unusually for this part of Wales, most of the oak was Pedunculate rather than Sessile, and, growing on a northfacing slope, they have tended to be slow grown. But due to the deer population there is very little, if any, natural regeneration of the oak. Nevertheless, within a deer fenced area nearby, after several years, considerable regeneration has occurred. Therefore two areas had been identified to have all hazel and other scrub coppiced, and where all stag-headed and damaged oaks were to be felled. These areas would then be deer fenced and replanted with some help from the Better Woodlands for Wales scheme.

We set about cutting all the hazel prior to dropping the big timber. With shake such a common feature of the oak on this site, care would need to be exercised so as not to increase it. Some of the trees would have to be felled downhill, and some across the slope, depending on the extraction route and on tree shape. As the owner wanted to keep the many holly trees on the site, we were to avoid these at all costs. The first compartment only had one sizeable oak and a few smaller ones. The large one leant downhill towards the extraction route. No matter what I did it was going to be brutal. I therefore cut a deep sink, but very narrow in height, so as to slow down the fall. Likewise the back cut was done by boring behind the very narrow hinge until only a small section held the tree up. This was then cut to trip the tree and set it on its flight. I wanted the butt to land first, as on such trees it
helps to avoid the main stem having serious internal splits and shattering too much.

As it happened this 4 foot diameter oak flew and landed about 20 feet away down the slope.
Fortunately the main stem survived all the way to the major forking in the crown. The crown itself? Well that was smashed to pieces and will remain as habitat and food for the bugs. The rest of the trees were relatively straightforward to fell, with all saving to their crowns. I have
to admit some of the stumps don’t look too tidy due to doing boring cuts from both sides and cutting out their hearts, yet no falling shakes were present in the fallen trees, which is what I wanted, but extraction was going to be rather tough.

Due to the slope of the ground, the brush covering the ground, the considerable distance from extraction routes etc there would be many obstacles. As it happens when you use a ¾” wire rope on a Boughton winch, you don’t seem to have too much length, so with most pulls
we had to use a short extension of 50 feet. For the long pulls we needed another 150 foot extension in addition to the first. This longer extension we have lovingly called the honesty rope, as to lay it out up a steep slope is a very honest way to earn your crust. Most of the extraction trails were rather steep and if you braked the skidder, it would just slide down the
hill. The only sure way to brake and stop was to put the blade down and let it dig in. Thankfully, while skidding the tree lengths down to the loading bay, they would act as a brake, although in certain parts of the skid trail, the tree lengths would just slide down at ever-increasing velocity under gravity behind the skidder.

Overall the oak butts ranged from 1 to 5 cubic metres or 30 to 130 hoppus feet in old language. Some were hairy, others pippy and full of character, and some were clean. Funny really, but the best looking trees often had the most shake, that being ring shake. Dragging the tree lengths through the cut brush helped to clear quite a large area, making it easier for the tree planters when they arrive on site. The larger tree crowns were, wherever possible, felled on each other so that the smashed limbs and branches piled up in certain areas. Due to site difficulties, most of the branchwood was left behind. This would eventually rot down and provide soil nutrients and form deadwood habitat – by being pragmatic everybody’s a winner.

Returning to what I said earlier about how markets change, although much of the old, fallen
oak had some shake, many pieces were pippy, with the added delight of having brown and tiger figuring. Most of the oak harvested either as standing or fallen trees will be used for construction work such as timber framing, with some used to make furniture. As it happens we have a further few acres of young ash and oak to thin, mostly up to small sawlog size, and a small area of Sitka spruce to be halo thinned around the owner’s fast-growing Californian redwoods. Moral of the story: if more woodland owners take a proactive interest in their woodlands, and more foresters try to expand their scope to involve more local timber
businesses with their non-standard needs, not only will the woodland owners and foresters benefit, but so too will the local timber businesses alongside the long-term wellbeing of the woods themselves. Arwyn Morgan