Yesterday I was working at Lodge Copse on the Barlavington Estate. It’s always nice to be back there as I was heavily involved in its management for over ten years when I was ranger for the area. The Copse is largely managed by volunteers as a demonstration woodland, and I still give them a hand from time to time, especially when there are large or difficult trees to be felled. Scattered around the perimeter of the Copse are a number of Turkey Oak trees (Quercus cerris) and it is scheduled in the management plan to remove them all over a number of years. (See an earlier post on Turkey Oaks for the reasons for their removal).

I was tasked with taking down two of them yesterday. Both were big trees, but the second of the two was around 3ft in diameter at felling height, meaning that my qualifications and experience would be required to safely fell the trees. I was working with Ron (the lead volunteer for the Copse) who kept lookout and also manned the winch for me.

The first tree was fairly straight forward and only required wedges to help send it on its way down. Ron quickly set about snedding the stem while I prepared the second tree for felling.

Although the tree was fairly biased towards the intended direction of fall, I decided to set a winch line up in case the tree needed a bit of gentle encouragement to send it on its way.

In the event, the tree required no encouragement to fall and with a huge crash it fell exactly where intended.

You can see how big the second tree was from the photo above. My saw has an 18” bar fitted, and its not even placed across the middle of the stump! After taking this photo I set about counting the growth rings of the tree. It was 93 years old which sounds impressive. However, to put it into perspective, an English oak of the same diameter would be around 150 years old. It just goes to prove how fast growing Turkey oak is in comparison, and of course, the timber is nearly all sap wood and thus pretty useless.

So, another two Turkey oaks felled, but still plenty more to go. Just as we finished a Red Kite appeared soaring directly overhead, as if to give its seal of approval. Days in the woods don’t get much better than this!