Gobions Workparty Sunday 7 December 2003

More rain for the last two weeks - making it dangerous, both for the environment and for us, to contemplate any work.

So it was good to be back out there again this week, starting to coppice the old hazel boundary trees at the south end of the West Path. These have not been touched in living memory, but when they are cut, they will provide a foundation from which new shoots will grow. These shoots will be usable whips inside three years and staves a couple of years further on. Ideally, this wood should be coppiced every 7 to 10 years. If you look at where we have cut, you will see that the inner wood was starting to rot, and the tree would have eventually died. Now new shoots will grow from the ring of live wood left.