End the Winter Season with some Mowing in the Orchard

The Winter Season is when we do most of the conservation work on the Lynchmere Commons. The volunteer gang has worked hard this season and despite the near continual rain and snow we’ve been very busy. Now the nesting season is suddenly in full swing (as it’s not snowing this week) we can stand back and admire all of the cutting, felling, burning, thinning, scraping, digging,filming, laying, fencing and mending we’ve been doing but before we do there is just time to fit in a little mowing.

We planted a community orchard a couple of years ago in a sheltered corner of one of the Ridgecap fields that adjoin the commons. These fields are traditional hay meadows and pastures, once the mainstay of every small farm but now very rare and endangered. This is mainly because without being ploughed up and reseeded with modern varieties of grass, and with no fertilisers and pesticides being applied the yield (in terms of grass) is far too low to pay for the monster machinery that now populates our farms and countryside. Likewise we’ve planted up the orchard with traditional apple varieties from Sussex and surrounding counties, all on large and traditional half-standard sized rootstocks  rather than the higher yielding and smaller bush varieties.

The orchard is not grazed so we need to cut the grass by hand. Having been a rough corner of the meadow it’s a serious challenge and the first aim is to reduce the tussocks and remove the old thatch of dead plants ready for the new season.

With a little sunshine a tiny bit of coaching in technique with a scythe and a lot of enthusiasm it didn’t take long to get through the orchard – keeping the rakers busy. Andy is using one of my oversized hay rakes – it has a 32inch head,nearly 3 foot, and a 6ft handle which makes it harder to use but once you get used to it you cover a lot of ground. Both Andy and the rake seem to have survived the experience.

With a good turnout (a promise of free food and drink is always a good thing) we had upto 9 scythes out mowing, enough for a team, with several Austrian Scythes a couple of English Scythes and Nick joined us with his original ‘Turk Scythe’. These were first imported from Europe around the 1970′s when manufacture of English scythes stopped. Very light in comparison to the English Scythe. This one has a classic Austrian style blade that we often use today but the handle or snathe is very interesting with it’s straight shaft and fixed handgrips. Very light but only suited to one size of user.

I’m not sure that the scything and raking was the main attraction here, I rather think it was mainly just to work up an appetite for lunch! It was the last task of our winter work programme and so a bit of an end of term party as well as the nature of the work now changes through the summer season.

A good job done. A little bit of exercise, good company and a lunch in the orchard, a nice way to get some fresh air. Of course the job could have been done with a strimmer – but it’s really not so much fun to stand and watch a strimmer, you can’t rake the grass off afterwards and with 9 mowers on the task  it was a really quick (if not completely proficient) job.

I find it thought provoking to reflect upon which is really the most efficient way of working, one mower with a petrol strimmer for a dayor two, and Allen Scythe for a few hours or several mowers with scythes and a few rakers and forkers for a couple of hours? This blog isn’t really the best place for discussing this so I’m in the process of opening up a new site ‘The Scythe Grinders Arms‘ to host a wider discussion of environmental issues and my pet rants.

If you live in the Haslemere area and like the idea of working on the Lynchmere Commons and the meadows now and then why not join in with the Volunteer working tasks – you can get more information via the Lynchmerecommons blogsite.

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January means beanpoles and peasticks

I’ve been a little distracted of late and you will have noticed I’ve not been posting as much. Sadly my mother died suddenly just before Christmas and I’ve not had much time for posting on the blog as a result. Normal service will be resumed eventually and I will shortly post something appropriate, as if you ever received one of her hand crafted cards, you will know she was quite a talented caligrapher. Meanwhilst the seasons don’t wait and if I don’t get the birch cut soon it will be too late, particularly with the warm weather we’ve had.

On sunday we had a good sized group of Volunteers working on the commons and managed to clear through a patch of birch which yielded plenty of peasticks and few good beanpoles. I even managed to persuade our more enthusiastic burners not to burn them all.

We joined up with some of the Allotmenteers from the nearby Shottermill Ponds allotments so plenty of beanpoles and pea-sticks were taken away but there were still some left for me as well.

I particularly like this way of working on the heathland as it is a living landscape and this is the way it was created and has been managed as commonland for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Completely sustainable, it provides exercise and a sense of connection and continuity with the environment – and it might just have avoided the import of the odd bundle of bamboo or even worse, plastic poles. Not saved a shipload, or even a container load yet – but every little counts as they say!

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Cidermaking & A Community Pressing in Haslemere

‘Tis the season to be pressing; apples that is. Before we left for Gower I managed to press most of the apples that I’d gathered from our garden and scrumped from various friends and neighbours. These are quite early apples, Early Worcester, Bramley, Tom Putt and a fair few unknowns that all go into the cider. But most apples, especially those used for cider are ready later in the season and the main cider pressing season is only just about to start.

I pressed about 300kg of apples this year – good exercise – but if you only have a sack or so of apples and no mill(to tear up the apples) or press then the good news is that there is still a way for you to make cider. Community Pressings are becoming popular and they are a great recreation of the travelling presses and cider rings which used to operate in communities throughout Southern England where cider making has a history at least as long as that of beer.

The local (Blackdown – that’s the West Sussex Blackdown) National Trust team is holding a Community Pressing at their Swan Barn Farm headquarters behind Haslemere High Street (access from Collards Lane ) this Saturday 1st October  10:30 to 3pm so take along your unwanted sacks of apples and turn them into juice or ferment the juice on into cider!

The press used by the Trust is a vintage Sussex press from Gospel Green, at least 100 years old and superbly restored as is the scratter (or mill) you can see here in the foreground . I can claim to have had a hand in the restoration of the mill as it features two handles turned on my lathe. Photo courtesy of the Speckled Wood blog where you can find more details of the community pressing or contact the Trust at Swan Barn Farm.

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Looking for some old slag – at the Fernhurst Furnace

If you like some old slag then last weekend was your thing, at the annual Fernhurst Furnace Open Weekend. With a forecast for bad weather as the remnants of hurricane Katia lashed the country I wasn’t expecting much, but in the event, apart from the odd shower, we escaped the worst of it and the show went on. Sheltered in the woods on the track down to the site of the old Wealden Furnace I hardly noticed the wind.

Unlike many of the shows and events that I do, this one is not commercial, being primarily a small community based event and has another purpose, to raise awareness of the remains of the North Park Iron Works which operated  on the site for over 200 years.  One of dozens of Iron Furnaces in the Wealds of Sussex, they were eventually put out of business by the successful use of coke for smelting in the Ironbridge gorge, releasing the ironmasters from their dependance upon charcoal as a fuel source and allowing iron working to be concentrated on massive sites.

It’s hard to get a sense of the size, noise and activities of the iron workings from the remains on the site you can see today. Almost all of the Wealden Furnaces have disappeared leaving little trace which makes this site something special. The most obvious feature is the size of the furnace pond and it’s retaining bank, availability of water being one of the biggest restrictions on the Wealden sites. Below the sluice it is possible to make out the remains of the wheel pits, the casting floor, furnace base and the charging ramp. You can even just make out the remains of the casting pit for the naval cannon that were made on the site.

This model gives a better feel for the scale of the buildings in the photo you can see the actual wheel pits and stream just to the right of the one in the model. You can learn more of the history of the site at the furnace website.

The iron industry in the Weald existed from Roman times (and probably well before that) but as the industry in the north of England scaled up in the 18th Century the Wealden Ironmasters were forced to rely upon their iron making and casting skills to compete. As well as making ‘pig’ or lump iron for the hammer forge at Pophole on the nearby Wey the furnace cast cannon for the Navy.  This cannon is a good example of the type that would have produced by the Wealden furnaces (though this one is not from this furnace).

The two sites, furnace and forge needed to be separate because of the restricted supply of water (power) and charcoal (fuel). This cannon ball was found in the grounds of a cottage close to the hammer forge at Pophole on the Wey and was most likely cast from pig iron smelted at the furnace 2 miles away.

Making iron from the ore requires a lot of heat, fuel and plenty of power on hand so we weren’t able to demonstrate it over the Weekend. But Fergus and Penny from nearby Butser Ancient Farm did take us right back to the start of the technology by demonstrating how to smelt copper from ore, very much the same principles which were refined (pun entirely intended) to smelt iron.

Fergus used Malachite which is a very rich copper ore, copper carbonate, the oxide of copper giving the mineral it’s characteristic green colour.

To turn the green malachite into copper the temperature in the clay furnace needs to reach almost 1400 degrees centigrade which is achieved using good quality lumpwood charcoal and plenty of air blown through the fire from the hand powered leather bellows.

The green tinge of the flame indicates that the furnace is reaching the right temperature and the copper in the malachite is being released. This happens as the charcoal creates a reducing action by burning and producing carbon monoxide that then steals oxygen from the copper oxide to make copper.

At the end of the process the crucible containing the molten copper and remains of the malachite mixed with some charcoal is removed from the furnace to pour into moulds.

Though in this case the copper pulled a disappearing stunt and flowed to the base of the crucible where it stuck fast until cooled and released by Fergus – though it does look more spectacular in this shape and contrasts with the original green of the malachite.

I was impressed that you can produce your own metal with some clay, charcoal, a pair of bellows and some ore. You really could try this at home. Though it might be better to try it with Butser ancient farm first and you can find out more about their courses including Fergus’ metal making on their Butser Ancient Farm website .

The title of this post is a shameful attempt to attract hits and maybe even readers via the search engines, though whether they will be impressed with my old slag is doubtful. Given the centuries of iron working at the site, and at nearby Pophole hammer forge, slag tends to turn up all over the place and would have been used to fill in the notoriously poor Sussex roads, but I found my old slag in the end and a fine example it is too. I shall have to leave the rest of the weekend to another post.

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2011 Fernhurst Furnace Open Weekend – September 10th – 11th

If you fancy a visit to the site of the medieval  North Park Iron Works near Fernhurst (that’s in West Sussex, close to Haslemere in case you are wondering) – it’s the annual open weekend on the 10th and 11th September. I will be there with my lathe and shavehorse as will friends making besom brooms, blacksmithing, smelting bronze (or is it copper), burning charcoal and there will be plenty of refreshments on hand. Not forgetting the highlight of the event the Sealed Knot civil war reenactors. More (and probably more accurate details) from the flyer below or the furnace website at http://www.fernhurstfurnace.co.uk/

Poster-2011 – pdf flyer for the event this weekend

Look forward to seeing you there!

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Putting in the BenchMark

The day arrives to install the green Oak (and Sweet Chestnut) bench I’ve christened the BenchMark. I designed and made it using local timber I’ve milled up with my Logosol chainsaw mill. It’s begun to lurk in the yard so it’s time to attach it to another Landrover for the short drive up the road to the Parish Church where it’s going to be installed at the bottom of the Churchyard.

The site selected for the bench is at the wild flower end of the churchyard with great views. I think the bench will fit in very well here and I hope the customers will be happy with it!  The first job is to dig out the holes for the legs – as it’s a two leg design and I’m a bit concerned about the load it will need to take the legs are going in deep. Alison highjacked my camera at this point – you may notice an improvement in the quality of the photography.

I had some second thoughts about digging deep holes in the churchyard, I mean over a thousand odd years who knows whats where? But luckily this section was until recently a part of the adjacent field. Richard helping me out, wasn’t quite so certain though! But all we found was the natural Greensand bedrock of the area.

On the sloping site it took some trial and error to get the lie of the bench just right as the site slopes in two directions but we got there.

Job done. Time to give it a good test drive. Very comfortable even if I do say so myself. I’ve made the back rest from an oak board which has warped to give it a natural curve, always a risk, but in this case it fits the back very well.

Michael and Anne Tibbs (who ordered the bench on behalf of the church) joined us and gave it the seal of approval. They were very keen to have a bench designed and made locally with local sustainable timber, and extremely patient as I had to fit the work in around other commitments. So  I am delighted that they like it so much.

At this time of year the churchyard is a quiet haven and a riot of wildlife as much its been managed as a wildflower meadow and I think it’s beginning to pay off and the results speak for themselves.

Though I think these might be garden escapes rather than wildflowers but the bees and butterflies were enjoying them just the same.

The view from the bench looks out from the churchyard over the local folds and through the Weald towards the South Downs in the distance. I’m looking forward to coming up here to check on the bench and enjoy the view on regular occasions.

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Raising the Frame at Speckled Wood

Last week the Blackdown National Trust Team reached a significant milestone with their new build project at Swan Barn farm. The farm is the base for the NT team and although its only a few hundred yards, or a few minute walk, behind Haslemere high street it seems miles away.

The new building is not being built in the simplest or easiest way. Almost all of the materials will be sourced within the farm or locally. The design and construction of the house is being led by our local roundwood cruck framed timber expert Ben Law – who you may remember from the ever popular ‘Grand Designs’ TV programme which featured his original house in the woods.

The timbers for the Speckled Wood building have been cut in the woods surrounding the farm by the team, Dave, Spike, Matt and Catherine and transported to the site where the cruck frames have been prepared by Ben Law and his crew ready to be raised into position.

With a cruck framed building the transformation from a pile of timbers lying messily on the ground to a recognisable building is almost instantaneous. Here the first frame is winched up slowly with the end of the ridge pole sitting in the cruck.

One of the great things about these buildings is their individuality. Unlike a modern timber framed house designed to be built bit by bit from mass produced components the cruck frame is a complete skeleton upon which the house will be hung. Inevitably each building is different and has it’s own set of problems to be solved. I was lucky enough to arrive before the first frame was lifted and to appreciate how calmly the team solved each problem and moved onwards.

With the first frame almost in position I had to leave to prepare some scythe blades for a course at the Weald and Downland Museum the following day. But if you are interested you can follow the build at the National Trust’s Speckled Wood blog here.

As I left I looked back at the first frame in place next to the existing barn which is used as a base camp for volunteers on working holidays. The cruck frame looks entirely appropriate and this return to an ancient form of building structure also signals the start of a project at Swan Barn Farm which will hugely reduce the carbon footprint as well as increase the use of local materials. I’ll be looking in at the farm from time to time to see how things are going – when I have a moment spare that is!

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Bluebells and Charcoal Burn – the ring of fire

The bluebells are coming on strongly in our restored Hazel Coppice (better than the Hazel unfortunately) and I stopped to take some photos on my way to make charcoal yesterday. It’s hard to capture the delicate colours and the sun was a little too weak to do justice but you get the idea, I hope.

The burn in my oil drums went well, no great surprise as the weather is perfect for it. With the long dry and warm spell having reduced the moisture in the wood significantly the burn is shorter and the yield is higher.

One drum burnt a lot slower than the others and getting bored with waiting I turned the heat up (opened up the vents around the bottom) and with the top shut down it produced an almost perfect ring of fire as the volatile woodgases were burnt off.

Very pretty to see – don’t try this at home. No really – to get the ring effect I shut the top of the drum down for a short time which suppresses the fire and the gases are collecting unburnt. Then on opening the top the gases mix with more oxygen and leap from the drum. Worthwhile wearing a helmet and gloves unless you like the singed eyebrow effect.  But it’s all wasted heat which would be better used in the burn – I need to move to a simple retort system in which the wood is baked in an oven and the gases are used to help improve the burn. But that’s another project!

Alright I admit it. This post is just an excuse to mix the photos of the bluebells with the flames – and I like the effect of the two very different textures and colours.

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Glorious Sunset – a good start to the season

 

It is hard to remember just how cold it got during the depths of winter during the warm spell of spring weather we’ve been having for the last few days. Tractors are all very well, but I do end up with one or more in the wrong place and walking across the commons to fetch it – but the sunset last night was a suitable recompense.

 

I notice the warm sunny weather improves my spirits and I am getting more done during the daylight. Besides walking is good for me and I don’t get to do as much of it for pleasure now I work in the woods as when I worked in an office (but I also don’t have to walk along pavements much either). I’m sure that we will return to the cold and the wet soon enough, we could do with a drop of it now, but I will make the most of the weather whilst I can.

 

The first show of the season went well and thanks to an unusual bout of preparation I had a suitably mothers day friendly range of turned and coppice products – though I can’t say I approve entirely of making products to suit a marketing fad.

In a fit of Spring Cleaning on this site I’ve updated the list of shows, events and courses for this season you can find it on the Show tab above this page or click here if you want.

I hope you are enjoying the weather, wet or dry, cold or warm, wherever you are and enjoy the coming season!

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Posts, planks and boards – the Logosol mills again

 

I don’t very often use my Logosol chainsaw mill in its full configuration which can cope with logs upto 17feet in length – if you can shift them onto the mill! I normally convert it to a cut down version (known as the woodworkers mill) which has a 4 foot log bed and copes with logs upto 8ft in length. But for this job I wanted some 10ft fence posts as well as 8ft planks and boards.

 

The mill doesn’t come with it’s own tractor, you have to buy that separately. For large logs like these it does make things a lot simpler (and safer) than winching and rolling the logs up ramps onto the log bed.

The tree is a windblown scots pine.  Not being valued for firewood all to often softwood trees like this are left to rot on the woodland floor. We prefer to ship our softwood halfway around the world instead. That’s a total waste of resource, and there really are only so many rotten trees needed as wildlife habitats, to leave more to rot while we import our timber is just a flagrant waste of resources.

To hire in a mobile sawmill  is going to cost a lot of cash, maybe 300 or 400 pounds for the day depending upon who you know. It still makes sense if you are milling up oak for a greenwood frame but softwood is inherently less valuable and you’d need to make a lot of planks to justify hiring in a mobile mill?

 

That’s where the chainsaw mill does come into it’s own. It costs a lot less than a bandsaw mill and can be easily disassembled and stored in a corner when its not in use, so it’s less of a security and parking issue as well. It’s never going to be as quick and efficient as a bandsaw but it doesn’t need to be as it can be used for lots of small jobs in difficult to access areas with timber that otherwise will be wasted. The logosol mill is much more than a simple adaptor for a chain saw with an fully height adjustable log bed capable of taking logs upto 500kg. The quarter inch kerf on the chainsaw ripping chain produces a third less waste (and effort) than a normal saw making the conversion of a large log into posts, boards and planks a pleasure. Are you getting the message that I am converted yet?

On my earlier visit to lop off the top and prepare it for planking I seriously underestimated the size of the tree, thinking it around 2ft at the base, but in fact it’s closer to 30 inches in diameter at the butt.

At a rough estimate with a diameter of 25inches at breast height (dBH is the normal measure of timber) the tree has a volume of about 3.5 Cu M and will yield about 3 tonnes of wet timber, about 1.5tonnes when dried – all based upon assumptions of the volume, density and moisture content of the tree. I’m probably being conservative with these figures, but however you put it – that’s a lot of timber.

 

I estimate this 10ft log weighs in at around 400kg on its own and is destined to be turned into fence posts. I start by taking slices off the top of the log. These ‘waney edged’ boards are not waste and all get used used for cladding and weatherboarding. The rustic nature of the edges makes them more popular than squared off boards – and fewer cuts means less effort!

I’ve missed out a couple of photos in the sequence (I got a bit carried away) and to get to this stage, once the log has a straight top I rotate it through 90 degrees and repeat the process for another side until 3 or all 4 sides are squared up and the log becomes a beam. Taking care with measurements at this stage means that less of the timber will be wasted in offcuts. The beam is then sawn down in 4inch lumps (heavy!) of stock which sit on the rails awaiting resawing.

 

The final stage is to resaw the 4 inch stock again to produce the final 4×4 timbers. The same process if followed for 3inch, 2inch or 1inch stock, whatever dimensions of wood you need. Though it doesn’t make much sense to make smaller timber this way – it’s much easier to make 2inch stock and then resaw on a circular saw or bandsaw in the workshop.

This log made 9 4×4 timbers and several waney edged planks.  Having been windblown for some months I was nervous that the timber might have started to rot 0r that I might meet my longhorn beetle friends again, but in the event the quality of the wood was superb.

The pile of waste from the day’s work is small, as much a testament to the quality of the tree that was going to waste as the competence of the sawyer.

Moving the Logosol mill to the wood is the easy bit. Moving the sawn timber is easier than moving enormous logs but the product from the day still weighs in at well over a tonne so you won’t be able to put it on the roof of your mini. It will weigh a lot less once it’s seasoned, but this timber is going to be used externally so seasoning isn’t part of the plan.

I have to admit that in the one day only just over half the tree was milled up. So hopefully I will be back for the rest before it becomes useless, but finding time is always a problem. Mind you it’s a full trailer load so the next batch will have to wait.  There is one more job to do with the mill before I disassemble it again so it gets a ride to the next site, but that will be another day.

 

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