Farm life

Chickens have a large field of vision

Left, the finished product - all your hard work is rewarded when your end result looks like this!

HAZEL COPPICING

A FEW YEARS AGO WE DECIDED TO HAVE A HAZEL FENCE, OR AS IT IS SOMETIMES KNOWN, A HURDLE FENCE

I had seen them all over the place regenerate from the cut base, or stool, throughout the years, and with a long with lots of long shoots. Also coppicing string of hazel trees along one of our prevents trees from maturing, so it can boundaries which needed to be coppiced, I also lengthen their lifespan. There is a thought, “I'll have a go at that!” lime tree at Westonbirt Arboretum in We have had a lot of people comment on the end result, and it cost us nothing but a bit of hard work. As one friend once said to me, “Cutting trees keeps you warm twice; the cutting and then the burning.” The hazels are fast growing and were taking over the area. The fence placed there previously gave a good barrier that Gloucestershire www.forestryengland.uk/ westonbirt-the-national-arboretum which is thought to be 2,000 years old, thanks to coppicing. The tradition of coppicing goes back thousands of years. Wooden walkways dating from the Bronze Age, such as the Sweet Track in Somerset, have been found to contain coppiced wood. plants could grow up, and livestock could Coppiced wood was traditionally used for be kept in. We learnt from the experience, fuel, basketry materials, fencing, hurdles, and there are a few things I would change, building materials, broom and tool such as leaving a larger gap at the bottom handles. Ash was particularly used for for wildlife to get under it, as I am not sure handles while sweet chestnut makes for our big fat hedgehogs can squeeze under. good fencing material and flexible willow So What Is Coppicing? Coppicing involves cutting a tree down to within 15cm (6 inches) of the ground. Cuts can be made with pruning saws or for excellent baskets. Faggots (bunches of branches) were also stored as winter fodder for livestock, also known as tree hay. chainsaws and should leave a clean stump Coppicing fell into decline in the mid-20th with no tears in the bark. century as fossil fuels took over. It is also Types of tree which can be coppiced include hazel (Corylus avellana), sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), lime (Tilia species), oak (Quercus), sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) and willow (Salix species.) To establish a new coppice, plant bare root whips at 1.5 to 2.5m spacings. These need to be cut down after about 5 years to encourage the stool to develop. It may seem drastic, but the tree will come back to life in spring and the regrowth can be surprisingly rapid. It is not unknown for willow to grow 4m in a season! labour intensive, so expensive to carry out. Abandoned coppice woodlands can be recognised by the multiple thick stems growing from stools, sometimes fused together. The practice has enjoyed a revival in recent decades as a conservation practice, due to the biodiversity benefits of opening up the woodland floor. The added light allows other plants to flourish, which encourages butterflies and dormice, which we have noticed, as we found a dormouse nest hanging from a stem in our maize crop. The practice has enjoyed a revival in recent decades as a conservation practice So now is just the right time to start coppicing your trees - no nesting birds, and the tree is as such shutting down for the winter. Winter or early spring are preferred while the sap is down, so there's not much bleeding or infection from the cuts, and not much stored energy wasted. It's also easier to see what you’re doing with no leaves on the tree, and any nuts have been harvested. In times gone by, a popular reason for doing this now was the availability of labour - most rural workers were needed for other farm work in the summer. Another was to do with the durability of the produce - winter felled wood is less likely to be eaten by microbes. Coppicing is a traditional way to produce useful wooden poles. With hazel they are How to Manage Coppicing Coppiced woods are usually divided into units, or coupes, which are cut on a cycle. This means that the wood in each coupe is at a different stage of regeneration. For example, on an 8-year cycle, you could divide the wood into 8 coupes and carry out coppicing every winter. We are now doing our row every few years to keep it under control and the resulting wood is used for all sorts of things around the farm. The period the poles are left to grow between cutting then depends on the species and products required. Material is usually allowed to grow for 7-15 years, with larger timber resulting from longer growing periods. Great if you have a log burner! long and straight, great for staking garden Coppiced hazel (Corylus avellana) has plants. Coppicing takes advantage of the been valued for centuries for the long, ability of some trees to naturally straight stems that grow in response to a

By Karen Luff

Karen with her husband John followed their dream and moved to Le Chataignier, a 400 year old house in the beautiful Mayenne region of France, with their five year old son. Over 14 years later they have established a smallholding on the site.

hard prune. Today, with local or homegrown products increasingly popular, these provide perfect plant supports for beans and other herbaceous climbers in place of imported bamboo, as well as being used for fencing hurdles. They have a broad, open habit, with branches carrying leaves in airy, horizontal layers. They also look beautifully ornamental in spring with long male catkins on the bare stems. When tackling a hazel, remove branches in stages. Take out the outer stems first and work your way into the centre of the stool. It’s easier to get a good clean stool once you have cut stems down to around 30cm. The end result should be no more than 5cm above the ground. A lot of energy goes into new growth. Use a sharp saw to cut the larger branches to ensure a clean cut.

Planting a Hazel Coppice

A hazel coppice is harvested on a 7-10 year cycle, so if you wish to harvest poles of the usual size every year you will need at least 7 trees. You could harvest more frequently for slimmer rods, for example if you wished to weave without splitting the rods. Plant trees around 2.5m apart. Coppiced trees too widely spaced, without enough canopy cover, can result in branching curved stems of varying size, rather than the desirable straight, uniform poles.

Restoring a Neglected Coppice

If you have some neglected Hazel coppice that has not been cut for decades like we had, cut all stems as close to the ground as possible - you are likely to need a chain saw for this job. The idea is to encourage new shoots to grow at ground level and develop their own root systems, reducing the risk of instability and base rot. Make sure all the poles are felled in the same direction, slightly sloping away from the centre of the stool. If you need to cut higher you can trim the stem back afterwards. After all of this hard work, we used the chainsaw and cut the thicker poles into a point and got them in the ground. The thinner longer rods we wove, back and forth in the same way as weaving and used the back of an axe to push them down. The resulting fence is wonderful and as I say people often comment on how nice it is. We will do it again as it's worked so well, and has seasoned and looks even better after just a few years.