A spot of coppicing

Along the side of the barn there is a row of willow trees. From what I can tell they are grey willow and frankly, they're not of a great deal of use. I'd coppiced a few of them last year and aside from some material to make dead hedges with and a small amount of thin firewood, it was a lot of work for little result.

They have grown back, though, not as vigorously as I might have expected but they put out about 8 feet of growth in a year. I was comparing them to osier, though, which is one of the fastest growers.

Anyway, the willows are underneath a power line and getting fairly close to it. Thought I'd neaten things up a bit so set to with the chainsaw and billhook:

 

 

The plan is to remove the new shoots from around the base of the trunks and end up with neatly pollarded trees. The regrowth from when they've been cut in the past is quite twisty and tangled in places plus it makes access down the side of the barn awkward when they come out low.

The poles were stacked up in my saw horse and cut to length. It's not big diameter stuff but burns really hot (when dry) and is good to get a fire going:

The saw horse (Oregon) makes it easy to cut lots of long bits to length at once:

 

With a bit of the leylandii thrown in for good measure that we had trimmed last week, it came to a reasonable volume and saves having to burn them on a bonfire:

Still not convinced it was worth the work but they needed doing and waste not want not!

 

See you next year!

The question remained of what to do with all the brash left over. It's very springy stuff and doesn't burn well when green as willow has one of the highest water contents but a few minutes with the saw horse and some sisal string made for some faggots. These can either be cut to length for burning in the log stove or used as the base of a future bonfire, maybe at the Summer solstice:

 

 

A friend of ours gave us an oil barrel that has been converted into a garden burner so we might burn the faggots in there to keep people warm for BBQs. Used a slip knot to secure the bundles so as they dry out I can tighten them up easily. I chose sisal as it's cheap and strong and safe to burn. Traditionally, they would have been tied with brambles and although we have plenty of those, I don't yet have a proper jig in which to make them with and bramble wouldn't take the strain. Some conservationists use them for reinforcing river banks but they take a long time to make (made 3 so far!) so not really a commercial proposition but I might make some enquiries if they fail to burn. There's still a large amount of brash left that needs dealing with - a tree surgeon would just chip it but I don't have a chipper and not worth hiring one in for such a relatively small amount.

 

Quite an industrious little setup!