Forest work in winter

I can’t tell you how happy I am to come indoors after my first day of work and almost impale myself on my secateurs.

Yep, they are back in the pocket after a long, long week of enforced indoor work. Utter bliss.

Apart from the yelp of shock when you sit on them.

I burst out the door at lunch and frolicked. Up to the potting shed to pester Artur, then armed with my largest loppers I went in search of quarry.

The snow hasn’t completely melted, so I chose some forest work to keep active and warm. I’m always in search of sticks for my chipper.

And I headed down the road to a very new spot on the farm. I can’t believe I’ve never been to this patch of forest in almost eight years.

Possibly because it is a thicket of growth in summer and I never pay attention in winter to what is actually there.

But I was hunting for long tall chestnut poles for the pool garden.

The pool actually.  The heavy snow is forcing the aluminium poles into wacky shapes. So we have decided to prop up the cover with proper poles. And for this pole that means chestnut.

Five metres of long staight tree? Not a problem. How many do you want?  I do love the water shoots from the pollarded chestnut trees.

I marked out the ones I wanted to cut down (Madame doesn’t do chain saws) and then spent a happy afternoon dragging out sticks and branches and taking them up to the stables.

I could have dragged the sticks up the hill, but I’d put all that work into digging the car out of the snow. It was time to give it a spin.

Chipping tomorrow. And if the snow keeps on melting, I might even be able to sow grass seeds.  Now where is my list?