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Once, I counted birds on a very remote and peopled atoll in the South Pacific.
Only a few feet above sea level, this special place was craned with life in every shape and colour.
All our busyness could be very easy to forget such places and their fate with rising seas.
Yet 10,000 miles away, it's funny how the wind in my forest sounds like this sea.
Connected, I think, each forest we tend, each small action we take.
I just wanted to know a little bit about what type of forestry work you would love to do.
What's your interest in forestry?
A continuous cover of forestry, close to nature approach to forestry, inspires me to get out and get involved with small woodland owners from establishment through to woodland owners like Paddy Wilkinson who years ago was told the only thing that would grow on the island is sicker spruce, plant sicker spruce and he now is restructuring that stamp.
And basically work with the dynamics of a forest system to work with people who are interested in re-establishing broadleafs throughout Ireland.
What sort of clients do you think you'll have or would you like to have?
Quirky ones, their neighbours are always looking over their heads, scratching their heads, those type of people are great and they're the people that move things on and who are willing to think outside the box and really actually people whose eyes aren't clouded over who can look around and see what works and what works very well.
I find those people inspiring and if I have something I can bring to the table and I can learn something off them, that's great.
Do you have something to bring to the table?
I do, I have a passion to bring to the table, I think I've learned a lot in Newton Rig, there are some aspects that I don't think are catered for at all for small woodland owners, things like zero impact extraction where you can go in and leave just your footprint for taking trees out and not always going with the option of heavy machinery going into an ecosystem.
Single tree selection, helping people understand what's going on even though a lot of people have maybe an emotional understanding of what's happening with their trees and in a forest to actually help them just hone a little.
Well I just want to know firstly what you hope to get from today's build trip.
Well I'm really looking forward to the trip today because I walk in these woods quite often with the dogs and I'm really just interested in seeing the different trees that will be left, trees that will be marked for removal and exactly how something like this is managed.
And do you have any way to practically apply what you're learning from here, have you woodland yourself or?
Well I've just bought 17 acres surrounding my house, it's very, it's good quality land, it hasn't had trees growing on it as such but there are some very nice old deciduous trees on the boundaries so I'm really hoping to plant probably maybe up to 7 acres with mixed planting but primarily broadleaf trees so I'm hoping that today will give me a feel of what that type of rock will entail.
Great.
Do you have woodland or do you have some trees yourself?
I don't, I'm living in an urban area, I'm living in a city and my interest is really stemming from a policy point of view primarily and I have planted woodland as well, some broadleaf woodland as a landscape gardener but also doing some forestry work so I really have an interest in this from more just from the policy side but also from the biodiversity side really.
Okay so what would you like to get out of the den yourself?
Really to learn about continuous cover of forestry, I mean all I know is the Irish experience which is large plantation, conifers forest.
And what would you like to learn from today?
What would you like to get out of the den?
Well just at the beginning of the year in January we planted about 300 or 400 trees, mostly oak and a few sweet chestnut that we kind of serendipitously bought from a friend who had been nurturing them, they were about 14 year old trees and he'd been hoping to plant them as a wood himself and when he found he couldn't we bought the trees from him.
So we've begun with that as the framework for a small woodland probably less than an acre and come the following winter we want to fill that area up and so I'd like to know a little about what species we should be looking for and having planted them how we should look to developing it so that it provides a real environment for creatures
and also something for all the people who live around about more of a woodland than what we have on the mountainside at the moment which is mainly I guess spruce.
So Martin you're the landowner here and I just wanted to know what you want from these woods, what kind of woods do you want to see it evolve into and what do you want to get from it?
Well mainly I want a meanity you know, a natural looking wood mainly broadleafs with some conifers, a nice mix basically and we really just want it to surpass with firewood and maybe the old tree if there's a really nice specimen tree but on the whole be firewood and you know wildlife basically.
If there's a really nice specimen tree to look at or for timber?
Well no even for furniture or something we know a lot of furniture makers and it would be lovely to have a tree that's one of our friends, our tree makes a piece of furniture half small or whatever but mainly it would be for amenity and wildlife and that kind of thing.
And do you envisage doing the work yourself or would you get someone in?
Mostly, you know if a lot of tinning needs to be done quickly then maybe I could get someone in like Chris but on the whole I'm trying to quite a lot for myself.
And how, you know you obviously quite like working in these woods, how is it for you working in the woods?
Yeah I just enjoy being there and you know being in the trees and you know trying to think about where I'm bringing in light and you know how it will develop in time you know.
And what would you like to get from today? What would you like to learn out of today?
You know what I should be concentrating on in the short term especially to get a nice mix and a growing forest you know with deciduous trees and how to go about that and how radical I need to be and you know do I have to take out 20% of everything or can I do it in a stage approach or that type of thing.
Alright.
We built our house a few years ago in a small woodland and quite a number of the trees had to be felled.
While we saved the cut trees as logs ran fire we often burnt the large amounts of branches trying to tidy it all up.
The spruce branches sent up massively the smoke.
We've since linked to mimic nature and managing our small woodland. Our branches now are left in heaps to decay and we leave our brambles too knowing they all contribute to our woodland's health.
Following close to nature instead of smoke we now have this.
Wow.
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