Owning a Woodland: Day 1 to Day 365 - An amazing experience

just over a year ago I purchased my very own small Woodlands here in the UK it's something I've been wanting to do for over 10 years now ever since I've been running a YouTube channel that focuses on Bushcraft and survival and camping and just general outdoor things in the past I'd always had permission from landowners to be able to use their Woodlands for these sorts of things even though these are fantastic woodlands and I still have access to them I just never quite felt 100 comfortable whilst doing the Bushcraft and general videos there and so for the last six years I'd had enough money saved up to purchase my own small Woodland here in the UK and the reason it took me so long is because despite the fact that Woodlands were widely available most of them were either on a really steep slope or they were near a really fast Road and because I do filming these things were important to me that it needed to be on a relatively relatively flat land but also not be near a fast where there was tons of noise that the camera would then pick up and so I was patient and I waited and eventually I stumbled across this small Woodland here in the south of the UK which has a perfect mixture of beach Ash Oak Hazel and a few more trees and shrubs as well as the ground floor bluebells wooden enemy wild garlic and it constantly changes throughout the year I've been doing Bushcraft and outdoor survival skills for most of my life really um but this was a journey that's something totally different this was more about being a steward of a piece of land because this Woodland is going to be here way after I'm gone and I feel like it's almost my duty to be able to look after it and care for it in a way that helps to benefit the future of the Woodland and to try and protect it and so over the past year I've been on this journey into Woodland management which has shown me totally new skills and given me a different understanding of woodlands and forests and how they actually work and contribute towards nature and biodiversity one of the first things I did when I purchased the Woodland was to take a walk around I bought my dog Jax and I came on a lovely autumn day and we just walked around the woods I looked at the trees I tried to document what species of trees I had how many of them the various conditions of some of them and being winter it was easy to see which ones were quite damaged and maybe needed management managing but also to gauge the boundaries and the state of the boundaries which were in a bit of disrepair at the time and it was just dilapidated barbed wire fence that divided My Woodland with the surrounding and neighboring Fields during that time it helped me reflect on how far I'd actually come in my life and career throughout YouTube and the journey I'd taken from going as a an ex-teacher to being able to purchase a small piece of Woodland to manage in the UK and it made me realize how fortunate I am to have people like yourselves watching the videos and helping to support that Journey along the way and for that I'll always be really grateful once I'd got a good idea of the Woodland itself and the layout of the land I then put together a management plan for the following year and potential five years in the future I just roughly wrote this out on a piece of paper and did it in much more detail once I got home but essentially I wanted to help rejuvenate the woodlands and do various traditional Woodland crafts along the way and help promote some of these traditional crafts and Woodland management practices to you guys and to help keep that knowledge going and keep it alive once I'd formulated a management plan I then came out with some trail cameras some Wildlife cameras because I'd known about the tree species and the various Flora that was around but I had no idea of what actual fauna what animals and birds occupied this Woodland and so I put various trail cameras around the Woodland and I left them up from months on end and it was really nice to see how rich the wildlife was here with roe deer Munchak deer Badger Fox hair Tony owls buzzards there was just so much Wildlife that I hadn't been able to see on the days that I came here at daylight but at night and obviously on times when no one was here in the Woodlands all the the whole Woodland just came alive and that was really amazing to see and I'm really pleased that I I did get those cameras and I put them around and I moved them around various different places it gave me a really good understanding of how other animals are using the woodlands there are a few really old oak trees here that marked a pretty old boundary and some of them had Ivy growing up them and I know Ivy is is really beneficial to species such as bees because they have berries almost throughout the year and long into winter there's some of these oak trees are really really old and they actually help to contribute to thousands of different species and so I did take the remove the ivy of some of them not all of them but just to help prolong the life of the oak tree more so because the ivy wasn't actually killing the oak tree itself but it's where they were facing strong winds The Ivy acts as like a canopy because the tree although it sheds its leaves it then has the ivy still there which catches all the wind and it can actually make some of the older trees blow over after a few weeks had gone I then just decided it was time to spend the first night here in the woodlands and so I brought my canvas lavu tent and a wood stove and it was deep into Autumn at the time and it was so so nice to be able to do the first ever camping trip here and I'll put a link to that video in the in the description box below but it allowed me to spend not only spend a peaceful night camping which I absolutely love anyway it just allowed me to experience the Woodland at dawn at dusk at night time and hear all the various animals that were coming out I could hear the Tawny owls I could hear the deer crunching on the leaves and it was just a really nice experience and it's hopefully one of many different camping experiences that I can have here throughout the years especially once I bring my family along once the kids are a little bit older it was actually just this spot here just behind me that I set up the camp it's in one of my favorite areas of the Woodland which is the beach area there's really not much growing on the floor so it's really nice for camping but at the same time at that time at that particular time of year all of the leaves in the canopy were oranges and yellows and reds and the uh it was just casting an incredible color across the Woodland not only did it make it great for filming but it made for a really nice camping experience and I'm always aware with Beech trees that they can drop their branches all of a sudden and it can be quite dangerous but I made sure to look up for any potential dangerous branches and overhanging branches and I pitched my tent in an area that was clear of those but it was an amazing night and I still come back to this particular area of the road and really regularly and it's something that I've not touched at all in terms of management practices I've just left it as it is and it's not changed much really because there's so much cover from the trees that are blocking the light in the ground there's not much kind of change here so there's I feel there's no point in me doing any management really here and so it's nice because this is a part of the Woodland that's never really going to change it was also the main part of the reason that I bought this Woodland in the first place was this incredible stretch of Beach I'm a massive fan of beach woodlands and the mixture of Oak and Ash with it as well just it's just yeah it's really really good and um I do this is probably one of my favorite places in the Woodland too foreign General outdoor skills was good my actual knowledge of Woodland management and Forestry practices was actually really minimal and so I got in touch with a friend of Michael Ryan he's a tree surgeon or an arborist and he does this day in day out he manages Woodlands he manages trees for people uh he's very good with a chainsaw and so he came out and he did a recce and he walks the Woodland with me and we chose various trees that looked precarious a few of them were dead standing Beech trees which could have been quite dangerous and full and there was also this oak tree here next to me which is lovely and straight but it was actually hung up diagonally in some other oak trees nearby and it was across the path that I normally walk up in and so it had to come down and it was really interesting to learn from Ryan the different techniques that he uses with the different chainsaws he had a small one and then he had a larger one and it was just really good to watch him in his element and seeing a professional just make such easy work of it but it was really good to have Ryan pass on that knowledge in the episodes again I'll link them below and it was something that was new to me to be honest I didn't have the expertise with chainsaws and climbing trees and so it was something that was beyond my skill set but it is something I'd like to learn down the line and I will go on courses and get the best practices in and up my skills where I can so that I can do some of these things myself as for the oak tree here I decided to leave it as it is at the moment and Ryan suggested we put some of the cut top sections of it underneath before we fell it so that it stays up off the ground and it doesn't break down as fast and that way if I need to use any of this wood for various projects um we can still cut it up with a chainsaw and it will be less rotten than if it was on the floor there are some other smaller sections of it too but I'm not sure what to do with them yet whether to use them for a bit of firewood or some other wood carving projects so many of you recognize this large tree stump behind me and it's actually what I call the giant ash tree which is a very big feature of the Woodland it was something that stood out as soon as I walked in here I could see it stretching all the way across this part of the Woodland and it had taken out some large Hazel trees and some other large ash trees as well it was already here blown over by the time I purchased a woodland so I wasn't sure how long it had been there and I wasn't sure how usable any of the wood would be so to begin with I did things slowly and I just trimmed off some of the tips of the branches that I could do with the small chainsaw that I had and I began to stack those as firewood ready for The Following Season or two seasons this was probably the first bit of management that I've actually done myself and started myself and I put up a temporary tarp and kind of miniature Bushcraft Camp as an area where I could stop have tea and lunch in between doing the forestry work but it was a really rewarding time because there was no pressure on having to do anything there was no time constraints it was just me in the Woodlands doing forestry things and not having to think about too much which is really nice in this day and age where life is all about rushing and how fast you can get things done for me it was just being in the moment and just enjoying time here in the woods if I'm honest I was really into Minds about what to do with this ash tree I didn't know whether to leave it here as a natural feature of the Woodland because it did look so Majestic and I actually did leave it here for many weeks throughout the snow and the rain and I still didn't know what to do and I asked some of you what you would do and a lot of you said to do something with it make some use of the wood because it is off the ground it's not directly on the ground most of the trunk and so it wouldn't have decayed as fast as it would have if it was entirely on the ground and so I stood on that for a few weeks and I eventually came to the conclusion that it would be nice to do something with the wood and obviously I have that other oak tree that would contribute to biodiversity and the other trees that the ash tree had taken out would rot away and contribute to biodiversity for the invertebrates on the floor and the fungi so I spoke to Ryan again and he came over this time with his Milling chainsaw and he taught me various skills and tricks on what to do with that and we milled the trunks up we cut them into three large sections and we milled them into two inch planks one to two inch planks and then I stacked them and placed the spaces under each one so that the airflow could get through them and they could dry much more evenly and they wouldn't hold water this took probably just over a day day and a half and it was the first proper bit of management that I'd done here in the Woodlands or at least Ryan had done once the planks have been milled up Ryan then showed me how he could make various four by four inch posts from one of the trunk sections and this was something I'd never seen done before certainly with a chainsaw and I've still got those posts and I've used them for various projects and I do plan to use them in the future not just here in the Woodland but back home as well for various Woodland projects and craft stuff but I do have to admit that once the tree was gone and the I could see the bare ground a part of me did miss it and there was a little bit of regret at the time thinking you know what what the Woodland looks so different I think that's what it was it was so suddenly so much more open and I wasn't quite used to that because this tree was such a big feature and so yeah part of me did regret that but early on before Ryan had milled the tree up I did make a small coffee scoop I carved a small coffee Scoop from one of the tips of the branches which I still use to this day and that moment made me realize that it was the right choice because this large root section here is still a lovely feature and it will always be here and it will rot down over the years but it's also serving as a reminder as to the Magnificent ash tree that was here and it really was probably the biggest ash tree that I had certainly seen I didn't get it aged but we tried to count some of the Rings and it was probably I think 89 or 90 years old so it was really impressive to see something like that just to shame it blown down in the wind sadly all the ash trees here are affected by Ash dieback and they're starting the tips are starting to die they're starting to blister and burst in the bark and these will come down naturally in the winds and the storms that we have each year but again another management Choice was whether to cut them down and just use the wood straight away or to let them go naturally and because of what we did to this tree I decided certainly for this past year or the first year of owning the Woodland to just leave these trees be and if they fall down they fall down and then it was onto what we decided to do with the wood that had been made and milled up and so we come to probably the most significant part of the Woodland management that I did and I decided to use the ash blanks pretty much straight away after they'd been milled because they were in good condition they dried out I think I left them maybe maybe four weeks to six weeks but I wanted to do a project with Dad and Father and Son projects again like we did with the pallet wood cabin and we decided to make this Woodland storage it's a storage shelter really I made the foundation from some of the 4x4 Ash posts that Ryan had milled up and I put it on some logs as well and raised it up off the ground so that that Foundation could last for as long as possible and then we just built up and we we kept it as pretty much a square structure with a relatively flat roof that was slightly angled because once we put this ash cladding on that I realized I'd made the right decision with using the wood straight away and it looked absolutely incredible I built it in an area of the woodlands that really minimized the impact on nature it's right here in the corner by a field it overlooks the the beach section and there's the carpets of wild garlic and Bluebell out in front of it and there's dotted Hazel trees just surrounding it and it's a really really peaceful area and I try to yeah minimize the impact on the wooden Itself by keeping it pretty small and building it here in the corner so I store all the tools in here the wheelbarrows lots of firewood as well and just general any wooden projects that I've been doing my store in here because to be honest it was a really enjoyable time to do another project with dad even though some of it was quite hard work it was good fun and we're really pleased with the overall finished project the actual build projects itself took us a few months because in between I was doing other filming work it wasn't just up here it was in different Woodlands at the time and so we took our time making it and it probably could have been built a lot quicker but we like I say we were pleased with the outcome and now we can just come here and use it and just enjoy looking at what we'd created and the ash tree lives on and you can see it's really got a patina on it now that's kind of Blends in a lot more with the Woodland it's a lot less bright than when we put the cladding on and we didn't put any coating on it we just left it as it is and we probably will just leave it as it is and eventually it'll all rot Back To Nature but something we're proud of and yeah yeah it's a it's one to be proud of another job I did that winter because the sap wasn't Rising was some copacing and I only did this on small scale and I put it in my management plan that I only wanted to do it in small segments so as not to massively affect the biodiversity of the Woodland rather than clear fell lots of Hazel and had it as a as a kind of proper big copis I wanted to be able to keep that biodiversity level going and not affect nature and too much and just work around it and alongside it as opposed to trying to just fight it and dominate and so the new shoots started to come through that following spring and they will continue to come up now and grow quite fast as they get more like this one here doesn't get too much light because we're the actual wooden storage shelter is but the other ones that we did have had plenty of light and they're growing really well now the the small whips are pretty much a meter long more than the meter long and we're coming into the second year now of growth and in about three years four more years they'll be ready to use for hazel hurdles and other traditional wooden craft projects and Bushcraft things so for me I enjoyed this part a lot because it's about creating a renewable resource and this is where Woodland management comes into its own and links in with Bushcraft because I'm helping to create a resource for the future of the woodlands as opposed to just letting the trees grow wild and fall down and break and then the stall itself breaks apart and it then doesn't regrow I'm trying to promote that new growth so as to use some of those resources in three to four years time for various projects and then continue to do that on other coppist areas of Hazel and then hopefully I should have a really nice balance of resources that I can use and the Woodland management side of things has that lovely cycle and that was one of my goals and then once the Woodland shelter projects had been finished it was still winter time the sap wasn't Rising yet and I learned that most of the Woodland management practices that you do with forestry and things all tends to be in Winter because the trees are dormant all the sap isn't Rising there's no kind of leaves coming out you're not affecting the actual progression of nature too much you're you're working with it and so that's when it's a really busy time and I realized this as I was doing these various management practices that winter is actually a really busy time for the jobs that you can do in a woodland and so the next thing that I went down the root of was traditional Hedge Lane because although it's not often seen in Woodlands it's mostly done on fields there's two boundaries the East the the northern and the Eastern boundaries of my Woodland are adjacent to a field and there are sheep in this field and it's a beautiful view but sometimes the Sheep will get through the electric small electric wire fence that they have they'll trample it over and then they'll just walk through the Woodland and whilst I don't mind that really at all it's part of nature at the same time further into the spring all the blue bells and the natural Flora that have been here for hundreds of years will get trampled by the sheep and it will definitely have an impact on the layout of the land and so the boundary itself was also a bit of a mess like I say there was a dilapidated piece of barbed wire which we needed to keep because that was what's down in the deeds and the legal documents as the boundary is is the bath wire but it was kind of all over the place and so I met up with the field owner and we both walked to the boundary together and decided you know the right place to put the barbed wire and keep the traditional all boundary that was there and we agreed that I could help clear the boundary of all my trees that were either hanging in the branches that were overhanging and that's when I started to do the traditional Hedge Lane techniques using hand tools where possible and to pass on some of that knowledge to you guys as I learned here and over that past year it was really nice to see how much progress it had made I felt like the the stakes and the Weavers and the binders like you see at the top here kind of give a really nice aesthetic look to the boundary without it looking too much like a man-made fence it's a much more natural one but to be able to see the new growth come through from partially cutting a tree to the point where there's enough cambium layer to still pass nutrients up and down through the roots to the branches to grow new shoots it was incredible to see and it's probably one of my most my proudest achievement is to actually create a living hedge and this is going to take a lot of time it's going to take a number of years and I might have to infill with planting over the next couple of years planting some hedging species but most of this Hazel has grown really well and it's budding really nicely and I've just been really impressed that how cool nature can be that you can partially cut a tree fold it over and then within a few weeks that sap Rises up and starts to grow new shoots nice and straight and vertical and can thicken out and create hedge and it was an episode and an experience that I was really proud of and I'm really looking forward to seeing the progress of this over the next five to six years and to see how dense you know I can make it and the idea was that not only was this improving the boundary but it was actually contributing and creating a much more beneficial wildlife habitat for small mammals and nesting Birds um so I'm really looking forward to seeing that progress like I say over the next couple of years and as spring started to turn into summer I decided to make this ash tree a little bit more of a feature and instead of having the temporary tarp area as the area where I would cook food and eat lunch and things like that I decided to make the Hub area of the forest here around this tree stump and so it's nice to have it as a backdrop and I have a fire pit and some pot hangers and a wood store with some flat areas where I can put pots and pans and then as the back end of summer came around I decided to do another project with Dad which was a a clay brick oven and the clay bricks were over 100 years old it was another father in some project and something we really enjoyed doing together and it was a bit of a labor of love we'd never built one before and it's actually it was quite a lot harder and it was a bit of a spontaneous one and it's nice to have somewhere to cook when it's raining and you can you know if it's torrential rain you can still easily cook there and we did cook a few good meals but part of me does have a little regret with building it because of the nature of how it looks it doesn't kind of conform as much as I'd like in in terms of in the Woodland and it was something that I just wanted to do and I probably could have done at any point in anywhere um so for me it was it was a really good project and it was fun and I learned a lot but at the same time um you know it it kind of detracted away from the actual Woodland management side of things and so it's nice to do different things you know you guys know you know my channel I don't always do the same thing I try and mix things up and um that was definitely a mixed things up thing and uh it's a great project and it was a learning curve again and it was nice to do some new skills and to try and create something with my hands which I've always been really into and you guys seem to really enjoy that as well so that was pretty much it that was the year wrapped up and I think Looking Back Now I actually did a lot more management than I thought I would not just because it was all new to me and I was gung-ho and I really wanted to get involved but also I guess from producing the series The Wooden life series for for you guys it was really good motivation for me to try and learn these new management practices and new forestry skills and just create some really nice educational content for you um in hindsight part of me would have liked to have taken the year a little bit slower and taken it in a bit more and perhaps spent more time here almost not filming and just enjoying it as it is as a woodland and I think over the next year there might be a little bit less on the certainly the management side because naturally I filmed a lot of it now already and it would get repetitive if I filmed cutting trees every year for firewood and things but I think it will focus more on allowing me to spend time here do some things like Bushcraft projects and do some camping here and just you know some overnights where I can enjoy it more not necessarily have to film it all the time just camping with family and just watch and study the nature with a little bit more attention I recently hired some new camera lenses long range zoom camera lenses to get a bit more experience on the filming side of trying to capture the nature that is you know surrounding me here and this is this is a lot more theirs than it is mine they were here before me and so you know I think this next year I'm going to pay a lot more attention to that and take it all in a bit more do things a little bit slower and just yeah focus on the nature side of things and the being I know it sounds really cliche but being at one with nature and I think by camping you can it's one of the best ways to be at nature be at one with nature is being in the elements itself and spending the night out in the woods yet to get the full experience of what Woodland life really is about but it's been a really Incredible Journey for this past year it's just over a year now and since that time I've also done some tree planting because where we've had a few trees come down and we had to fill one or two dead ones it's been really nice to try and rejuvenate that Woodland with some different species as well like the wild service tree which don't grow here but they are native to the UK and that's purely because with the climates we've been having and we're going to have in the future and everything warming up and the very hot summers we had a drought last summer it's important to try and create a more biodiverse Woodland so that these species and this this the layout of the wooden itself can still Thrive otherwise if it was all the same species and let's say there was a big drought and it wiped out loads of trees it would massively affect not just the other the floor around but also the animals and the birds that use this Woodland and so as part of my stewardship it's important to be able to protect it for the future and for my kids and the future Generations that you know come through the woodlands to be able to keep that going and I think that's a really big thing and although it's really hard to look into the future at you know the age I am now and having owned just owned the Woodland it's quite hard to see that far ahead and think oh if I plant that tree now I'm never really gonna see it in its full maturity I'll be dead before it's fully mature but it would be my grandkids down the line who get to experience Grandad's trees and enjoy them and hopefully learn from that and continue to do that that process and it's the circle of life isn't it and that's really what it's all about when you take everything back and you strip it all back that is what modern management is all about it's the protection of nature for future Generations and so that's it thank you for watching this episode I do appreciate it if you would like to watch all of the individual episodes I've done here on Woodland life and Woodland management I will put a link in the description below if you enjoyed the video feel free to subscribe and there's going to be plenty more content on based on this coming up in the future thank you for all your support over this past year and if you have any things you want to ask then pop them in the comments below and I'll do my best to get back to you thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one [Music] thank you

Channel: TA Outdoors

Views: 276,471

Keywords: Owning a woods, Day 1 to day 365, one year, a year in the wild, a year in the woods, Bushcraft, camping, survival, ta outdoors, TAOutdoors, My woodland life, woodland life, woodland management, forestry

Id: V3wdp554QnM

Length: 30min 29sec (1829 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 28 2023