Friday, January 5, 2018

A Tour of Fox Wood

Greetings all and happy New Year. Hope you all had a good one — I've been working in my woodland this week and thought I'd make a little video to show people what I'm up to. It came out a little bit longer than I anticipated, so it's probably best to watch it with a cup of tea.

This is my first YouTube video, although there will be more, so please don't be too harsh in your judgement of my efforts.

Normal writing schedule will recommence shortly.


9 comments:

  1. Hi Jason,

    Thanks for sharing the video of your woodland. I was really interested to see the deep litter mulch which had formed from the fallen leaves. When people keep animals for harvesting on pasture and don't bring in food for the animals to eat, they are doing the exact opposite that you are doing in that they are drawing down on their top soil reserves. The many fungi are a good sign in that soil building regard too. :-)!

    I especially enjoyed the history of your woodland and the occasional old oak. It would look great during the summer! And the ground ferns are awesome. The ferns here always make me feel as if there is a dinosaur peering at you from behind the nearest boulder!

    The mosses and lichen look very similar to here although they are far more prolific in your woodland.

    Your soils are getting pretty good just from my observation of the rate of growth of the many trees. And perhaps that is your best protection against the plant viruses? Dunno, but Phytophthora cinnamomi is not only a problem in your part of the world. I tend to feel that such plant diseases are a positive feedback loop in that they recycle minerals back into the soil at a faster rate than previous and as such make those minerals available to other more resistant plant varieties. Of course that may be a different outcome than we desire.

    And yes, it is a strange old world that we live in when gardening is a subversive activity, but yes indeed it is.

    Mate, I have had one rubbish day today. On the other hand, you have cheered me up with this video. I never appreciated before how much could be observed from a video. Would you like a similar tour of here? I would really appreciate seeing your woodland over the summer.

    Chris

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    1. Hi Chris. Yes - the litter mulch is very deep. You can slide in a spade easily and see that there's probably 20cm of healthy humus. If the chestnuts do get the disease I'll probably just fell them and replant everywhere with a greater variety of species. Of course, I'll never get to see them mature.

      As a matter of fact, the latest advice from the Forestry Commission (a bungling government department) is that diseased trees should be left standing and allowed to develop tolerance. Most will die, but a few will survive, and these will be the disease resistant members of the population. Common sense really ...

      Hehe - I don't think our neighbours regard gardening as subversive - it's more the fact that the land isn't nicely landscaped and we don't have a nice gravel parking area with a shiny new SUV parked on it. As a matter of fact, I'm sure a few eyebrows were raised last night when a bunch of us were walking around with flaming torches, banging drums and dancing around apple trees in a variety of outlandish costumes. That'll be in the next video.


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  2. Jason, thanks for the tour. Best wishes for 2018!

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  3. LOVE THE VIDEO! :)

    Will publish to the Diner this week and also promote it on Reddit r/globalcollapse and r/collapse.

    RE

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    1. Now UP on the Doomstead Diner as Feature Article!

      http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2018/01/10/copicing-for-coping-with-collapse/

      Headline: Copicing for Coping with Collapse :)

      Also promoted on Reddit r/collapse

      https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/7pgqiu/copicing_for_coping_with_collapse_a_tour_of_fox/

      RE

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  4. Hi Jason,

    That advice is pretty good and common sense, as long as there is enough land and genetic material for the chestnuts. As the plants succumb too, the lifecycles of the trees will speed up and that will assist the selection process, although it wont look good.

    Thanks for the correction as I never would have considered that aspect of your neighbours reactions. Down here people tend to fear planting fruit trees in case anyone confuses them for a poor person. Mate, I'll tell ya, they don't know what wealth is.

    Well done with you and your mates too. Down here we tend to light the brazier in the courtyard and sit around and enjoy the fire and a few beers. I would quite enjoy the torches, banging drums and dancing around apple trees. I hope your mate of the genius cider producer brought a few bottles to the festivities?

    Chris

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    1. Cheers Chris. BTW, I was really sorry to hear about your dog :(

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  5. Wow. Inspirational... You & your family are going to be very busy in coming autumns; that'll be a whole lot of preserving & prepping for storage, but what a well-stocked larder you'll have. I particularly love the edible hedge; tried to grow a little one here, but sadly it's not a sociable thing - too many thorns, too many multicoloured splatters on other people's clothes lines thanks to the resident jackdaws - and we're in the middle of a little town, so most of my cherry plums, rosehips and sloes have had to go now. But we still have apples, quinces, hazelnuts, cherries, elder, kiwis, berries, currants and kiwis. And even a handful of rather tiny olives this year.

    Hope those non-rabbits aren't breeding up there...

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I'll try to reply to comments as time permits.