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There's snow and there's snow ... and this time it REALLY snowed, with nearly a foot of the very heavy wet variety falling unexpectedly overnight. There is no other way of putting it - the result was pretty well total devastation in the woods.

I have to say it wasn't a great sight to wake up to. The main workshop tripods snapped under the weight, as did the equipment storage tents. To make matters even worse, almost every tree in the woods had the top branches or limbs snapped by the sheer weight of the downfall too.

'Disappointing' is one way of putting it. And the pressure was on to re-build it all quickly, with just two weeks before the first course of the year.

Tree Climbing For A Living

However, before we could start doing any rebuilding we needed a professional tree climber. (If you fancy a major career change then yes, there is such a profession!)

Mike, the climber in question, scaled every single tree around the working areas and cleared all the dangerous branches to make them safe again. I was tired just watching him, not to mention full of admiration for his skill as he shinned up perilous looking stems.

We also lost a few of the older birch trees, requiring Mace to revisit the pond where one of them had fallen ... Another case of deja vu from last month.

Problems and Opportunities

Once the tidy up was complete it was time to start rebuilding. I know it's a cliché but the only way to look upon it was as an opportunity to make some improvements that I'd been considering anyway.

So, I have now redesigned the main woodland workshop areas by replacing the broken tripods with an extension to the existing fire pit flues. This offers two advantages: we now have a much more effective way of extracting any smoke from the fire pits, and we have a much more robust structure in case of more inclement weather. (OK, I'm told this was a once in 20 year occurrence, but you never can tell with the weather these days!)

These new structures were fabricated by a local metalworker in record time. They arrived on a trailer looking like two WMDs, which caused much amusement in the local lanes, but they worked as planned and we are now able to unclip the parachutes in about 10 minutes if heavy snow is forecast.

A Growing Mushroomoid

We have also taken this opportunity to rebuild the equipment storage tent adjacent to the main workshop area, to include sharpening facilities and first aid. (No, the two aren't related.) This new structure uses parachutes again, but instead of the flues we have used a pollarded alder as the central column and willow poles as the pillars - the end result looks something like a giant mushroom. In time the alder and willow should grow and produce an interesting living building - I would love to see it 50 years from now!

Book Now!

Anyway, after an awful lot of hard work, all was completed just in time and we had a very successful pole lathe course at the end of last week. We are now ready for the rest of the season's courses with a much improved venue.

Which leads me on nicely to say that a couple of courses now only have one remaining space and so, as ever, if you have a date in mind do please reserve your place now before they are all full. We have all heard about UK-based holidays getting more popular this year ...

Fishing In The Woods

After a very long-winded process of gaining permission from the Environment Agency, we have just released 100 Rainbow Trout into the pond. (This was before the old birch trees and Mace went in there, but I don't think the fish minded the interruptions!).

So, if there are any keen fisherman amongst you, the woodland workshop also offers a chance to show off your skills. This finishes our current plans for the pond and it is very satisfying to now be able to watch everything that we have planted start to grow, with the trout rising too.

Exhibition Time

It seems a million miles away, but there are a couple of events in London this month that I would recommend if you are in town.

Firstly, I'm exhibiting my wishbone stool at an exhibition called '21st Century Furniture - The Arts And Crafts Legacy', at the Millinery Works Gallery in Islington. This is an exhibition of a group of designer-makers from the UK and will be well worth a visit if you're at all interested in contemporary design and craftsmanship in wood. Full details are here:

http://www.millineryworks.co.uk

Secondly, for anyone interested in sculpture and trees, you simply can't miss my friend Tania Kovats' fantastic new installation at the Natural History Museum, entitled TREE in celebration of Darwin. Further details are here:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk

And that's about it for this month. My heartfelt thanks to Mike and Mace for all their heroic efforts and let's hope that next month is a little less fraught. It would be nice to get on with the business of fine tuning the venue and courses for the year to come!

Guy and the team

Tree of the Month: Spring!

I had a last-minute change of heart this month: when, in the depths of winter I was writing out a list of trees for this article, spring seemed but a distant hope. Consequently I had earmarked another evergreen tree for March and planned to move on to a broadleaf species in April when they were starting to look interesting again. In the last couple of weeks, however, spring has most assuredly sprung, and suddenly all of nature is shouting for your attention.

Since our house move, youngest daughter has changed school and as a result we now walk to school every day, along an enjoyable route via an urban meadow, through hedged back snickets and along beside a small stream. Walking the same route every day really made me notice the mass of small, steady changes occurring all around as the warmer weather and longer days make their presence felt.

Just a few short weeks ago, the alders, Alnus glutinosa, beside the stream carried only tiny brown male catkins and the dried, cone-like structures of the ripe fruits that are retained over the winter. Suddenly, over the space of a few days the male catkins lengthened and fluffed up in the warmer air, covering the whole tree in delicate greeny brown tassels. Just prior to this I had noticed the bushes of hazel, Corylus avellana, quite suddenly stand out from the hedges and verges with the emergence of their luxuriant, yellow-green catkins, the showy male flower; the female flower is an inconspicuous tuft like a tiny red jewel whose beauty repays close inspection. This spectacular display amongst the bare boughs of a February hedgerow is another welcome sign of spring.

Around the same time in the hedges round the field the earliest blossom broke in a white mist. This is the cherry plum, Prunus cerasifera, the earliest flowering prunus. This tree, a native of southern Europe, grows freely in southern England, where it forms dense hedges and thickets. The flowers appear just before the leaves, sometimes as early as February, a welcome precursor to spring. The cherry plum produces an edible red or yellow fruit, and it was cultivated for this fruit in earlier times, before breeding and selection led to the selection of cultivars producing bigger and better fruits; the plums and gages cultivated now are descended from the cherry plum, which is often used as rootstock for grafts of these domesticated species.

Elsewhere, the leaves come before the flowers. Mace recently finished laying a hedge of hawthorn - Crataegus monogyna - which he completed, as is best for the trees, before the sap rose and the leaves broke bud. On my morning walk, on lower ground, the leaves came a few days earlier. Hawthorn is known as 'may' for the white flowers that appear around mid-May. This blossom, which marks the season's change from spring to summer, appears around the time of May Day in the old calendar, before the revision to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. As flowers mark summer, leaves mark spring; the very young hawthorn leaves, glossy green and perfect, were traditionally picked and eaten in April and May, and were known as 'bread and cheese'. They can be enjoyed today in salads, or try them added to your cheese sandwiches on that early-spring picnic!

My last couple of spring harvestings are pleasingly alcohol-based; as spring arrives and the sap rises, birch trees - Betula pendula - can be tapped for their sap, which is made into wine. You can buy this - it is made commercially in Scotland, where the birch tree thrives - or you can make it yourself. I won't give a recipe here as space is short and there are loads on the internet; just remember to collect the sap from several trees, and plug the wounds when you have finished so that the tree does not bleed to death. There are great instructions on tapping a birch for sap in the newest edition of Living Woods Magazine - recommended!

Finally, if you fancy harvesting the rising energy of spring in a drink that's less labour intensive, try Beech Leaf Noyau. For this, collect the young leaves of the beech - Fagus sylvatica - to fill a stone or glass jar. Wash and dry the leaves, pack them in the jar, and cover them with gin. Leave for a week, then strain off the gin, which is now coloured the fresh green of the young leaves. Measure the liquid, and for every 500ml of gin, allow 350g of sugar. Dissolve this in 250ml of boiling water, and add to the gin along with a good slug of brandy. Stir well, cool and bottle, and enjoy the essence of spring when winter is here again.

Carolyn Brightwater
Brightwater Greenwood