Le Pré de la Forge....Five old Saules... part the third... 2007 and the heat is on!!

The weather in February 2007 was wonderful...
it even brought out the Small Tortoiseshell from hibernation...
and, yes, there were flowers for it to feed from! [taken19th February]

By this point Stuart and I had got into a routine.
Cut the 'trees' off the top of the old pollard....
deal with the usable timber, plant trees, cut rods...
and refill the cattle splash.

Why 'trees'...
mainly because that is what they were...
pollarding usually takes place between ten and twenty five years after a cut...
only really dependent on what wood you are trying to harvest.

With the final tidying of the tree nearest the bridge I was able to take a nice oblique slice at the base of one of the branches and this made counting rings easier....
all forty-one of them....
the trees were last 'tetarded' in 1964.

This tied in with the old 'milk record' books that we found....
the milking and managing as a farm ceased in 1985.
The twenty-five year cut would have been due in 1989 and, by this time, the owner was using it as a holiday home a couple of times a year.
The farm was managed, the owner was a 'pub landlord' in Poitiers.
So no one bothered.

We want firewood...
so will probably take a second cut at ten years from  the four strongest [2015 to 2019].
I am now thinking of using the weakest one, that we cut in 2006, as a source of rods....
it also seems to be a slightly different colour to the rest.

We chose the second tree from the bridge as this year's 'victim' and proceeded to drop branches.
The method was as follows...
cut down an outward leaning 'trunk', process, stack and pile the 'lop & top' up ready for burning.
All progressed well but...
not for long.

The fourth branch twisted slightly as it fell, and landed, absolutely horizontal, on the first tree...
fortunately for us, it landed in between the two growing points!!

The snagged branch, lying across the space...
would make a good hammock spot?

But it was still attached. How to deal with that?
My procedure was as follows...

I started by cutting off all the branches furthest away...
until I arrived at the 'snag' point...
the first pollard...
unfortunately I didn't think to take photos...
I was too busy trying to get the branch down!

Rope two fully extended Acroprops just forward from the butt end to form a tripod.

Cut out the section between the props and the tree...
leaving the trunk supported at the props and the first tree.

Stuart and I then pulled the two Acros away [using ropes], until the trunk reached the ground safely.

Undercut the trunk in sections until the end that was resting in the first tree was almost upright.

Climb ladder resting on first tree and with a Y-pole push the last length over...
snag removed.
Safely!

Final cuts made, it was time to tidy up.

All timber cut, stacked under tree 1 and the whole area tidied.

It was then OK to fell the rest, section them and stack the good timber up to dry
When the last branch had been dealt with in this way, then it was time for a bonfire.

More timber stacked on right;
Stuart by the bonfire and the area of branches in the foreground
is creating a habitat for insects, birds and small mammals.

As the fire got going so did the heat...
you can see the haze in the top left of this picture.

Once we'd cleaned up, it was onto the tree planting.
We had had a greater success with the young rods, about fifty percent take...
but lost a lot as a result of our infrequent visits in the height of summer.
Yes! I can hear you gasp....
"house in France and they don't use it in the summer?"

Well, no we didn't, we had 600 sq.yds of allotment to take care of in Leeds!
That was feeding us [on the veggie and fruit front at least] and needed tending to almost constantly.
We hadn't lost, however, more than three of the rods that were crammed into the 'cattle splash' nursery.

We left the 2007 rods in the now 'less than temporary' keeping pond and began to lift the young trees from the nursery.
Using a sharp spade, I cut down through the roots between each tree, one at a time, and then Stuart would pull it over and I'd cut through the tap root and we'd get a bin bag over the root block.
Once we had a barrow load [about half a dozen trees] we'd then move on to planting them.
We weren't precious about this....
it was...
[i] dig a hole large enough to get the root block into comfortably and about ten centimetres deeper,
[ii] stuff root block into the hole,
[iii] back fill and stomp heavily to firm the tree in and pile what didn't go back in around the tree.
No staking, no feeding, no nice compost...
they were on their own, planted about twenty centimetres deeper than they had been in the nursery.

We used these to 'beat up' the 2006 failures along the ditch towards the house and add to the two  survivors in the clump.

Next it was 'beat up' the line along the bief and extend it towards the 'Five old Saules'.
Once that was done we crammed eighty new rods into the nursery and put the rest out into the original two areas from 2005 to extend those.

As you will read in the next instalment of the saga, we stuck to this routine for 2008.

Le Pré de la Forge... a continuation... 2006

A gratuitous Klimt'ish image of our Norway Maples

As I said in the previous post ...
we started by pollarding the big pollards already on the site.
The plan was to tackle them as 'one a year'....
but that slipped away after the first attempt with bowsaws.

The first willow to be attacked… as it was left in 2005.
You can see the healthy new rods that have grown during the previous twelve months.

Winter 2006 saw us 'armed' with a chainsaw.
That meant that we were able to tidy up the wreckage of the first attempt and finish the tree off properly.
The cut timber was then processed and we took some of it up to the hangar [dutch barn/open barn] to dry out for use as firewood.
The usable rest was stacked at the base of the tree. 

The first tree, once cleaned up, with wood stacked underneath.
The branch underneath, leaning against the trunk is no longer supporting the tree...
The tree lifted towards the upright and the branch fell away

We then tackled a second tree, the smallest and weakest specimen.
That way we were keeping to the original one a year plan!
"Cheats!" I hear you yell....

Two views of the weakling - halfway through and after.
In the background of the first picture the maintenance tasks can be seen lurking.

Some essential maintenance followed on the remaining three trees....
cutting down dead branches and ones that were left unprotected as a result of the other work done.
 

First three trees pollarded.... hope for the weakling was faint!
The final tidying up on the fifth tree is yet to be done.

As we were less than halfway through the stay, and the fact that...
[a] the cut ends from the previous year had produced good growth and...
[b] the maintenance work on the third tree in the line had left only three good trunks coming up from the head...
we decided to do a full job on that one too.


In 2005 an attempt was made at planting up with first/second year growth from the top of the tree....
what a waste of time that was.
We planted 100 little twigs...
half at the end nearest the weir and the rest in the corner by our neighbours étang and the Aigronne.
We had six survivors at the weir planting....
and two at the lake end. Eight percent success rate!
Or should that really read...
92% FAILURE rate?


However, in 2006 we took a different tack.
There were plenty of really healthy first year rods to be harvested from the untidy ends that we'd had to leave in 2005.

We cut these off before tidying the ends and finishing the pollarding of tree one.
There were over one hundred and fifty one metre to two metre rods.

We placed these in a 'holding pond'...
hastily constructed at the side of the bief...
whilst we concentrated on the pollarding.

Rods stacked in the holding pen before planting.
This kept them wet and safe from being trampled on.

In 2005, I had used the cattle watering shallow to plant some currant bush cuttings that Pauline had taken from our allotment bushes.
30 of them were Redcurrants... probably Jonker van Tets... and 27 of them took.
There were hardly any losses from the White and Blackcurrants either!
[We now have twenty-seven redcurrant bushes in the verger! Ask Pauline....
BUT we still only get fruit the equivalent of two of our allotment bushes....
a combination of frost hollow effect some years and in the good fruiting years...
our feathered "FRIENDS" scoff them before they are fully ripe...]

However, armed with this new knowledge...
Stuart and I planted fifty of the rods in a block next door to the thriving cuttings.
Most of the rest were planted at the lake end, in the original block and a group of three opposite...
next to the bief [to start the tree line]...
and at the weir end.
Then the last few were lined out along the ditch that leads up from the Aigronne towards the bridge...
and a small clump planted between the end of the ditch and the bridge.

As I will tell in the next posting... we had more success from the healthier, longer rods.

Le Pré de la Forge... an interpretion and record of work on the site.

As trying to write two blogs on a very similar subject meant that the weaker blog kept getting neglected.... and that this blog has turned out to be much more about our few acres of meadow and the Aigronne valley between the two Pressigny villages...
than about the whole valley and places further abroad...
I made the decision to incorporate the weaker blog into the stronger!!

These are the first two entries combined, with a few alterations / corrections...
All will be in this "willow green" type to distinguish between the entries.

Our maples

With two hectares of land... five huge old willows.... where does one start?

You put your "Art 'n' Soul" into it.... of course!

These are occasional posts of what we are doing [and why we are doing it] in the way of land management here at La Forge

The five old pollards

These are the original five willows that formed part of the boundary of the bief. 
The rotted out stumps of some of the rest remain... 
a hazard when one walks the bank.

As you can see, these were in desperate need of conservation.
Already, branches had rotted and fallen, trunks split and trees were leaning after their overweight branches!

The work began in earnest in Winter 2005, with 30" bowsaws...
a big error on my part as the sap was frozen and blunted the blades very quickly.
A Stihl chainsaw was later purchased to speed up the work and make the cuts cleaner and safer!

But trying to fell leaning, frozen timber...
especially willow, which breaks unpredictably, is dangerous.
You need to take time to study the line of fall and care, especially when ten foot off the ground, about how the butt end is likely to move.
I got very good at fireman's slides down the ladder!

If you look at the willows in the picture on "A bit about the site" you will see them near the end of the longère... 
only one was left to be pollarded** [they are called tetards in French].... 
but you will see that they are quite a way away from the bief. 
This, we think, is because they were planted to skirt the back of the forge at this point, sheltering it from northerly winds.
And as Pauline has recently discovered from early maps... a long narrow building following the alignment of these old "trognes"... the local dialect word for a tetard.

The forge itself,  sited on the meadow side of the bief,  would have been a bloomer furnace... 
a tall chimney-like stove, filled with the raw materials... 
charcoal, lime and ironstone... 
and then fired.
The undershot water-wheel would have powered bellows to raise the temperature of the firing and possibly a drop hammer to beat the metal from the slag. 
The molten metal was drawn off at the bottom.
A very inefficient process, judging by the weight of the slag to be found on site.

We will be writing more about the forge and the Touraine Iron Industry on the Following others' Footsteps blog in the future.

The intention is to recreate that original line of willows.
However, our neighbour Richard owns the bief and has a four metre right of access along the north bank for maintenance work.
To respect that access we are planting the line five metres back from the bief.

Other corridors have been planted to help wildlife move in safety.
Further corridors and clumps will be planted, to be managed on a cycle of five to twenty years... depending on the crop required and the wildlife to be supported

** The view from above must date from about 2007/8, as the orchard is visible on the south bank [the pretty pattern of mowing at the north-west end of what has now become the growing field.]

Seeing a man about a trogne

On Monday night we went over to La Rabiniere at Betz-le-Chateau to a book talk organised by the “Champs des Livres” association. Mainly because I am fascinated by trees...

The author was a man passionate about “Les trognes” which is the main title of his book.

That passionate man, Dominique Mansion, founded and runs the Maison Botanique at Boursay in Loir et Cher.




He spoke of the history of the trogne, the reasons, the wildlife… he spoke quietly, intensely and with burst of loud emphasis. He was utterly captivating… so much so that I would have bought the book afterwards… if I hadn’t already bought a copy as we went in!!
His illustrations are marvelous… both detailed where needed and beautifully freely drawn where the impression is what counts.


The trogne goes back to prehistory… but for more of that follow this link to Art en Saule our website about the "Pre de la Forge" as well as discovering the reason behind his continued fascination with "Les Trognes"

I pollarded our old willows because I love trees and knew that they were old and needed a haircut… I was also aware of the wildlife that a pollarded tree supports… but my knowledge pales beside Dominique’s!