sadly have to fell a beautiful tree!

[red]

well we started planting our orchard today - it will be little by little as we have to pace ourselves financially. today we planted a plum and a quince, we already have a cpouple of apple trees and a manky looking pear tree.

our land is bordered by Devon hedge .. or once was Devon hedge, now mostly trees - but will need to be brought back into hedge at some point.


The bordering hedges.. its unknown as to who owns them, so we may have interesting times ahead. But we do have a hedge down the middle, so that's definitely ours. sadly there are now great gap sin the hedge - if the trees are allowed to grow into trees, rather than cut back into hedge, they shadow the land underneath, nothing else grows and the bank wears away, and often the tree falls over then! Mostly its hazel, but we have some hawthorn, elder, holly, sycamore, and a nice old oak, that is being very strangled by ivy. we cut a ring through the ivy, all the way around, and the stuff we cut is log size....
most of the hazel is old copice, so many trunks - need to do some hedging, and some firewood making, and some replanting.