This is just a quick note to say that I added a new page with details of upcoming work opportunities this year. If you are a mounding, fencing or planting contractor, you may be interested in taking a look.

It’s a temporary effort and I intend to produce something more polished when I add more work details to it. For now, if you would like to be kept informed of updates, then please email me using the contact details you can find on these pages. I will then send you a short message when I next update it.

If you - or someone you know - is interested in the current work opportunities, please read the details on this page and follow the links to download more information.

That's nonsense, of course. I have been out and enjoying the weather most days, whether doing so while at work or when undertaking chores in the garden (which is looking amazing after so many weeks of solid sun and high temps).

Even so, it passes so quickly and I cannot help but feel that I should be doing MORE to make the most of this amazing time - especially when the weather has been so unusually hot and sunny up here.

Take today for example, in an attempt to get back on track in dealing with a slowly mounting pile of outstanding work for my regular clients, I left the house at seven to continue work on a contract I have with Forest Research for installing and monitoring Pine tree lappet moth (Dendrolimus pini) traps in the Beauly Firth area of Inverness shire.

It's not a very well paid contract. It's also somewhat irksome to perform because I need to visit the traps once every week for ten weeks to maintain them and check their contents. While this makes an impromptu summer holiday somewhat tricky to arrange, it is very interesting work and somewhat different to my usual activities.

For those that do not know, adult PTLMs were first noticed in the River Beauly catchment area in Scotland in 2004. This was (and continues to be) a problem because, although there are occasional sightings in the South of England, it is not a native species to this country and it should not be here and forming a breeding population.  

In 2008, Forestry Commission Scotland was made aware of the moth's presence and immediately established an outbreak area around known breeding sites. The purpose of this was to restrict timber movements from mid May to the end of August, when there is the greatest chance of accidentally exporting the moths' eggs or larvae to new locations if they happen to be attached to freshly cut wood which is being shipped to a sawmill or other processor.

At the moment, this seems to be the only breeding population in the UK and it is contained to just a few forests within the outbreak zone.

This is the status quo that everyone is keen to see unchanged, especially because the native Caledonian pinewoods of Glen Affric are very close by and Scots pine is such an important timber crop in Scotland and the rest of the UK. In this regard, a burgeoning PTLM population would present a substantial risk to the health of those forests and, if the species spread far and wide, it could have serious repercussions for the Scots pine species, which is one of only three native conifers we have in this country (the other two are yew and juniper).

Interestingly, researchers have not yet concluded whether this is a very small but nonetheless endemic local population that took a long time to be noticed, or whether it is alien and invasive in nature. Obviously, it is important to know, so Forest Research has been using genetic analysis to try and identify if there are links to other European populations.

I am not completely up to date on the research, but I believe that many presently favour the alternative 'alien invader' hypothesis and that the gene studies undertaken to date tend to back this up. 

Whether native or not, it's a bit of a mystery why the population is so localised and has not spread further considering that the moths are large enough to be blown across the English channel from time to time.

All of this preamble leads me to the specifics of today's work, where I went out to check pheromone traps that I installed in the local woods last week to catch any of these moths that may be mooching about. 

Catching a moth is made easier by the use of a small rubber lure that is treated with the pheromone of choice for the moth. The lure is loaded onto a VERY sticky sheet (think flypaper) that is then placed in a small weatherproof polycarbonate tent left hanging from a tree branch in the survey woodland (see the pictures below).

The moth is attracted to the lure, enters the tent (with visions of moth-on-moth debauchery on its mind, no doubt) and then becomes irrevocably stuck to the sticky paper within, where fate decrees that it must wait until I come along and - as humanely as possible - transfer it to an ethanol solution in a small tub, to be later sent off to Forest Research for analysis. 

The benefit of this work to Forest Research is that they can monitor the size of the local population and establish whether it is moving into other woods in the general vicinity. To enable this be ascertained, the traps are installed in many stands of Scots pine throughout the River Beauly catchment area, including those with known populations and those where previous trapping sessions have shown that these moths are absent.

Of course, they also obtain more material (dead moths) for their genetic research.

The benefit to me is that I get paid for a day out of the office doing something a little different.

It's a bit harder to think of any benefit to the moth.

Check out the images below for the trap design and pictures of the three moths I extracted from their sticky fates today.

For more information on the Pine tree lappet moth, please see the PTLM pages HERE for lots more interesting - and I dare say accurate - information on this unusual forest pest.

Several traps are placed around the forest to be studied and each primed with a pheromone trap. They are inspected weekly for a period of ten weeks over June, July and August .

The rubber lure is impregnated (snigger) with irresistible moth pheromone.

Not how I would like to go.

Today’s catch (three moths) sitting in ethanol, waiting for collection by Forest Research.

Hello!

My apologies to anyone who pays any attention to this occasional blog and has noted the lack of posts in recent months.  Work has been good and all that, but there has not been much of interest to report.

To make amends for my silence, I thought that I would provide a little information about a small woodland planting project that I have been working on at Brora, Sutherland.

Yesterday I left the house early to meet the tree planting contractor at the site.  That is not in itself a particularly unusual event in itself, but seeing as I previously uploaded a few pictures of my earlier planning work here to my Facebook page (this link)  I thought that it would be nice to do a follow up post with some news from the other side of the woodland design and grant approval process.

The planting contractor was on site to plant around seven thousand trees in the this  future woodland to be.  Everything was ready to go, with the ground fenced to protect the young trees from wild deer and livestock and the ground spot-cultivated with an excavator to create a planting position for each individual tree.  

The process is commonly referred to as 'mounding' and these excavator mounds provide many benefits for the young tree. For instance, the mounding process mixes the soil horizons so that nutrients washed down into lower strata by the rain are now within the reach of the young trees, it improves drainage in the immediate vicinity of the young tree, it creates a raised planting position leading to a warmer growing environment, organic matter in the surface layers are incorporated throughout the soil, and weeds are knocked-back for a short period of time.

The mounds were created last summer by a local contractor who was already known to my client, the farm owner. This machine operator did an excellent job and between the three of us we were able to get the work done painlessly and at less cost to the farmer than would usually be the case.  

He saved on my fees too as finding, appointing and managing the ground preparation contractor is something that I would normally expect to do.   

This approach worked well for the both of us.  He saved a portion of my fees and I was able to spend more time on other matters, such as procuring a supply of trees to plant in the project area.

It took a little work to finalise the specification for the the trees and to order the planting stock as I discovered that some of the native broadleaves proposed by my original plan were going to be unavailable come the anticipated planting date (today!)  Because of this, I had to agree an alternative species mix with the Forestry Commission, who were acting as grant regulators in this instance.

This amended species mix was guided by both the growing conditions on the site (soil, altitude, exposure, fertility) as well as the stock levels anticipated by various tree nurseries for at least six months down the line.  

The provenance of that future planting stock also had to be right.  

John uses an ATV and trailer to transport trees across a deep ford to distribute them around a new native woodland site for subsequent planting.

'Provenance' with regard to trees sold by a nursery means the same as the common use of the word 'provenance' - i.e. where something comes from.

Foresters are expected to identify the provenances of the trees that they intend to use in their projects.  This is necessary because new native woodlands should be planted with trees grown from seed or vegetative material collected in the same general area as the proposed new woodland. Doing this provides the young trees with the best chance that they will be suited to the local climate and growing conditions.  

To formalise this approach, a system has been established by the Forestry Commission for this purpose and one often hears mention of these ‘seed zones’ in talk pertaining to the supply and planting of trees for native woodlands.

It is not unusual to experience these kinds of tree supply problems and from time to time it can even be necessary to instruct a nursery to contract grow particular trees in order to avoid them.  

For example, a forester could have plans for a large woodland in an area where trees of the right provenance are just not grown in large numbers in the nursery trade.  Even if they are, there can be years where seed production in the wild is unexpectedly low and contract growing can be a useful, if costly, precautionary approach.

The can be other reasons for growing trees under contract. 

For example, I worked on a project where the woodland owner wanted me to restock a timber harvesting site with Silver birch (Betula pendula) for future timber production purposes.  

I could not obtain the right planting stock as that which was available from the general nursery trade at the time was intended for native woodland projects and had not been selected for its timber production potential. 

As a workaround, I identified a local stand of Silver birch that was well known for its straight and lightly branched trees and I arranged for seed to be collected from them and grown on to become the next rotation for this particular forest.

Contrast this approach with seed zones for conifers that are grown for timber production purposes.

In this situation, because most of the conifers used for plantation forestry are non-native species, it is somewhat redundant to be talking about seed zones as if they matter.  Instead, it is common for the forester to identify particularly well performing stands within his or her wider geographic area and then seek to obtain planting stock grown from seed obtained within them. To make it easier for the buyer, commercial nurseries often identify the specific forest of origin of the conifers that they supply to this purpose. 

[Edited 17/3/18 to add that this is a gross simplification.  In fact, provenance can be very important for conifers when selecting seed or vegetative material from overseas, where the same species will grow very differently in the UK depending on where the parent material comes from.  Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) is a excellent example of this, where trees grown from seed collected in the coastal provinces of areas such as Alaska produces considerably better timber than seed collected from stands in the Canadian interior.]  

Many nurseries go much further than that and they either produce trees that are vegetatively propagated from an exceptional specimen (thus creating clones that will exhibit identical characteristics) or they will establish their own seed orchards so that they have more control over the genetics of the trees they grow. 

The trees in these seed orchards are either allowed to freely pollinate themselves or they are pollinated in a controlled manner. These two similar-yet-different approaches result in planting stock that is either of the 'half sibling' variety (where only the mother is 100% known) or of the 'full sibling' variety (where both parents are known because of controlled pollination).

Anyway, I digress.

As mentioned before, this project area at Brora was intended to be a native woodland. In fact, it was to be a native Scots pine woodland and around six thousand trees of this species were delivered to the farm yesterday for this purpose. To comply with the UK Forestry Standard - and also because it makes good sense - an element of native broadleaves were also to be planted among the pines.

Therefore, the following broadleaves arrived with the pine:

30 Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia)

178 Grey willow (Salix cinerea)

249 Aspen (Populus tremula)

30 Common hazel (Corylus avellana)

628 Downy birch (Betula pubescens)

47 Silver birch (Betula pendula)

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I won’t write much here about the species choice, other than to say that aspen trees happen to have been a popular preference in forestry circles for several years. This interest is well deserved as the species supports a unique fauna and has an interesting autocology in many ways.

What's more, they also look fantastic with their leaves gently quaking in the breeze and their handsome autumn colour.

My client, the farmer, knows his trees well and we both thought that some substantial stands of aspen would make a great contribution to the ecological benefits of the new woodland while adding some nice visual amenity to this part of the farm, which lies between the more gentle lower ground and the more rugged bog and moorland habitats on the highest ground within the land holding.

The ability of new woodlands to deliver such multi faceted benefits - environmental, visual amenity, recreation - is a significant reason for providing land owners with access to grant supported forestry in my opinion.  Planting new woodlands is to everyone’s benefit and not just the owner of the land on which the trees are planted.

What’s more, the owner may even make a little surplus money from the work, although this depends on the scale of the project.  

I should also add at this stage that, while there is nothing stopping landowners from developing a woodland planting plan and nudging it through the grant approval process without the assistance of a forester (and thus saving on some expenditure) I do think that the cost of professional input is worth it in the long run - particularly if those costs can be minimised wherever possible by sharing the workload between client and forester, as I did in this particular case a Brora.

Getting back to the site itself and my reason for being there, my work for the day was actually fairly straightforward: I was to see the contractor for a pre start meeting, ensure that he had access to all the trees and any other materials that he required, and then walk around the planting area with him to identify where each particular tree species was to go.

Of course, I produced a map for that purpose, but nothing beats a quick stroll with the main planting guy to make it come to life and increase the chances of the right tree going in the right place.

Sometimes, if the project warrants it, I will also physically mark out the areas for each species with bamboo canes or other markers. That can help a lot on larger projects where there are not so many landmarks or distinguishing features than can be used by the planters to orientate themselves with the printed map.

I know the contractor well (John McNally of Boreal Forestry), so I was able to quickly work through the formalities necessary at the start of a new planting job and leave him and his squad to it, although not before giving them a hand with moving some of those several thousand trees around the site, ready for planting.

At times like that, the cost of a winter spent sitting in front of the computer is all too apparent:  I contributed little and sweated much!

I returned home to start working on the grant claim, confident that the planting work would be finished within a few days.

In the future, I intend to write a little more about the workings of the Forestry Grant Scheme and the wider Scotland Rural Development Programme.

In that regard, I don't suppose everyone reading this will know how it works and what can - or cannot - be done with grant support. The timings too, from inception to grant approval to planting the trees, is not always easy to understand for those that have not done this before and I think some explanations would help the uninitiated.

Also, perhaps, a little more information on what those grant rates are, what the costs are likely to be, and what, as a forestry consultant, you should expect me - or anyone else - to bring to the party.

On that note I should conclude what has been a fairly lengthy post.

“Well done” if you made it to the end.  “Tsk tsk” if you skipped most of it (now go back and read it!).

However you arrived at these final few paragraphs, I wish to say 'thanks' for reading as much as you did. I hope this have provided a little insight into tree planting in the Scottish Uplands.

If you enjoyed the post, please consider liking or following my business page on Facebook (this link). By doing that you to receive a handy notification of any future blog posts.

Alternatively, the tech savvy among you could achieve the same by subscribing to the RSS feed for this page with an aggregator such as Feedly or one of the very many similar programs and applications for personal computer or mobile device, in all their various flavours.

That would save you from physically checking for new posts like it’s 1999 or something :P

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]]>Tree planting in Brora, Sutherland.work newsforest managementTim LucasSat, 27 Jan 2018 19:05:58 +0000https://timlucasforestmanagement.co.uk/blog/2018/1/27/more-timber-measurement-more-snow57dfdcfb3e00be77caadf6e1:57dfe3b63e00be77caae2aff:5a6cbfd624a694fb93393b33Having spent the best part of last week sitting inside, you would be forgiven for thinking that I had plenty of time to write something meaningful and informative to post here.

Although you would be very much right in that respect, I spent my time instead on doing some work on a last minute SRDP forestry grant - the next assessment round is imminent - and sitting in front of the PC doing GIS work. 

The GIS work involved remapping the forest where I was measuring timber a few weeks ago.  At that time, I encountered a few problems while in the field: the stock map was wrong in some areas; stands planted with the same species at the same time were of variable quality ; and windblow had occurred in patches of varying sizes. 

Seeing as the aim of the work was to predict future timber production with as much accuracy as one can without going too mad on the cost, my client (the management company that manages the estate's forestry) agreed that I should use an aerial photo together my site notes from my previous visit to address those problems and improve the stockmap.

The picture below shows a work-in-progress view of the new stock map with an aerial image of the forest behind it and my site notes and timber measurement plot locations overlaid on top. That latter data was gathered in the field using a mapping app and my phone.

Once that was done - it took a good five hours to amend and redraw the original subcompartment record - I took the new plan out into the forest to check it and add some more detail (the age of the windblow and whether there was any value left in the timber).   

The manager also wanted to know whether there were any areas of native trees that could be retained when the rotation ends and the crop is clearfelled, so I was to look into that too.

Although the snow had cleared from Foyers, there was still a substantial amount on the ground in the hills of the Monalaidths. I posted a picture from this same location on my last visit to this forest before Christmas.  In that one the view is mostly obscured by a passing snow flurry.  Apart from the far superior weather  - evident in the clear skies of this picture - snow still covers the ground here.   

The snow was quite deep in places and the ground soft and boggy underneath, making wellies essential. 

It was quite tricky moving around the forest at times, with soft ground, deep snow and windblown timber leading me to expect a refreshing face plant at any moment....

There was not much time to dally and I had a fair bit of ground to cover so I just kept moving, checking the new map and making notes as I went. 

As the photos show, it was a bonny day to be walking in the wood.

My mapping work with the aerial turned out to be quite accurate - helped by the fact that I was doing it after already spending three days in the forest laying down the timber measurement plots - so I did not find many places where substantial editing would be required.   

However, attending to the other tasks took some time, so I need to go back there before I am finished.

Ideally, I would being doing this tomorrow as the work has already been delayed, what with the uncommon snow showers before Christmas keeping me away for days at a time.  Unfortunately, the weather has suddenly turned wet and this is very much a job that gets done better when it is a little drier.  The forecast is for further unpromising conditions for the next few days so I will be staying in and processing my field notes and getting ready to return later in the week.

AECS is always popular and over subscribed so the deadline to work-up a proposal is ridiculously short: Friday 13 April.  

AECS supports forestry activities that including grazing management plans for ancient wood pasture,  the planting of new hedgerows and, of course, my favourites: the control of rhododendron and the control of other non native invasive plant species.  

In addition to those forestry options, farmers, crofters and anybody else involved in land management can access financial support for a wide range of activities that benefit wildlife and the environment in all manner of semi natural habitats, including farms, moorlands, heaths, wetlands, bogs, rivers and water catchments.  There is also support for conversion to organic farming and the provision of public access.  

The full list of options is available on the SRDP website here (note: not all areas are eligible for all options).

If any of this tickles your fancy, then please let me know as quickly as you can.  There really is not much time available to do the groundwork, consult with the statutory authorities and prepare the grant application.

I will endeavour to visit within a few days and we can then identify the measures that could be of interest.  I will then provide an estimate for the work and, if you decide not to proceed, no charges will be raised and it will go no further than that.

If, on the other hand, you wish to apply for a grant, I can assure you of my best efforts to have everything ready for the deadline.

As with most of my videos, it is best watched with the sound off to avoid hearing me speak to birds in a frankly quite embarrassing manner.  

I went out to take some footage of the snow and a robin appeared for its usual feed.

I think this is the mate of a robin that I fed by hand all through last winter and most of this year.

It must have learnt that it was safe to do this from observing the other robin.  I say this because I didn't encourage it all all; not in the same way that was necessary last winter, before its partner would feel confident enough to swoop in and grab a beakful of food.

In fact, I never actually realised I was feeding two birds for quite some time - not until they had babies on the nest in a nearby conifer and I saw them taking it in turns to grab food from my hand and take it back to the young.

While the original bird has sadly gone, presumed dead, its two offspring also have a territory nearby and they are confident enough to eat from the ground at my feet (well, one of them is).

They fight with this one over my front garden and it is interesting to see how finely territories are demarcated - right down to the metre it seems.  From observing them over even a few days, one can see the frontlines where they battle over the extremities of their domains, which move back and forwards over time, or at least that's how it appears to me. 

I was meant to be working on site, so I sat there and wondered whether I should attempt it or abandon it altogether and treat myself to an extra half hour in bed.

The job that I had to do today involved measuring timber in a forest that was a 90 minute drive from home in Foyers.  It is a fairly substantial contract, involving nine or ten days working in a handful of productive conifer stands on the same estate.

I started the work a couple of weeks ago, having won the contract after some recklessly low pricing ("What was I thinking?" is becoming an all-too-common refrain when I review my tendering).

Then, before I even really got started and into the swing of things, that tree planting job in Aviemore took me away from for several days; a delay made worse by the unseasonably early snowfall during that time. 

Once the tree planting was over, I became tied-up with miscellaneous one-off jobs and office work that left me feeling that I really needed to get back on site and get that timber measurement job under wraps. 

With that in mind, I got up at 05.15 today, looked out the window and decided that it wasn't too windy in Foyers, and then proceeded to drive South on the A9 in the hope that it would be likewise where I was going.

Of course, it was blowing a gale by the time I arrived on the estate and little had changed by the time I had drunk a cup of coffee with the head stalker and discussed the safety - or otherwise - of actually venturing out alone into an already-part-blown forest in such windy weather.  It was clear from the swaying tree tops outside his office that discretion, rather than valour, was required, thus I drove home ruefully.

Still, every cloud and all that: I managed to spend the rest of the day catching up with some admin and other jobs.

My afternoon was further brightened by the arrival of two publications in which I have just placed adverts: Farming North and Scottish Forestry (the journal of the Royal Scottish Forestry Society, no less). 

Aside from marvelling at my lovely advertisements (see below), I skimmed through Scottish Forestry and found an interesting article on a study of the effectiveness of glyphosate ecoplugs when deployed to kill rhododendron bushes after treatment with a chainsaw.

The author concluded that these plugs are at least as effective as the conventional method of spraying the freshly cut stumps with glyphosate in solution with water.

That may not sound like much to get excited about, especially as the plugs are quite expensive, but the fact that their use is not constrained by wet weather, which more often than not prevents the timely application of glyphosate by knapsack sprayer (the much more common alternative treatment) makes them worthy of consideration in my book.  As an extra bonus, there is less chance of collateral damage to nearby plants - among other benefits - by avoiding the knapsack spray method of application.

There is much more to the article than that and I would recommend anyone who is interested in this approach to buy the journal and read for yourself. 

Indeed, why not consider becoming a member? It does not cost much, the journal is informative and very well produced, the society holds regular free field trips and your cash  would be supporting a venerable institution.

Alas, I get no commission for increasing the membership, but still have no hesitation to recommending it for those with an interest in trees and woodland management, whether professional or just in passing.  

Their website address is http://www.rsfs.org/

Finally, in case you are interested, here are my latest adverts.  They may not win any design awards (apart from maybe the BAD design award, ho ho) but they are good enough for my purposes.

I have procrastinated thus far because such a post, if it is going to carry any clout with those that already support a ban and have the power to challenge their views, would need to be robust, well researched (erm, googled) and written in a manner that is not prejorative of the very audience that I would be trying to reach (convert).

Alas, I don't have the time or the energy to do all of that at the moment so this short commentary will have to do.

In this respect, until information comes along that proves otherwise, I am happy to stake my reputation in support of the continued use of glyphosate in agriculture, forestry, domestic situations and anywhere else  where cost effective weed control is necessary.

I reached this position by spending quite a considerable amount of time in the past looking for evidence on the internet to justify a ban.  At that time, I could not find enough accumulated scientific evidence to conclusively suggest that a ban was necessary or even appropriate from a precautionary perspective.

Some of the information that I found that favoured a ban was not scientific and, while perhaps not entirely scaremongering, appeared to approach the subject from the initial position that Monsanto is evil and that the chemical itself has already been proven to cause ill effects on both the environment and on human health.  As a result, I question its veracity.

If this was the robust and well researched article that I mentioned above, then I would need to write many hundreds of words on the subject and, at the very least, make reference to the Soil Association's recent campaign against glyphosate because of its presence in bread. 

Unfortunately, although the presence of glyphosate in foodstuffs is something that I think does need discussing in a balanced manner, this is not going to be that thesis.

Instead, I will just leave the subject for now by posting this link to an article that appeared in support of glyphosate in the Scottish Farmer today.  It lists some useful Twitter accounts for those who wish to make the case against a ban to EU President Juncker and colleagues. 

Considering  how so much disinformation about glyphosate is disseminated across the internet, I think it would be good for glyphosate's supporters to speak up. 

Perhaps one mythical day I will feel up to the task of writing about glyphosate at length. 

Perhaps I will even write about about those other two bete noir of the agricultural world: GM crops and neonicotinoids, both of which are seldom subject to a balanced discussion on the internet (I'm looking at you Facebook) and where a measured new regulatory approach would be better than the outright ban proposed by some (FYI: the Scottish Government has - wrongly in my opinion - already stated that GMOs will not be produced in Scotland).

For the time being, I will leave you with a picture of a sign that I had made-up for the car park of the livestock market in Dingwall.  It cost a few hundred Pounds to procure the sign and the annual rental is around £250 on top of that, so I am hopeful that it will generate some sales from customers of the mart (i.e. farmers, estate managers, landowner and so on).

It's a shame that the sign is sandwiched between those of two funeral directors! 

Perhaps it will help to bring some urgency to the potential client's tree planting plans ("Hmmm, must get that will sorted and make arrangements for the headstone........ oh, yes, and plant some trees before I go....").

Then again, perhaps not.

In fact, I returned a couple of days ago, but I have been busy doing the post survey GIS work and tidying-up the fieldwork results so I have only just found the time to make this post.

The trip came about because rhododendron and cotoneaster have been doing what they do best: being a nuisance and spreading into places where they should not be.  In that regard, the cotoneaster has formed extensive stands as an understorey in some of the woodland under the Trust's management and, somewhat less frequently, across adjacent hill ground that SNH manages.

Likewise, the rhododendron has been up to it's usual tricks and doing the same, this time forming some really nasty stands on very boggy ground that was not at all fun to survey in the, sometimes inclement, weather.

Both the Community Trust and SNH intend to do something about these hooligan plant species, so they asked me to establish the extent of the the problem and suggest some approaches to dealing with each area. 

Regarding that weather, I experienced a couple of really wet days that stretched my recording methods to breaking point. My waterproof document holder wasn't and it was a challenge to keep charging my electronic mapping device from a portable powerbank when everything was soaking wet.

Fortunately, I prevailed and the work was completed on time.  I even had a couple of very nice days while in the field and took some photos during this time and while I was waiting for the ferry home.

I thought that I would show some of the photos here and provide some links for further information on Rum.

As a destination for some peaceful rest and relaxation, Rum is well worth a visit.  The ferry timetable provides an opportunity to spend a few hours exploring the Kinloch area in both summer and winter and there is a modern bunkhouse and camping (owned by the community trust) for longer stays.

But first, let's get started with the pictures. 

And that, as they say, was that. 

For those wanting more information on Rum, including details of its fascinating geological history,  I recommend SNH's excellent free PDF on Rum and the Small Isles here.

For more information on Rum, including practical advice for visitors and details of the history of the Isle of Rum Community Trust, see this link.

And finally (finally!) here is a link to the Facebook page for the bunkhouse. Jed is the manager there and you'll receive a quick reply to any enquiry. It stays open for most of the year and, seeing as there is as much chance of sunny weather in the winter as there is at any other time of the year, an out of season trip is worthwhile.

Thanks for reading. 

I planted three thousand trees in a small farm woodland that I have been developing for a farming client this year.

It has been a nice little project and quite unusual for me in so much as the trees are being planted on a flat and fertile field located at sea level.  Until just a few weeks ago, the field had been full of sheep. 

It is not too often that I get to design woodland on ground of this quality.  Usually, it is only the less fertile - and considerably more hilly - upland environment that is made available to forestry. 

However, in this case the farmer wanted to diversify his business and add a little character and woodland habitat in the area around the main farm buildings at the same time.  A small mixed conifer and broadleaved woodland was his chosen method of achieving this.

The grant rates for the work were good and I kept my prices low so that even such a small project would be financially viable. As a result, we all got something out of it, including the taxpaying public who indirectly funded some of the work through the Scotland Rural Development Programme. 

While the physical tree planting aspect of a project such as this does not pay very well, it is a rewarding thing to do because one gets to be involved in all aspects of the work, from undertaking the initial site evaluation work (I recall digging soil pits on a wet and wintry day) through to budgeting, detailed design work, producing grant applications, instructing the ground preparation contractors, arranging for new fences to be built and, ultimately, sourcing the trees and sticking them in the ground.

It WAS hard work though and I was remiss in not taking some pictures of the finished project to post here. 

I do have an excuse of sorts though. Each tree required a vole guard so, by the time I had planted the tree, added the vole guard, and tidied up the work site afterwards I was in no mood to put my phone in my muddy and tired hands and take some snaps.

I am going back to the farm to do some planning for a larger woodland soon - located this time in a more typical upload setting - so I may get some pictures then.

Until then, perhaps you would like to see the October 2017 issue of the Strathnairn News for your fix of local colour. 

The Strathnairn News is a small newsletter that is produced both by and for a farming community in a nearby strath. I thought that I would place a short run of adverts in it to see if I could get some business closer to home (my tree planting work this week was a two hour trip from home - I left at half past five in the morning each day and got home at half past seven in the evening).

My advert will not win any design awards, but I produced it myself and it gets the point across, I hope.

Interested readers can download the current copy from my Google Drive here.

Even if you live outside of the area, it is an interesting insight into the daily life of a rural community in the Highlands. 

Until next time, stay frosty.

Fortunately the weather was reasonably benign, with just a few passing showers.

It helps if it is not too wet because I find that writing on a printed aerial image of the site is still the best way of producing the most accurate results.  I am not a technophobe by any means and I still make use of my phone for recording GPS data and establishing my precise location.  However, patterns of vegetation cover on the aerial photo are usually sufficient to allow me to orientate myself and - together with a peat probe, spade and visual clues of the underlying ground conditions -  produce a rough design for a new woodland that I then digitise and tweak when back in the office.

The system fails if it is really raining hard, even when using waterproof paper and adapting my work method to make more use of the phone, which is less affected by the weather unless it is really grim.

I had quite a lot of ground to cover and the ever changing landform and plant communities prevented me from making too many assumptions about the suitability of any particular area for supporting tree establishment (peat depth being the most significant constraint in this respect). 

Because I had so little time, I did not stop to take too many pictures and those that I did take are not that great. 

Even so, I present a few of them here as they provide a good indication of the type of ground that I was surveying and the reasons for doing it.

The building is called Tallwood House and it is 18 storeys high and made mostly of pre fabricated timber components, plus the usual steel and concrete elements. 

It may not be entirely made from wood, but it is a pretty impressive undertaking that demonstrates the ongoing resurgence of timber framed buildings. 

I thought that timber framed buildings started and finished with one or two storey affairs, so I was impressed to read that it has eighteen levels and is a stately fifty three metres tall.

There's a picture of the finished building at the bottom of this post.

For more information, please see the original post on the excellent Web Urbanist blog or go direct to the University of British Columbia's website to see their page on the building.

The UBC page also links to this interesting time lapse video of the construction process.

 * According to the Office of National Statistics, the average British male is 175.3 cm tall, so I am technically above average in both stature and, having now uncovered this fact, height-related smugness.....

I have several topics of discussion rattling around in my cavernous (i.e. empty)  brain space but I have just not had the time to work them up into a post. Perhaps those impending cold, long and dark winter nights will provide the opportunity.

That said, I may even be too busy to post much even then. I am certainly hoping that this will be the case with my work situation once the adverts that I recently procured begin to take effect.

Here's a picture of the first of them. It's a modest advert in the Autumn/Winter 2017 issue of Reforesting Scotland magazine. I designed it myself using the open source Libreoffice Write (a good alternative to Microsoft's Word product but a bit buggy and frustrating to use sometimes).

I have included a picture of the magazine cover in case any reader wishes to rush out and buy it!

I will be trialling the advert and monitoring the responses it generates over the next several issues.

One other source of advertising that I hope to capture on camera is a large (2 metre by 1 metre) sign that I had made for a special location. I forgot to take a photo when I collected the sign from the supplier so I will now need to do this once it is in position.

It looked quite smart when I took it out of the van, I thought.

I would love to take credit for that particular marketing idea, but it was a client that suggested it to me (thanks Nigel!) 

I will post details of that later.... if you can stand the suspense!

1. The cost of the Calmac ferry from Mallaig.

It was only £8.30 for a return trip. I think it is subsidised. The boat was modern, spotless and the staff friendly and helpful. The only downside is that one cannot book in advance. I was told that it could be busy, what with it being Peak Tourist at the moment, so I arrived early to ensure that I would manage to get on the boat. It In fact, it was only moderately busy. The return trip was almost full though and the slow moving traffic on my return dash back to Foyers via Fort William had me using my full vocabulary of expletives! :/

2. It is well worth a trip.

The people were friendly and helpful and there is a nice ambience at Kinloch, the place where the ferry docks and the islanders live. There's a great cafe and a well stocked shop, camping in a number of forms, lots of paths and walks, otters, eagles and archaeological interests, including the abandoned settlement of Harris, which sounded like a great place to wild camp.

Sadly, I didn't have the time to do any of that. I was working don'tchaknow...

 3. There are hardly any midges.

Actually, I was very lucky in this respect. Normally, I think the midges on Rum are reputed to be among the worst. I took my full arsenal of midge protection and defence but the hot sun, stiff breeze and dry conditions kept them all away.

I was hassled by them more in my own garden at Foyers when I finally got back home :D 

All told, the island is well worth a day trip or an overnight stay (or more).

Here are some pictures that I took:

Perhaps this is a sign that a good clean is required :D

It moved too quickly to take a photo but this slow worm, who was found in the exact same place a week later, was not so fast.

It couldn't climb the lip on the door frame to get back out so I picked it up and set it free on the grass. It was surprisingly strong in its wriggling. I found it - or another one like it -  sunbathing on top of the compost heap a few days later.

I haven't seen a slow worm in the garden for a few years but they are common around here. My neighbours often see them. They are surprisingly long lived and most welcome for the sterling work they do in keeping the slug population in check. 

Considering the amount of slugs eating my plants, I think they need to improve their game a little bit. Both them and the toads, which are now appearing in relative abundance. 

I know from my subscription to the Public Contracts Scotland website that both Forestry Commission Scotland and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds are both actively restoring peatland at Forsinard and other areas of the Flow Country.

The work often involves clearfelling inappropriate coniferous woodland, and blocking drainage ditches. To do this, excavators and other heavy plant work on very soft ground where there can be a very real risk of getting stuck. Aside from a great deal of operator skill, this is made possible by fitting the machines with wide tracks to reduce ground pressure.

Here's a link to an informative brief on the work, produced by Scottish Natural Heritage. 

The RSPB's page on their work is here.

Interested land managers would do well to take a look at SNH's Peatland ACTION project page. 

And finally, the Scottish Rural Network's information on the project can be found here. 

Their newsletter often contains interesting information on forestry, farming and community matters. I recommend it!

I am proud and relieved to have made it though my first year, although somewhat ashamed that it has taken me so long to get this website to its current state.

I would love to say that I have been too busy to even contemplate writing all the content that was necessary before I could get this far, but that would be a little dishonest of me.

Sure, I have had a surprising and varied work load for my first year, but the delay is really my own doing. Squarespace's templates are excellent and easy to use but I just got bogged-down in all the detail. I tried writing too much too soon.

Still, it's done now and I am happy. I hope you like it.

Hopefully, it wont take me so long to write my next post!