Porter

Apologies for the rather retrospective nature of the blog posts so far. It was my intention to start a blog from week one of June, but as I'm sure you can appreciate, the work pretty much overruled this idea. What I'm attempting to do is condense the past few months into a few salient blog posts to give a good idea of what has been happening to date, and then update as and when something exciting happens, or something useful can be shared.

Anyways, here's a little info on Porter, for those who'd like to know.

Porter is a 1954 Ferguson TED20 tractor, powered by a four cylinder Standard engine which can be run on Petrol or TVO (vapourising oil). Porter was originally supplied to a farmer in the Hamlet of Martin near Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire by Boston Tractors and was used in an orchard and an adjacent woodland for various uses and had a rather hard life having had a new engine and gearbox at some point, before being abandoned in a hedgerow.


The tractor was purchased from the original owner and restored by its previous owner, to its current condition and was used predominantly for showing and light ploughing duties. Here are a few snaps of before/during restoration.

I decided I needed a tractor, having brushed-off the idea of doing all of the work using an old Land Rover with a winch as being too costly. I'd also dismissed the concept of a tracked unit for moving logs on the grounds of versatility; so a tractor it was to be!

The Ferguson TE20 came in a number of guises centred around intended use and fuel type, but all were suited to the Ferguson range of implements, of which I might add, there are/were many. Porter in fact came with a two furrow mouldboard plough, which may see use in the future depending upon the fate of the meadow. I swiftly made a complimentary purchase for Porter, namely a rear transport box which can be seen in use here;

Whilst Porter is certainly not up to concours standards, he is in good nick, both mechanically and cosmetically speaking, however that wasn't the case when he arrived. Initially the starter solenoid wasn't functioning correctly (the TE20 series of tractors started by means of a sixth 'starter' gear which actuated a small switch in front of the centre console), so Porter had to be started by shorting the terminals with an old set of pliers, which was er....'fun' to say the least. The fuel wasn't particularly clean either; the petrol tank is split into two compartments, the largest of which contains the TVO, however it was full of rust so it needs to be stripped and re-sealed at some point. I've already had the carburettor stripped and rebuilt (for less than the cost of parts to do it myself, which was a bonus), and the spark plugs have been replaced for a fresh set of NGK's. I'm still not happy with tick over, but I'm sure smooth running will come in time, especially once I've got a new distributor cap and a couple of gaskets for the manifold.

Anyways, that's about all I can tell you about Porter at the moment, I'll leave you with a few more pics of him in all his glory:

 And I couldn't resist one of Evelyn 'The gaffer'.

Erecting a 'post and wire' fence

As part of the legal obligation of the purchase of the land, we needed to erect approximately 250 metres of post and wire fence along the longest boundary (sods law eh!?) to the south and south west of the wood, within two calendar months of the purchase date. Initially, I'm happy to admit that I was very daunted by this prospect as 250 metres of fencing is no mean feat, even to an experienced fencing contractor. Whilst I consider myself a reasonably practical kinda' chap, this project was well out of my comfort zone, and it had to be done right-first time, and rapidly. We were aware of this obligation from the outset, as this stipulation was made within the sales particulars, which gave me plenty of time to do the sums and research.

Initially I looked at paying a local fencing contractor to do the works, but unfortunately quotes came back at around £8 per metre, which was to supply and fit high-tensile galvanised steel wire to softwood treated posts. All-in, therefore, the cost of the fencing would work out at £2000. Based upon this figure, I didn't even bother asking for quotes to supply and fit sweet chestnut fencing, which was my preferred choice for ethical, environmental and maintenance reasoning.

Sweet Chestnut (Castanea Sativa to give it its correct Latin nomenclature) is not an indigenous species to the UK, having been introduced by the Romans, but it is prolific in the south east of England where it has been coppiced for centuries to produce poles and stakes for Hop production. The reason why Sweet Chestnut is so desirable for fence posts etc, is its resistance to decomposition when in contact with the ground due the tannins within the wood. In fact, Sweet Chestnut has a comparable tannin content to Oak, which is obviously considerably more expensive and generally harder to coppice. The premise of this post and wire fence is to provide a degree of stock-proofing to the land, whilst also providing a strong, flexible boundary line to demark the edge of the plot, as cheaply as possible. Unless the ground is particularly soft, this type of fence should require nothing other than the wooden posts and the wire between, which means that concrete is not used.

With my mind already made up for me to 'DIY' due to the costs of contracting the work, I set about obtaining quotations for supply and delivery only of the following:
11 No 6" Diameter 7' Peeled & Pointed Strainer Posts
25 No 5" Diameter 7' Peeled & Pointed Struts
140 No 4" Diameter 5'6" Peeled & Pointed Intermediate Stakes

The most favourable quotation for all of the above came from CWP Fencing (http://www.cwpfencing.co.uk) at just shy of £675 delivered to Derby from Ashford, Kent. An order was placed, and withing a week the back garden was full of chestnut posts ready to be ferried down to the woodlands as required.


I took a week of work inJune to begin the fencing, joined on alternate days by Gemma, Mark and my folks to assist me with the fencing or provide tea. Without this help and support (and a huge bowl of porridge every morning), I can safely say that the fence would not have gone up so quickly, if at all!


The erection of the fence begins by installing two of the larger 'Struts' braced with a 'strainer' towards the top, at each end of the fence line. Each of the struts are placed into a post hole which has been dug to a depth of three feet into the soil/rock and backfilled with whatever arisings created from the excavation. These strut and strainer combinations are called 'box strainers' and should look something like this;

We were rather fortunate that the exact changes in direction of our boundary had been marked out by a land surveyor before beginning the fence by means of a number of 3' long by 2" square stakes. I was personally quite keen to get these stakes replaced with the vertical strainer posts as quickly as possible because of the potential for these to be removed with ease if anyone toook umbridge to the woods being carved up and sold-off. Where there is a proposed change in direction of the fence line, a single strut is installed rather than a box strainer. The strut is the braced by roughly morticing two strainers approximately one third to half-way between ground level and the top of the post like so:

The strainers are aligned along the course of the fence, therefore it's prudent, although not essential, to use a string line to assist when doing this:

Once you've mortised the point end of the strut into the strainer, and aligned the blunt end with the direction of the fence, a narrow trench must be dug to accomodate the end of the strut. The trench need only be a spade's with, and around 8" deep at most; the end of the strut is then placed into the base of the trench. Whilst taking a break from mortising the strainer posts to accomodate the struts, a stob was fashioned from the end of a 4" intermediate post, to a length of 2' or so. This stob was offered up to the base of the strut and driven into the ground at an angle to provide a solid foundation for the strut to brace against (apologies for my crappy sketch):

After digging the first couple of post holes through reasonably easy sand, I was gutted to encounter 'hard as nails' Sandstone (yeah, that's an official geological term). It took some hellish work in the blazing sun to advance into this stuff and get all of the box strainers, directional strainers and struts into place. Having got them all into place, the next step was to install the bottom wire. I opted to use high tensile galvanised wire upon recommendation from a few folks, not to mention a good friend of mine; Craig Dasilva. It was an absolute sod to work with as my buddy Mark found out when helping; the wire takes every opportunity to twist itself around like an eel, but once its taught it wont stretch much! When it comes to fixing the wires around the box strainers (i.e. tying-off the wire) I initially started by using knots which I learned here from this guy in New Zealand (via Youtube);
Post and wire fence tips.
Once one end of the fence has been tied-off around a box strainer, a monkey strainer can be used to tighten the wire before tying another knot. Whilst the guy from NZ makes it look easy, it really isn't! My knots looked awful, so I ended up purchasing some Gripples, which are essentially a small non-return device which slides onto the wire and grips by means of a cam. Much quicker and easier, and holding firm so far!!

At this point, the most laborious task was upon us: knocking in the intermediate posts. This basically involves installing a post every 2.5 metres by way of knocking them in with a post rammer. The rammer is a simple tool, comprising a section of steel tube of 6" diameter by 3' long, with one end blanked off and two handles welded to the sides. Mark and myself took it in turns to do the donkey work, whilst the other checked the post was going in straight. Surprisingly, we did it in no time at all considering the heat we were working in and the overall length of the fence! Because we were on a bit of a roll at this point, the second length of wire went up before sunset as well:

In the last photo, you may notice the addition of a little grey Ferguson tractor, which arrived midway through the works. Sadly it was too late for the bulk of the hard work, but 'Porter' was still able to help with hauling large numbers of intermediate posts up to the top of the woodland. More info to come later in the year...

Right, back to the fencing.

Now both the upper and lower wires were in position, all that remained was the addition of three further wires to finalise it, as well as the temporary erection of the gateway fence and gate posts. The three wires were installed as per the first two and then tacked into position utilising staples. It is important not to drive the staples all the way into the posts, thereby nipping the wire, as the wire needs to be able to run freely to allow for expansion and contraction. If the wires are abraded by the staples, they will eventually lose the galvanised coating, thereby prematurely rusting the wire.

That's about it for the fencing to be honest. The next project will be purchasing and installing the gates! I'll leave you with a photo of the fence in its completed state:

Beginnings.

"As an ook cometh of a litel spyr"


I wanted to begin a blog about my experiences of woodland ownership way back in the late Autumn of 2011, when my wife and I first began to seriously consider purchasing woodland. Of course, back then, there seemed to be an innumerable amount of obstacles to block the path to our intended goal; such as building a deposit, securing further finance, choosing a solicitor, finding the land, making an offer etc. At the time the list seemed endless, and almost every conversation we had about woodland began with "If we're ever lucky enough to buy woodland....". The future seemed so uncertain, not only because the recession had bitten deep and money was not readily available as it was pre-financial crisis, but also because little information in the form of blogs, websites etc were available that documented woodland ownership from conception to management and beyond.

In the beginning, we found a brochure from an agent in the midlands advertising a four individual woods, the smallest of which was fourteen acres. We valued the land, by comparison with other woodlands around the country, at £4000 per acre and made a bid for seven acres. After much to'ing and fro'ing, we settled on a three and a half acre section of one of the woodlands at nearer £5000 per acre, and felt a little sore to say the least. The agent and the vendor seemed in no rush to negotiate or communicate with us, and generally projected the feeling to us that the sale was an inconvenience. Fair enough! Looking from a different angle than our own, they were the vendors and it was their land, therefore they could do as they wished. In this world, those with the money/assets can do or act as they please, or that's the way it seemed.

The initial sale negotiations drew to a close and the solicitors were 'given the nod' to begin drawing up contracts in June, approximately four months since we first saw the brochure. The first draft of contracts arrived a couple of weeks later (our solicitor was very good at her job!) but we noticed a clause stating that we were responsible for paying the vendors fees; nearly £500! This was the penultimate nail in the coffin of this particular negotiation, and we decided to hedge our bets and look elsewhere whilst still progressing, at a diminshed pace, with the sale.

Within a couple of days we had found and planned a visit to see another wood, a little further away to the south of Derbyshire, not far from Swadlincote, within the National Forest. On paper, the woodland looked a bit lacking if I'm brutally honest. It had been planted as part of the National Forest woodland creation scheme back in 1998 and was comprised of blocks of species with a mixture of sixty percent broadleaf and forty percent coniferous and was lacking any form of topographic feature. It wasn't great, but it was reasonably priced.

Upon setting foot upon the land, I can safely say we had no 'thunderbolt' moment that others speak of; there was no sense of feeling 'right' or belonging, just a feeling of calm and the smell of woodland and grassland in equal measure. As we investigated further, we noticed a parcel of 4.5 acres which contained about half an acre of grassland, situated atop a sandy bank (complete with huge badger sett and rabbit warren, overlooking a shallow valley and farmland below.....This was to become 'it'.....Badger's Holt Wood.

Negotiations began and a deal was struck that was both favourable and rapid, and the agents of the first plot were politely informed where to get off. Recalling from memory, I think the whole sale negotation period for Badger's Holt lasted less that three weeks, I wish the same could have been applied once terms had been agreed!

From August, up until completion at the end of May the following year a lot happened, but given the time scale it seemed to drag considerably, mainly due to the nature of the purchase, whereby a larger wood was being fragmented and sold off. Searches and access permissions took longer than normal, and the contracts were written, re-written, and re-written several times more. At first it seemed that despite a clear field entry from a farm track to the wood, we were only at liberty to cross the access on foot or by horse!! However our excellent solicitor advised us to pursue vehicular access for 'Forestry, Agricultural and Amenity' purposes, which was finally agreed by the vendor. Further complcations arose when our initial woodland mortage offer expired and had to be applied for in full again, but fortunately our solicitor and the wonderful folks at Ecology sorted this in short order. Completion and exchange of contracts came in the last week of May, and the fun began in earnest the following weekend.