Hi everyone,

As you know we had our small spruce wood thinned in January – over 200 trees were felled and that created large piles of branches all around our site. I’m talking piles of organic material about 5 feet high in places! Obviously you can leave some to decay naturally, as seen in my previous film ‘burning bright’, but we are aiming for as much natural regrowth of trees as possible so we are going to deal with it by chipping it, with a big chipper.

Like the tree-marking workshop (the first step in converting the spruce into a real permanent forest) of last year, we are inviting everyone interested to ‘chip’ in – as we are literally going to chip/mulch all of this. Volunteers will be able to take home their own sitka mulch (we have a feeling it might not be that great on the garden, but early indications seem to suggest it might be better as an organic paving material). Also on offer will be loads of hotcross buns, lashings of hot tea/other refreshments etc. (Thanks to Edmund, another local Pro Silva forester for already volunteering last night). Visitors will also note, we are right under Mt Leinster, so we can direct you the nearby lookout ).

We will be chipping (the main task will be dragging branches to the chipper) on this Easter Sat, Sun and Monday. Email me if you are interested and I will send on details. All welcome, even those curious as to just looking at the steps that we are taking to change Ireland’s first small-holding spruce plantation to a real, healthy, biodiverse forest.

By the way, our forest is now working for us and ensuring it’s future too, as it’s been drummed into me by forestry friends, ‘the forest that pays, stays!‘ We’ve sold our first trailer of wood – our first customer wasn’t worried that the wood needed to dry or be cut up – in fact, Eileen’s nephew has already split and stacked it for next winter.

By the way, I have finally started using a new computer for editing – it’s been driving me crazy over the last year as I have so much footage for this SLOW ART project, but I did a very small piece on Sunday to get my eye back in training, editing wise (see below). It’s quite lighthearted, not very arty but I think you get the idea how our forest was thinned – unfortunately, I didn’t get any footage of the Ironhorse in action as I was working, but still… ps it looks better if you watch it in HQ.
Its dedicated to Darragh and Leo, two woodbe, already tv star gardeners/foresters 🙂

Irish translation of music: ‘no bugs on me’, I expect is the literal translation of ‘no flies on me’ in Irish ;-)!!