Treemageddon

In early December were endured Storm Darragh which brought down 1 rowan Sorbus aucuparia; 2 sceagh Crataegus monogyna and and large ½ ash Fraxinus excelsior. Oddly, the night before the storm, another rowan, which had been leaning uphill forever, quietly sank to the ground as if exhausted. When Éowyn blasted through 7 weeks later it was a much bigger event nationally but we only lost one (1) more rowan. Inconveniently that was 320m from the woodshed: as far as you can get and still be on the farrrm. More importantly, it was 25m downhill; which makes an uphill struggle with a loaded wheelbarrow.  Rowan is about the least useful tree we have. It is beloved by ivy Hedera helix; it tend to branch copiously from near the base; it tends to have standing dead branches; the bark of these branches stays on and stays wet which tends to rot out the timber. Even if you can get the timber out of the wet (by shucking off the skin and covering it against the rain) it may still be punky before it's ready as firewood.

The key thing for drying wood is to a) increase the water-shedding surface area by cutting to lengths and splitting b) persuading the breeze to whisk past sucking out the moisture c) keeping the rain off. In that order, i.m.o. The design of the wall of the woodshed was hit-and-miss vertical cedar planks with staggered gaps which (in theory) allow breeze and discourage rain. In processing the fallen rowan trees, I started filling one bay of the woodshed [4ft wide] with logs and billets ~35cm long. When I had stacked two ranks of these logs 1200mm W by 2000mm H [that's about half a cord for Nordamericanos] I figured that the wind-whistling was getting diminishing returns. Resolved therefore to give what I had stacked a few months of unimpeded drying and start another pile elsewhere.

What you see [L], is cannibalized parts of our storm destroyed trampoline, formed into 2 squares of tubes braced 30cm apart and oriented N-S -- at right angles to the prevailing wind. The N side of the square [to the R] is tied up against an old apple tree. It's not a permanent solution, and I'm hoping it won't collapse before I decide it's time to move the semi dried logs into the woodshed. And let me say that, since picture was taken, I have at least doubled the quantity of logs on the rack.

I thought I was working through the wind-throw of Darragh in quite good time, I R not 30 anymore, so I am not getting all macho about Outdoor Work. One tank of gas in the chain saw will see me through a happy hour of chop-chop with a bit of pully-hauly to see what I'm doing. Then it's 🛑 stop.

But walking through the fields to the most distant fallen rowan, I clocked that 3 more downed rowan trees [all with too much ivy and so too much windage]. It's a bit disheartening because rowan is kinda useless [as explained above] but I can't let them lie where they are: collapsed over fences and occluding the grass from sheep. I think we've have more trees down in the last ten weeks than in the previous ten years. And we can't blame ash-dieback.