We tend to harvest hazel coppice in Wintertime when the trees and the flora are dormant. It’s also a time when there are less other things to do at work. Co-incidentally, it’s cooler in Winter as well, and cutting coppice is a warm job!

I don’t make a lot of charcoal, but I do get the fines – which is the unmarketably small charcoal – which is used to make bio-char. I just add mine to the domestic compost bin and hope it’s doing some good. Like the spent brewer’s grains from my brewing, the wild red worms in the bins love it – I think I could sell the worms as a byproduct!

A friend of mine in Kentucky is getting involved with bio-char. Are you familiar with this?

Coppicing is an old traditional way of managing woodlands in the UK. I’m working in the coppice woodland again next week and I’ll take a few more photos and go through the process. It is rather different for the woods where I’m working as the cutting rotation has been neglected for many, many years and it should be cut about every 7 years.

Watch this space!

KRs,

Richard

I look forward to learning more from you about coppicing, what it looks like when you start (a tree trunk cut flush with the ground?), how it grows and gets harvested. Nobody coppices in these parts.