Trees & Walls

We had a great few days out at Grindleford Primary School last week, reducing their trees in the trim trail area the kids use for forest school and mud kitchens etc. Unfortunately on day 2 it snowed heavily and we had to reschedule for a Sunday session! Fortunately on the Sunday, the weather was perfect, […]

Putting the surgery in tree surgery. We spent a great day out in the Peak making this rotten old silver birch safe for a customer, eventually having to remove one entire stem, which was almost entirely decomposed, with huge tell-take splits down the trunk. Not a fun climbing job, but rigging off the other (smaller) […]

Seems like the summer sandstone dry stone wall projects are flying off the shelf. This is for Abigail and Duncan in Bamford. turning their small wasteland into something a bit more controlled that they will now be able to manage themselves, grow some veg around and the kids will be able to enjoy playing around […]

Hedge planting in Bakewell Bare root hedge plants are currently quite cheap and you’ll find that a lot of nurseries and online companies are having sales and promotions at the moment. This is to mark the end of the bare root season, after which hedge plants must really be planted with root ball or in […]

Today we have been dismantling a silver birch tree. Small, but right across a really busy road and also with three BT telephone lines going through it! So not so easy. It’s great now it’s gone though and owner John got a good amount of firewood to burn next winter.

The weather this weekend has been amazing. Literally t shirt weather in late December. What a great chance to get some gardening work and late hedge cutting done. But beware of the fungi and bacteria that are still around causing disease and rot where it wouldn’t usually be at this time of the year- clear […]

Winter with the wood chipper. This month and the next 2 are the season to be carrying out major tree works and disturbances. As most trees are in their dormant phase in the winter, the sap has receded into the inner parts of the tree prior to new growth, the tree is less prone to […]

These English longhorns are quite valuable beasts,  but also very destructive. They got used to trampling through this hole in the wall, and using it as a thoroughfare, after it’d been taken down by a fallen tree bough. It was quite a job to dissuade them from going over the foundations and it had to […]

A big ‘Thank you’ to everyone who sponsored me for the Bob Graham Round, which we completed with a great team from The Peak and Lakes in 22 hours and 46 minutes! We had a great day out on the hill, ran up over 8000 metres, 42 Lakeland fells and about 70 miles in the time… […]

Quite happy with this rebuild at Bubnell completed last week just in time for farmer Chris’ son’s wedding reception in the field a day afterwards- phew! Thanks go to Steve Atkinson of Cumbria DSWA for the help with this and the advice along the way, as well as for putting up with shoddy stone, virile cows […]