Paul with his battery chain saw, Jim with the old petrol chain saw, Blake from forest school, tall Gemma all worked that first day, not raining, but in dull weather. Charlie arrived, new to our coppicing network, new to this wood and new to us all, he’d just bought a wood – to put bees – and was eager to learn the wood ways, a good complement to his software development day job and he got stuck in. He was also a keen talker and there is a skill in working and talking and I do not have it. After felling the over stretched Maple, we concentrated the day on coppicing around the eastern boundary, the boundary that for a time in my wild dreams I may have occupied, yes, I lost the land of Valley View this year a sadness that sits deeply.
The overstretched old maple coppice was felled into the still full flood pond, and having moved the bees, we winched the fallen branches out, Gemma doing a magnificent sort into various useful piles for wood stoves. Paul noticed how wet the stumps were with rising sap – yesterday was the first day of warmer weather after all the cold and snow from the beast from the east. On the eastern boundary, after Paul took down some lower oak branches to enable light for regeneration, he taught Blake and Gemma the gentle art of hedge laying. Over lunch (butternut squash chilli coconut soup) we heard Blake’s story of how he and his father drank Liberty cap (magic mushroom) tea, not once but twice. Father and son.
The next day the same team minus Jim and a duller day which we eventually forsook when rain arrived. With Paul, Phillipa arrived, who I had not seen for years. She’d planned to construct a cabin, made by Paul and came to see this manifestation. We found all sorts of connections from our pasts, PH and Bob, but most astonishing of all – she recognised the hard wood mix glass cabin doors. Were they by any chance from Gillian Wells? she asked. She’d bought a set of 4 pairs from a reclaim merchant, where Gill had sold her doors to, I’d got the last two, gifted (although sometimes Gill forgets this) as I helped to clear out Model Farm. With Paul and Blake leaving with the rain arriving, Gemma and I walked the dogs to East lodge, to see the progression of work there (garage and garage conversion) and when back, the rain had stopped so we began clearing up the fallen coppice. ‘I am always building, always constructing’ observed Gemma of her hazel stick constructions around the stool to protect it. Jon arrived, fresh from a First Aid course, to tell us when you can and not apply a tourniquet. From Gemma again, I learned something I surely should have known all my life. Picking up a piece of natural chalk from the clay at the back of East Lodge, she said,
‘Chalk, ah, the precursor to Limestone, and like Limestone, made by crustacean period, time of dinasoars. Calcium carbonate, formed underwater by slow accumulation and compression of the calcite shells of single-celled coccolithophores. When this sedimentary rock is further compressed and metamorphosed, it may become limestone and then marble.
‘Do you ever volunteer? asked Gemma, and I mumbled a response, but questioned why she asked and this is her second gift of the day (she said something like this): ‘When I volunteer I find my mind is free to wander – in a liberating way, which it is more constrained when I do contracted or paid work. It is surprisingly creative.’
Jon taught us that in Essex coppice workers were called Higglers. As often happens with Jon who fires on many cylinders (in an inspiring way, I add), we meandered the idea of getting back into rotation – setting up a group of people to travel around coppicing in the winter in exchange for wood, and working woodland which would otherwise be left to go. Same as Richard set up in Reydon. This came about as we explored Gemma’s dilemna, a lime worker from April to September but what about those winter months? The coppice work fits well into here, she was finding. The dogs cavorted by the pond, birds sang.
‘Ah these rich verandah conversations’, said Gemma before she swung her long leg over her bike cross bar, and peddled off to her home, where ever that was this evening. I gifted her a bow saw, gloves and bottle of Sisilian wine – ah the joy of gifting.
Kaliwood 