An Informative Afternoon- Glenlyon Kirk 17th July 2010 12.00-5.00

Remember the excitement of phase one of the Home Heating Assessments ( I'm only joking- how could you forget)?  Well, set your thrill receptors to max because there is more to come.

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 A glen resident waves goodbye following a survey in Phase One

Not only is Heat survey Phase 2 happening soon (please contact GWI if you live in the glen and would like your house surveyed), but now that most people have got their Phase 1 results, we are holding a woodfuel informative afternoon /open day type thing to answer any queries about the survey results, any questions about woodfuel heating in general and to provide up to date, glen focused information on the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).
Woodfuel expert Bernd Pinamonti and RHI consultant Steve Luker will actually be here, in Glenlyon to discuss, one on one, your personal woodfuel heating requirements and options,  Potential payback times should RHI become policy, and, how much wood you might need a year- cost of, etc.This is an excellent opportunity to really learn about woodfuel heating options, from people working in the field.

People are looking forward to it already. One resident contemplates the upcoming event.

Sorry I just remembered how exciting this must be for you - the reader, I probably should have said sit down first. Now would you like some water? 
Feeling a bit calmer, I 'll carry on. In addition, people from The Big Shed project (Shedi's) and the Loch Tay  Food Chain will be giving a talk and discussing the really interesting and positive actions and opportunities that are happening "over the hill", and what benefits they could bring for people in the glen.

Bracing themselves for a long wait- The Informative Afternoon is not until the 17th of July.

Locally grown Small Round Wood (SRW) products will be on display and available for sale, plenty of long whippy poles are a certainty so if you are struggling for Teepee poles for runner beans or that sort of thing, you will be in luck. This SRW  comes from some further coppice experimentation (Coppice Experiment 2)

Coppice Experiment 2. This bit of woodland looks better now its been thinned.

We have lots of poles from the thinning, they make much better pea supports than imported bamboo does
All of the above topics really need a blog of their own; Bernd has done a great job on the heat surveys. His survey forms are really comprehensive breaking down easily into payback with and without RHI (on ave... respectively). Steve Lukers input on RHI has, right from the start given the project an added economic impetus and awareness of how this innovative initiative makes the payback times for conversion to woodfuel compared to staying on oil  "A No Brainer Mate" according to my Australian friend Jason.

Shepherds, Farmers, Mole trappers, Dykers and assorted forestry types are all welcome.

During the afternoon I will no doubt gibber on about forestry and wood fuel supply chains and some other things.  Oh yes, we will very probably have an extraction demo from an Iron Horse - possibly the most low impact, economical extraction device available and undoubtedly the bit of the day you will chat to your nippers about. Incidentally no Jason an Iron Horse is not what Ned Kelly rode about on.

 

 These Iron horses really are quite astonishing, as you will see if you follow this link
http://www.artcom-tradebridge.com/ironhorse.html   

After watching this link an appropriate thing to say may be..."Golly Gosh those Iron Horses really are a spiffing looking bit of kit, well done Swedish chaps. 
If this short film has left you suddenly realising what a gap there is in your life as concerns viewing small tracked vehicles in action, you may find this next link heartening. This one is also recommended watching for fans of ultra dramatic music and implausible emergency situations, something one will rarely see in mainstream films methinks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCdvIzMxpt8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

The way the music picks you up, exciting, exciting, rescue, rescue, and then changes for the interior cab shots is just thrilling... you will see what I mean (I hope).

By the way- Children are welcome at the Informative Afternoon, I think they will find it interesting too.

How would Sam Steele have dealt with BP?

Despite being unusually busy I have read and enjoyed numerous books lately (as always),  and sometimes while perusing  "The Silvicture  and Management of Coppice Woodlands"   or the rather excellent Woodland Way by Ben Law, I have paused and thought " Oh I must mention that in a blog". Sometimes I mention these interesting things to my partner and sometimes she answers.
Anyway I was feeling a bit stuck for a blog- so much is happening Springwise and everything else that I just could not find something to focus in on- as I say so much is happening at the moment- then from the pages of a book the woodfuel message leapt out, relevant to modern society and potentially accompanied by astonishing photos. I think we all know that they can be an important component for a good blog.

News on the radio this morning that the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico is potentially double the amount previously estimated was accompanied by BP's share price rising 7%, as investors hope the American President is going to stop shouting at BP.

Yesterday I was reading of how BP's emergency plan for containment of a leak in the gulf were so detailed  they not only included plans for cleaning Walruses, inhabitants of sub Artic regions rather than the Florida coastline, but also listed a Japanese home shopping website as one of its "Primary equipment providers .....for rapid deployment in spill response resources on a 24 hour, seven days a week basis". The author of the article I was reading suggested that perhaps the whole document had been cut and pasted from a plan for Alaska.
Anything else - Oh Yes  I remember - Number Crunching Private Eye No 1262-

£6 - Hourly payment by BP to volunteers clearing up after oil spill.
£1.500- Hourly pay of BP Boss Tony " Its not our accident" Hayward
£1,500,000- Hourly profits of BP in last quarter
I would like to say that all the above made me really angry about the way massive oil companies and large corporations in general behave as regards their environmental responsibilities, but I can no longer remember a time when I wasn't really angry about that, so no joy there then.

What has been quite interesting is seeing Barack Obama become annoyed at BP and enter to some degree uncharted territory, the thought of Dubya criticising BP and wishing to punish it is not one that comes easily.
I think I may have a suggestion for him......One of the books I was recently reading was about a really extraordinary period in the mid 1890's when an estimated 100,000 worldwide people gave up their jobs and lives to head for an extremely uncertain but potentially highly lucrative future in the Klondike.

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 These would be miners face a 33 mile over this pass and beyond to Dawson. The Mounties in a bid to avert starvation had a check point at the top and each person passing through had to have a ton of food and supplies with them. Carrying this up took a number of journeys or involved paying "packers".

Very few of them managed the (properly arduous) journey to the emerging town of Dawson in the Yukon in the short time frame when gold was still to be found, however that did not stop a lot of people from getting rich in some way or another during the glory years of Dawson and the Klondike. The whole thing is a real macrocosm of human society with all its attendant facets and I could go on for hours about it all, however I will allow myself to relate just one small nugget of woodfuel thought on the subject.   
That this huge influx of people into an area of barren, generally frozen wilderness did not just end in disaster or utter lawlessness was due very much to the fledgling Royal Canadian Mounted Police and in particular one man Sergeant Sam Steele who did indeed have a steely gaze when it came to came to controlling hordes of unruly (mostly American) miners.

  Sam Steele had negotiated with Sitting Bull before the Gold Rush took him to the Yukon.

Steele used two main punishments to keep law and order in Dawson,  one (a blue ticket) meant you were leaving town and the other meant you would be working on the government woodpile. This woodpile was incredible. It kept more than 50 prisoners busy morning to night, the police and Govt offices alone used enough wood to make a pile 2 miles long and 4 foot square, all of which had to be sawn into lengths by the prisoners who could be serving backbreaking 3 or 6 month sentences on the woodpile.
There is a story from the time of an American gambler who, on coming up before Steele was contemptuous when fined fifty dollars.
"Fifty dollars - is that all? I've got that in my vest pocket," he said.
Whereupon Sam Steele added "...and sixty days on the woodpile. Have you got that in your vest pocket?"

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An older Sam Steele- what a crazy hat! 

Now it occurs to me, in relation to punishing BP or wishing it and its ilk took more care with our environment that perhaps this approach would be better than fining them what will always be a small (oil) drop in the Ocean.
If corporate responsibility involved those responsible for these disasters personally and actively cleaning them up alongside all the people whose livelihoods have gone because of this slick, and alongside all those volunteers - there because they care, then perhaps some small glimmer of understanding and an actual feeling of responsibility and concern at the results of their negligence may eventually start to permeate these peoples lives. Who knows they may actually begin to care about the damage they do, rather than just the money they make- Either way it would worth finding out, just a month cleaning oil on the beach would probably do it for most of those BP fat cat's and they would always be truly welcome to work on my woodpile should they discover a previously unkown love for the outdoors. 

Good reading - Klondike - Pierre Berton,
Practical Forestry for the Agent and Surveyor- Cyril Hart 


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Getting the Hazels in

On Friday we planted the hazels. Our planting site at Loch Archie runs above a recently buried power cable and this certainly made for some interesting planting. The site is currently planted with (tubed) native broad-leafs (BL's) with the exception of the strip we were planting. Prior to the BL's being planted it had been a small commercial block of Sitka Spruce which was felled about 4 years ago. A number of rootplates from these spruce alongside woody debris from the harvesting operation had been incorporated into the soil of the strip we were planting. For those who have not had the experience of trying to plant trees in wood instead of soil, it basically involves a spade bouncing of buried wood and a new spot being found for the trees. It was only an infrequent problem, but it meant some bits were hard to plant and that some of our lines and spacings were a bit wonky.

Our planting site, looking to the West, then to the East.

We had a really enjoyable visit from some of the pupils and teachers at Glenlyon Primary School. The school is making great progress towards an Eco-Schools award and recently held a well attended and very pleasant  event aimed at creating vegetable growing areas in the schools grounds.The kids from the School are mostly well adapted to the glen weather which is just as well because not long after they started planting trees, we were blessed with some water to help them get established. I really think in this case the pictures mostly do the talking.

 
The intro bit- "This is a Hazel tree and we are planting them because......." Luckily no-one fell asleep.

Getting started with Screefs and T-notches for planting. Note various waterproofs hanging on the gate.

Headteachers and pupils get busy and the trees start going in.

Sometimes tree planting can be exciting.

Rain is good because it helps things to grow.

Mixed emotions as time to return to school comes.

Eventually we got all the trees in and Loch Archie now has a new hazel corridor along its north end.

All Done!
My thanks in particular to John and Jason who were so very helpful on the day and also to Victor Clements of Scottish Native Woods for organising the trees and to E-Forests for donating them.