Our young forester gets back out into the woods with his chainsaw

I’M still reflecting on my latest visit to New Zealand and how different my experience was this time. Maybe I’m getting older and see life from a slightly different perspective or maybe things are genuinely changing, but what really did strike me was the provision of food. I genuinely worry that soon there may not be any! Here in the UK I think we’re all aware a magnitude of farmland is being removed from the food chain by either being built on, planted up in some form or, in the worst case, ‘rewilded’. It sounds good and eases the conscience but more often it’s neither use nor ornament to man or beast and instead it consists of a brackeny, self-set silver birch mess supporting as much indigenous wildlife as an airstrip.

The public seems to think that all we do is import food from elsewhere, but where is elsewhere? During my recent travels I’ve chatted to Kiwis, Australians and Americans, all of whom appear to be in the same boat. It’s those age-old laws of economics; supply and demand. During COVID there was shortage of sawn timber and the price rocketed. Some bit the bullet and paid for what they could get whereas others simply couldn’t get anything. When it’s not available, it’s not available. The Mr Joneses of this world couldn’t build their garden trellises or their bird tables, but life went on. When the Mr Joneses of this world can’t buy any food, then I foresee a very different scenario.

The ‘bread basket’ of New Zealand lies just to the south of Auckland. It’s here where the soil is particularly rich and fertile and where the bulk of New Zealand’s vegetables are grown. What I witnessed in this region on this visit was quite scary; the productive oasis I’d seen in the past had been bulldozed into oblivion.

To solve the growing population problem in Auckland the government has decided to build another city slap bang in the middle of the bread basket. This new city will be called ‘New Auckland’ and will provide homes for 500,000 people, and although no concrete has yet been poured the site resembles an opencast mine. Naturally, neighbouring plots of land within the same vicinity are being gobbled up by wealthy investors and the nature of the area is changing quite rapidly. Gone is the sense of organised farming and productivity and in its place is a patchwork of what appears to be farming failures by a new generation of ‘have a go’ eco farmers; patches of blight-ridden potatoes, lame unshorn sheep and donkey sanctuaries. I’ve never tasted donkey but when things get tough and the residents of New Auckland are forced to eat it I expect they’re going to need an awful lot of curry powder!

Factor in climate change and the scenario looks quite bleak. While I was there, New Zealand was hit with some of the worst floods in the country’s history, which resulted in Auckland Airport being under a foot of water and 70 per cent of the onion crop being washed into the Pacific.

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So, after seven weeks of shearing I had serious sawdust withdrawal and was itching to get back into the woods. I had learned from previous visits the folly of rushing back onto the frontline with jet lag and a lack of routine fitness and so decided to ease myself back into woodwork gently in order to avoid potential ‘burn-out’. All clients had been deliberately misinformed about my return date in order to enable me to get organised and generally up to speed. Unfortunately, the plan failed immediately as I was spotted leaving a nearby hostelry under the cloak of darkness. Word spread like wildfire and in no time the phone was ringing, pinging and dinging. Was I really the only person capable of cutting wood? Would people really freeze to death if I didn’t turn up tomorrow?

After barely a day I’d had enough and made a sharp exit to Lancashire where I don’t know as many people. Here I could get my ducks in a row and sharpen some chains in peace and quiet and hopefully do a few half days processing some of next year’s Lancastrian arb waste. However, it didn’t quite work out like that and the first half day turned into a full day and what was intended to be 30 IBC crates for that week turned into 92. I was off and running.

Although it has been quite intense, by not having anything booked in the diary I’ve been able to tackle a variety of tasks which have called upon all my forestry skills. As well as sustaining and consolidating my place in the wholesale kindling market, I’ve spent a fair amount of time with Coquetdale Timber, which is probably one of the largest firewood merchants in the North East. It prides itself on being ‘low impact’ and I was able to keep its kilns in operation by processing some dry, oversized timber. This reduces the time the wood spends in the kiln compared to fresh-cut, processor-grade material which had been stacked in the yard. 

While working with Tom at Coquetdale Timber, we took the opportunity to swiftly fell and extract a small belt of Scots pine on an estate he is contracted to. The majority of the job involved hand cutting, keeping the stumps low while the eight-tonne digger tidied the brash and assisted with the felling of leaning outsiders. Having moved away from the saw and onto the spade I received a phone call from a large landowner. He informed me that he had some hedge plants arriving the following day which needed planting immediately. I explained that I didn’t have time to plant and guard 700 metres of hedging until he pointed out that it was only the planting that was required.

The local rugby club (Alnwick) is hoping to go on tour to New Zealand next summer and a large part of the funds it needs to raise has come from caning and tubing hedge plants.

I was aware this had been going on as I’d been following the progress on Facebook. It only charges £1 per metre, which is very cheap, but the standard of the work is questionable. In fact, if my close associate and perfectionist planting comrade Kevin Longbottom saw the results he’d probably faint!

The rugby lads could be trusted with pushing in the canes but not the planting. I agreed to the work but only on condition my name was not connected to the visual results. I also told the landowner that there would be a slight delay between the planting and the guarding on account of the availability of personnel and explained the damage deer and hares can do to unguarded plants. He insisted that this wasn’t a problem and that his gamekeepers would keep a constant vigil over the area day and night and that none of the aforementioned species would come within half a mile of the tender saplings. After lots of running around and phone calls the wheels were finally in motion and then –BANG!

All of the airbags in the car inflated, the windscreen was shattered and I thought my eardrums would explode from my wife’s screaming in the passenger seat. I wouldn’t recommend a head-on collision to anyone. Admittedly, the driving conditions were bad with a lot of snow on the road, but despite having a 12” trailer on the back I had cautiously negotiated my way past several other vehicles towards my destination. At a particularly notorious bend, an oncoming car lost control and slid across the road, hitting me head on at about 40 mph. It was one of those situations where there’s nothing you can do about it. The scenario unfolds as if in slow motion. You know what’s going to happen but all I could do was take a firm grip of the steering wheel and wait for the inevitable.

Your first reaction is to see if everyone’s okay and, judging from my wife’s screaming, I knew she was fine. The thing about living in rural communities is you’re almost certain to know the other person involved, which, of course, I did. I prized open my buckled door, stepped onto the road and walked across to James in the other car. He was also able to exit his vehicle and was clearly unharmed. Apart from a small fracture to one of my fingers I don’t seem to have incurred any major injuries.

Then, in a terribly British fashion we shook hands and recognised that unfortunately in weather like this these things happen, but thankfully no one was seriously injured. He accepted he was entirely to blame and probably felt even worse when I explained that new Hiluxes are very difficult to come by and the three log splitters I had in the trailer had now become one!