It's taken me and the guy I've been paying to help me the best of part of two months to clear my woodland and make it reasonably Fire Safe - that's about 2HA of woodland clear of some serious brash and broom and hundreds of mainly brashy and dead pines.
This is how much of the Pine Woodland looked like a few weeks ago:
And around the edges now (you can see a tiny area yet to be cleared in the background, that's now done, I took this a few days back):
We haven't taken out as much in the inner areas, but what you can't really see in the photo is the several tiny oak saplings that can now breath and grow.
We/ I haven't been working full days or weeks - two days a week with two of us, between 4-5 hours work each day and then me on my own for another two days every week - working about another probably 2 hours on average on land clearance, as I've been doing other things when on my own.
We've now cleared around 95% of the land and are currently working back around the edges dealing with the 3000 or so logs in 'chip piles' I've now decided not to chip - they're piled on the edges of the land waiting for a chipper to come round but I've decided it's not worth it as they need stripping of branches before they get chipped (the guy who was going to come round only has a 'semi-industrial strimmer') and the chippable wood that's left is hardly a fire risk so I may as well just leave it piled up safely somewhere.
Having a professional forester working with me was defo the right move - it may have cost me around 1000 EU means he's probably worked at something like twice the rate I've been working!
How much have we cleared...?
I estimate we've taken down about 500-600 trees, about 95% pine and some eucalyptus and probably about....
- 70% totally brashy/ dead pines
- 25% medium sized because they were growing too close/ leaning
- 5% large trees because they were obscuring oaks.
It's not been the cutting down that's taken the time - it's stripping the branches and dragging out the brash that takes time. Honestly, my chainsaw batteries last about 45 minutes of total use, I've got 2, and I've never managed to deplete both batteries in a five hour day of using it - dragging out (which sucks) takes that long!
And the larger trees took more than an hour each - with winching to stop them crushing oaks and some of the larger branches were like trees in themselves.
All in all we've worked at a steady pace and it's been quite fun, not too repetitive as I've only been at it for 2-3 days a week, and we've paced it pretty well to get it all clear before a likely chainsaw ban comes in towards the end of June.
Power Tool Love
I've had to to buy a strimmer and a chainsaw to facilitate land clearance, and I must say I love both of them - probably more than the guy in the Fundao branch of Stihl loves me for spending around 1100 EU on them.
They're totally different beasts - the strimmer is a mistura (50-1 petrol oil) noisy BEAST of a machine that whips through pretty much any non-tree organic matter with a stem of up to around and inch thick.
The chainsaw is more subtle, it's a small battery operated machine that looks like a toy, but with a sharp blade it'll cut down a 20 cm diameter tree with no problem at all, although really it's designed for branches and logs. It's perfect for me with a small woodland, I can get my mate to deal with anything larger with his proper large petrol chainsaw.
I've also learned how to do basic maintenance of both machines - sharpening a chainsaw blade is actually quite meditative you know!
I should have burned more material
Had I known how much brash I was going to end up with, I would have burnt more of it before the fire ban came in a couple of weeks back, ATM we're now making MASSIVE hugel beds in the inner part of the land which I THINK (HOPE!) is OK from a fire-safety-fine-avoiding perspective - looking at the neighbouring land, they've just clear cut their pines and left some fairly large brash just lying around, and my land is no worse than that so I should be fine.
Still, I'd rather those piles weren't there with summer coming, and I might cover them with plastic and some with dirt to minimise the fire risk. I'll probably attack a couple with the chainsaw and 'chip them' to an extent, once we're done with the edges in the entirety - I want to save the blade for now.
Once they've rotted down, which they will do over winter - they need rain - then they'll be perfect for planting new trees in - let some younger diversified saplings take root! That'll probably involve digging into them and distributing the more rotted material further afield to where the light gets through best.
Taken more time than I'd planned
Honestly, I thought we'd be done by the end of May at the VERY latest, but we're looking at half of June at least to get round and get everything tidy, so about a month longer than what I'd thought.
That's what everyone says around here - moving to Portugal and buying land is a process of adjusting your expectations to a MUCH slower pace of life than you'd probably thought.
It is what is, and I'm happy enough to just be on top of this MAJOR goal of getting my damned woodland clear so it can now breath!