A life less ordinary: Tobias Jones

Felling trees is an activity tinged with regret. But when the axeman cometh, so too does the autumn sun, the birds and the green shoots of a new generation

The best advice anyone ever gave me about writing, and something I try and pass on to anyone who's interested, is that the most important key on the keyboard is the delete key. It's through removing the dross that quality comes out. It's in creating space that the reader is given the chance to use their own imagination. It's in the paring down and the brutal editing that a manuscript takes shape. I'm slowly realising that the same rule applies in woodland management. Until recently I used to think that all trees were there to be revered and admired, rather like elderly relatives. Whereas actually many trees are like bad sentences needing a firm red pen.

Since the entirety of our little woodland came about through natural regeneration, it's a dense, dark place. Many trees are growing only a few centimetres apart; sometimes they're even growing out of the same spot, one on top of the other. The paths are narrow and you often have to duck to avoid being scratched by overhanging hawthorns or blackthorns. And there's one tree that dominates and darkens much of the wood, a fairly useless thing called Goat Willow (Salix caprea).

In its defence, Goat Willow provides an early source of nectar for the bees; it also provides "witch's aspirin", since its bark apparently contains salicylic acid (from salix), the source of "real" aspirin. In the old days, girls who didn't wear a sprig of Goat Willow on Palm Sunday would have their hair pulled. But beyond those attributes, it's only useful as a pioneer species. It establishes everywhere and sends up huge, divergent stems that knock over other, smaller trees.

Jonathan, a friend staying with us, and I get into our Kevlar overalls, fuel up the chainsaws and get to work. Part of the difficulty of thinning in dense woods is that trees are likely to get "hung up", meaning they don't fall to the ground but get snagged in other trees. So we slowly clear an area to the east, creating a open space into which we can knock over the willows.

Felling is never as easy as it sounds and is, obviously, a potentially lethal activity. Basically you cut away low branches and remove the buttresses from the bottom of the trunk. You look up at the tree and decide which direction to fell it according to the lean, the weighting in the crown and the surrounding conditions. The first cut is the sink cut, a thick wedge taken out of the front of the tree; the back (or felling) cut is slightly higher so that the falling tree can't jump back at you. Those two cuts create a "hinge" in the middle of the trunk on which the tree then, hopefully, "folds" and falls in the intended direction as you retreat. This is a ridiculously short summary of a complicated art: don't try it without the proper training.

Our 10 minutes of felling lead to two hours of laborious tidying: cross-cutting the large trunks into 4ft lengths and stacking them in piles which are held off the ground by two perpendicular logs and kept in place by hazel rods, front and back. We weave the smaller branches into a kind of dead hedge along the path.

After lunch we do more of the same: taking out more goat willow and the odd ash, sycamore, hawthorn and hazel. I still have a twinge of regret about felling, but am consoled by the fact that almost all the trees will coppice vigorously, meaning their deep roots will create dozens of new shoots from the old stumps.

And after two days' work the difference is incredible. I know of no other activity that so quickly changes a landscape. We've created a glade. Suddenly the autumn sunlight is streaming in. Birds are already making it their home. We can see, for the first time, dozens of strong saplings which know that their turn has come. And the trees we have left in place suddenly look more majestic. In years to come they will have the necessary space and light to put on girth. We can, in this one small spot, finally see the wood for the trees.


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