Coppicing is an age-old activity designed to keep a village supplied with (in the case of hazels) hurdles, thatching spars, stakes, bean poles, pea sticks, some firewood, kindling for fire-lighting and several other uses. As such it is the perfect recycling operation. Say you have 42 "stools" of hazel. You divide them up so that six can be cut down every 7 years after which you start the rotation again.

This is in fact the number of stools and the rotation laid down by Sussex Wildlife Trust's management plan for these hazels. We do the coppicing to ensure that the trees do not become too overgrown and dilapidated like so many woodlands today -- there is little call for this wood these days.

But there was a snag to our routine. I discovered a year or so ago through a dormice handbook, published by no less than English Nature, that hazel does not fruit before seven or more years old, which means that our dormice wouldn't have any nuts to eat! They need the nuts particularly to fatten themselves up for hibernation. Hazels are "an almost essential species" says the handbook.

So we have left one a year before dealing with some more stools, to make a rotation of eight years. We expect to find a few more next winter to make it nine years to be on the safe side.

In general this winter has been pretty "open" which helps us to keep working steadily before the spring sets in, although I have mentioned before that the sap is still in the trees, making for hard sawing.

Hopefully, it may be that the spring will have begun to show properly by the time you read this.

NUTTY NOTE: Coppices get their name from the Norman French "couper" to cut. Thus areas within a coppice are still called "coupes"

John Hall © 2005