Not my paraphrased words, but those of a book by Raymond Tabor* who has worked for many years on one on the Wildlife Trusts' woodland reserves. The book is one of my bibles for our small reserve, and his words were called to mind when we hurried to coppice some hazels which line a footpath between an oak plantation and a chestnut coppice before the spring put paid to tree work.

Coppicing is an age-old activity which kept a village supplied with (in the case of hazels) hurdles, thatching spars, stakes, bean poles, pea sticks, fire and kindling wood and altogether a total of 24 uses. 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 seven years, after which you start the rotation again.

This in fact the number of stools and the rotation laid down by the Trust's management plan for these hazels. We do the coppicing to ensure that the trees do not become overgrown and dilapidated like so many woodlands today. There is not a great call for hazel (Corylus avellana) these days, certainly in Sussex.

But there was a snag to our annual routine. I discovered a year or so ago through a dormice handbook published by English Nature, that hazel does not fruit before more than seven 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 did not cut them last year, but dealt with some more stools this year to make a rotation of eight years. We think there are a few left for next winter to make it nine years to be on the safe side. One can, in fact, coppice hazel usefully for up to 15 years to yield bigger poles. So, in a whole wood, one could plan for exactly what the market needs.

Unless, of course , plastics ruin your business!

*Traditional Woodland Crafts, Batsford,£15.99 (Have a look on Amazon)

John Hall © 2005