Foresters and horses in Greater Roe Woods

Story & photo: Iain Stokes

Not ‘Paint Ball Gamers’, but foresters, have been in Greater Roe Woods. They’ve been leaving pink dots on trees to be thinned, which will encourage the tree canopy and nesting birds. The foresters have also been raising the next stand of oak to bring on a tall ‘Treeland Standards’ habitat.

So as not to churn the delicate floor of our young woodland, Green Estates duo Max and Amanda brought a team of two Clydesdale draught horses, Freddy and Big Lad, to pull a hundred tons of small and medium timbers out of the wood and to train college graduates Alex and Nathan in the finer arts of forestry and horse handling.

Quietly munching on oats and carrots mixed with meal corns and molasses, the gentle giants, Freddy and Big Lad, finished their dinner and set about hauling the one-and-a-half ton timbers down to the bottom gate with graceful ease. The timbers were due to be collected for milling and for the smaller stems to be chipped into bio-fuel. The horses proved to be a big attraction.