In today's post: my French is tested (“désolé; mais nous avons coupé votre arbre …. ”), I find out why the french farmers pollard their oaks and leave that ridiculous single shoot on the top, get to use my forestry helmet working with a real tree surgeon and I build the biggest bonfire in Morbihan.
Last Friday the work started on our boundary trees, John and Antony worked on the long list of work prioritised by our safety concerns and they set about the trees with a total of four different chainsaws including a monster that John used on the cherry. The sequence of work we agreed was to start with felling the cherry by the picnic table then removing one trunk from the two trunked oak by the garage and finally felling the leaning oak by the open barn and they completed all that work and left the timber neatly sawn up on the ground and a huge pile of brash for me to burn. The cherry was in very poor condition at the top and Antony showed me where the heart was rotten right down the middle, he thinks it has been burnt at some time (lightning strike ??) and said that he’s seen ones before that have been completely burnt out by fire when the middle is rotten as it acts like a chimney. By the stage of decay and the insect activity he thought the fire had been several years ago, although he said he didn’t think it was in imminent danger of falling - probably. The split oak had a big rotten area in the middle and the tree by the barn was OK but obviously dangerous and leaning at 55°.
The next day I saw Dominique our farmer neighbour and said that I had wanted to explain to him the work that we were doing on the trees; he said he was going to come to speak to me about this as well so he came round and we walked round the boundary. He explained (very amicably) that the oak trees on the talouse were his not ours and so the wood from the trees belonged to him not us (but not the cherry which was ours). I explained that our main priority was to maintain the trees and the talouse in good condition, reduce the tree growth above the house and to let in more light. I also showed him the rotten centres to the trees and explained what Antony was going to do (maintain the pollarding and return the trees to their last cut level). I said that we would pay for the work to his trees and said I was happy if he wanted to take all the wood but (having learnt how to say this with the hockey club …..) asked him what his proposal was. He suggested that we split the wood 50:50 (I learnt a new word here “moitié” – half) and he confirmed that he gave us permission to complete the rest of the work (I think his main concern had been that we were going to cut down all the trees ….) so we shook hands on that. On the way out he said that the oaks – and only the oaks – on the field boundaries in the commune were under protection (so couldn’t be cut down) during the reamenagement foncier that is going on at the moment but – with a smile – said he wouldn’t be telling anyone about his tree that we had cut down. He also said that he didn’t think the trees had been done for 12 years.
Antony came back by himself on Friday and Saturday this week to continue the work, he’s from Birmingham, married to a French woman and has transferred his UK qualifications to France by completing a French arboriculture certification. He’s very interested in trees, has worked as a gardener at the Chateau of Villandry and talking to him during his work I found out some interesting things:
- French chênes (oaks) on field boundaries are invariably pollarded and cut back completely to the trunks with a single shoot left at the top. Last winter when we saw this for the first time we thought it looked ridiculous and had no idea why it was done. The single shoot is called a “sap-puller” in French and the theory is that it encourages the tree sap to rise maintaining the trunk in healthy condition and enabling the cuts to heal quickly.
- Our beautiful red squirrel paid him a visit as he was up one of the trees – he thinks it may have a nest in one of the high boughs - so we agreed to leave that part of the tree untouched.
- Oaks on field boundaries have a further significance in Brittany, historically the wood from them belongs to the owner (hence Dominique’s visit) but by law the twigs and small branches could be harvested by the paysans who worked the land and were tied into fagots and used for heating and cooking.
- Many chênes are hundreds of years old and were planted to delineate boundaries – certainly the 1830 Cadastre Napoléon (=land plan) that Liliane (our solicitor) uncovered when we bought La Basse Cour shows some boundaries that still exist today so the oaks are possibly at least that old.
- We also have some Elm trees in the talouse – a tree almost completely unknown in the UK now.
Antony also cut down a beautiful “knobbly knee” joint from one of the oaks to show me how fractures develop in branches and abseiled high into an ash tree to cut down a huge limb that had torn off the trunk and was hanging down from the tear point. Amazingly the wood was still alive at the tear joint and he thought it had been hanging like that for several years.
I did some of the ground work as he lifted the canopies of the oak and ash by the potager and then set to work on the massive pile of brash that had been left. The evenings are drawing out now and when the fire was going strongly I sat out until 7:45 with a beer as a blood red sun sank into the purple haze of the evening sky.
Amazing things trees ……
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