Small timber for fuel mainly. The trees re grow after cutting...like coppicing, but higher up, out of reach of grazing animals.

Often fall asleep to their calls and wake to a barn owl in the small, dark hours.

I always head for ant hills when surveying plants. They can be free draining refugia from competition with coarse grasses. And fascinating little worlds of their own.

Indeed. My firewood all from coppice, pollards, siding up unsafe trees on footpaths or those growing over ponds etc. No trees actually killed off! We fight over who does the log splitting in my house!

Loving the gusting wind and grey drizzle today, justifies coffee in bed, then warming up be splitting some firewood and coming back in feeling satisfied and damp. Simple pleasures.

I read his memoirs when was 14. How they have influenced my life.

I read this today and Wilfred Owen's Futility, which says it all.