The first day of March, a day bathed in warm sunshine tempered by a soft south-easterly breeze filtering through the broad expanse of leafless forest. I pull over and park outside the woodyard, one that’s held a fascination for me, for I often driving past it. Here, they specialise in the supply of fencing materials produced from sweet chestnut they have locally coppiced…
The tall double metal gates leading into the modest-sized open-air premises are wide open, one of which rests against a builders bags filled with logged offcuts.
The yard’s floor consists of a mix of moist tannin-blackened sawdust, fragments of wood and soil, into which wheel marks and footprints are imprinted.
Around the perimeter are numerous stacks of finished stakes, posts and rails, revealing the timber’s freshly exposed straight grain which together with the stakes sawn tips, appear strikingly pale in the afternoon sunlight.
There are also stacks of both part-finished products and cut lengths of timber in the round, in readiness for being converted.
Not far from the gate a fella in his forties is labouring to split cut lengths into rails, each blow of the hammer and wedge producing a dull metallic ring.
He working in just a vest, showing his tanned muscular arms; beads of perspiration on his forehead glisten in the afternoons gentle warmth.
His exertions release the attractive, pungent aroma of split chestnut, a smell that brings back memories for me of erecting fencing in beautiful countryside – that now some years ago…
In the centre of the yard stands an old black-painted Ford tractor with no cab which provides power for the various milling operations.
Close by, the proprietor and his wife are busy chain-sawing pieces of timber.
I find this scenario nostalgic – it somewhat resembling how woodsmen would have ordinarily toiled in woods in the open air, in times gone by. In years to come, will this present scene too perhaps become just another memory?
Netherfield, East Sussex,
March 2021.