Bron Haul Research Plot

July 2021 – We welcomed judges from the Royal Forestry Society’s Excellence in Forestry competition (Wales, Northern Ireland and Isle of Man) where we are entered in the Small and Farm Woodland category.

July 2021 – We welcomed judges from the Royal Welsh Show Forestry competition (North Wales) where we are entered in the Broadleaf Woodland over 15 hectares category.

April to July 2021 – This woodland is vulnerable to bark stripping by grey squirrels. A successful season of squirrel control has protected our tree health and timber potential.

February 2021 – We hosted socially distancing BSc Forestry students from Bangor University, studying how UK woodland has been affected by government policy.

Dec 2020 – We started selling seasoned planks. See blogs to find out what they have been used for. Contact us to see what we have for sale!

May 2020 – The best stems from the thinning were planked at Elwy Working Woods sawmill (about a mile up the road). This yielded about 3 tonnes of (mostly) ash and wild cherry planks.

May 2020 – Gethin Jones, Forestry Contractor (Llansannan) employed to extract timber felled in the spring.

Jan to March and Oct to Dec 2020 – Thinning to favour the numbered trees. Pruning favoured trees.

We’d love to know what you have seen here. Please visit our Contact Us page.

Our farm includes 20 hectares of young mixed woodland planted between 1991 and 2014. The vision is to produce quality timber in a beautiful landscape with continually improving opportunities for biodiversity. Of course, the woodland also captures carbon, cleans our air and helps clean and regulate water flow. It shelters the species-rich hay meadow and pasture grazed by our small suckler herd and has strong connectivity through a network of laid hedges. All in all, we hope to give the birds plenty to sing about!

We welcome visitors using our public footpaths. Please stay on the footpath and keep your dog on a lead. If you wish to visit other areas of the woodland, please contact us to arrange a guided tour (£10/head minimum 4 people for a 2 hour tour).

This woodland subcompartment was used as a Forestry MSc dissertation study site by David Brown in 2019. One of his aims was to identify the best trees in the woodland (at appropriate spacings and whilst maintaining species diversity) that would be favoured in our woodland operations as quality future timber trees. He numbered and measured his chosen trees and then estimated how fast they are growing.

A serious saw log (tree stems big enough to make really desirable planks) needs to be between 50-60cm diameter minimum at 1.2m above the ground. This is referred to as the ‘diameter at breast height’ or DBH. His assessment showed that the first saw logs will be ash and wild cherry harvestable in about 10 years, when the woodland will be less than 40 years old! Not bad going.

More information on this study will become available as a blog posting.

Another part of David’s study was to calculate how much carbon was held in the trees in 2019. He used a method called the Carbon Protocol devised by Forest Research. He had to measure every tree in the woodland! David worked out that the trees at that time held 206 tonnes/hectare of carbon dioxide equivalent. For comparison, the average person in the UK has a live-style that generates 10-15 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. (A sustainable level of emissions is more like 2 tonnes! Hmmm.)

Since then, the woodland has been thinned. A lot of the timber will be firewood, and the carbon dioxide will be released back into the atmosphere. However, some timber has been used for fencing or has been planked for making products with enduring end uses…a carbon capture and storage mechanism that actually works!

Want to be part of the process? Buy a plank and make something amazing! Visit our blog page to see some of the lovely objects that have already been made using our timber. Meanwhile, after the heavy thin of 2020, this woodland will be growing rapidly and reabsorbing carbon dioxide as it grows.

Trees are just brilliant.