Trimming back on Hawthorn

I always look forward to the first session of the Glorious Grasslands Winter habitat management programme, and today I set out for the eighth season since I started doing it in October 2019. We returned to a regular site, which we’ve certainly been coming to for four years, maybe even five. The first time we encountered it, it was nothing more than a steep slope covered in dense mature hawthorn trees. Today, it has been transformed and is now mostly grassland, dotted intentionally with pockets of hawthorn. The task today was to keep working on scrub edges, and also remove the young, one year shoots. Chris and I took the brush cutter to do the latter. It started off quite easy on the far side, just walking the slope and taking out small stems with the electric brush cutter. I hit a snag though when taking out smaller bushes which were hidden by much thicker stumps. Continual knocking of these ended up throwing the shaft out of line to the point where it was quite severely twisted.…

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