WORK HORSE balance
Runs Weald Woodscapes
How I make it work: A good sense of humour and always having a plan B
The environmental forester and logger, who specialises in sustainable, low-impact management of ancient woodland, keeps four working horses and confesses that she works so hard she hasn’t had a holiday for 20 years
My job...
I’ve worked as an environmental forester and horse logger for the last 27 years, running Weald Woodscapes. I specialise in sustainable, low-impact management of ancient woodland, helping to protect and conserve the area’s unique biodiversity and ecolog y. I look after all aspects of woodland management, which includes habitat management, selective felling, horse-drawn extraction of timber, control of invasive species and mobile saw milling.
I’ve got various woodlands on my books that are on rolling contracts and I’ve been managing them for donkey’s years. They range from small private contracts to work for borough councils. I also undertake horse-drawn bracken control (known as bracken ‘rolling’) in a few areas, including Windsor Great Park.
The work varies throughout the year. All the tree felling is done in the winter, so there’s quite a small window from the end of September to March to get it all done. Then I go back with the horses in the spring to extract the timber.
I established the business in 1999, on completion of my degree at Wye College. I ran it on my own for years, until about 10 years ago when I met my partner, Rich. Today we do most of the woodland contracting together.
How I got here...
From the word go I have always worked on the land, and always with animals and livestock. When I left school at 16, I started contract shepherding, lambing large f locks of sheep on the marsh. Then I followed the seasons by tractor driving in the summer, harvesting apples in the autumn and cutting timber in the winter. As I did more woodland work, I developed a fascination with ancient natural woodland. I began to explore how to manage it in a low-impact way, and extract timber without causing undue damage to its delicate ecology.
One day I was working on a saw milling contract and I met someone who kept heavy Ardennes horses. I went along to meet them and thought that they were outstanding. The penny dropped, and I decided to pursue the idea of using working horses in forestry. I studied for a degree specialising in forestry and wrote my dissertation on the role of working horses in 21st century woodland management. I travelled to Sweden and worked
