Sofa forestry

David Dickinson thinks forestry is a sure-fire investment according to a former Ebor Forestry employee.

Ebor Forestry employ quite a lot of people across the Broad Acres and beyond and we pride ourselves on our equally important opportunities policy and believe in investing in people and stuff but sometimes you realise that someone`s taking the piss.

Our office has a big whiteboard with the various contract managers names down one side against which they can scrawl their planned destinations for the day or if they are on holiday, for example. This gives the office staff half an idea of where they are and therefore coordinate their movements, arrange meetings and so on.

We became suspicious over the regular absence of a certain junior member of staff recently when during the course of a week his movements read as follows:

Monday - 2:00pm, Dickinson`s Plantation.

Tuesday - 3:00pm, Titchmarsh SSSI.

Wednesday - 4:00pm, Midsomer Corpse.

Thursday - 4:40pm, site meeting with Dick and Dom in da Bungalow.

Friday - subcontractors meeting with Tricia and Jeremy Kyle - all day.

The last straw came with the following Monday`s whiteboarded whereabouts:

Monday - 12:30pm, deep ploughing ITV`s Loose Women.

Needless to say the skiving time waster doesn`t work for Ebor Forestry anymore but has apparently gained employment with a forestry investment company called Cash in the Attic.

Woodfuel - more on the virtuous circle

"Forestry Commission, hello?"

"Hello, it`s Ebor Forestry here and I`d like to talk to whatsisname about how we could contribute to woodfuel supply chains."

"Sorry?"

"Can I talk to thingy about woodfuel?"

"Sorry, I can`t hear you - can someone tell Crispin to turn Barry Manilow down -------- that`s better - what were you saying?"

"Woodfuel supply chains."

"Chains? You want an ironmonger. This is the Forestry Commission, we only do trees."

"No, woodfuel is to do with trees. Can I speak to the woodfuel coordinator?"

"Is he new?"

"Fairly new."

"Oh, that`ll be thingety who we got the new fleece for, I`ll put you through ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- hello? Sorry, he`s had to go home, his central heating`s broken."

"Do you know when he`ll be in next?"

"Er, let me look on the whiteboard -------------- hello?"

"Bbbbbbbbzzzzzzzzzzz ------------------------".

Forestry Commission find something to do at last in the Dales

Tourists trying find their way through the Dales will now have one less landmark to go on thanks to a new government grant.

Regional Director of the Forestry Commission Yorkshire and the Humber, Crispy Thong, said:

"We`ve at last found something for our Woodlands Officer to do which is to do with dormouses and so his white Ford Focus has been replaced with a new style Ford Fiesta. Visitors to the region who`ve been used to navigating by our staff car being parked in the same lay-by near Kilnsey Cragg for several years should be reassured that the Forestry Commission will continue to provide a visible presence in this lay-by and that the National Park Authority will continue to clear up any mess generated by our staff and the dormices."

The Forestry Commission has pledged a grant to give rare dormice more elbow room in the Yorkshire Dales.

Over 1.5 hectares of new woodland is set to take root on the banks of the River Ure opposite Freeholders Wood, near Aysgarth, where the rare mammal was reintroduced to the Dales last year after becoming extinct.

Now nearly £3,000 from the English Woodland Grant Scheme will support an expansion of the dormouse's new domain on private land owned by 72 year-old retired farmer Arthur Lambert, mainly with hazel trees, but also with other species like ash, oak and cherry.

Jeremy Dick, Forestry Commission Woodland Officer for North Yorkshire, said:
"The good news is that the dormice are breeding, so expanding the habitat is a key way of securing the population's future. A bigger colony is a more resilient one, capable of withstanding change such as me finding somewhere else for me lunch and a bit of kip."

Habitat creation and wildlife conservation are important drivers behind the Forestry Commission's English Woodland Grant Scheme in Yorkshire.

The new wood will eventually mirror Freeholders Wood rich mix of coppiced hazel trees, honeysuckle and bramble, which makes it ideal habitat for dormice. When the trees are old enough traditional coppicing will be introduced, maximising the production of hazel nuts, which the dormice feed on. Planting is set to start in the next few weeks.

Phil Hibbs, from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, added:
"Freeholders Wood covers about 12 hectares, so it's crucial we increase the available habitat, especially as we recorded nearly 30 dormice young from the last breeding season. We are also always looking for willing landowners to come forward with potential woodland creation schemes although we won`t hold us breath, the miserable toe-raggs."

The dormouse reintroduction project has been co-ordinated by a range of agencies, including the Yorkshire Dales National Park, the People's Trust for Endangered Species, Natural England and the Peoples Front for the Repopulation of Tiny Rodents. A total of 35 adult dormice were released at the beginning of the project and at the last count just before the hibernation period that figure had expanded to 58.

Ebor Forestry filled all the forms in.

Face My Twitter Book Space

In spite of the RFS` attempts to dampen any enthusiasm for forestry in young people through its stalled Facebook thing, here are a couple of FB pages that may be of interest to Ebor Foresters.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=6963029150

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2259852714

Various celebrities have also been extolling the virtues of Twitter recently as a means of communication. This is fine so long as your`re a great steaming luvvie queen who went to Cambridge and who`s never off the telly making coy references to anal sex while stuck in a lift and who`s got nothing better to do. Otherwise it`s not much use.

You wouldn`t get a hairy-armed, sweaty-arm pitted, stubble-chinned, Colleen Nolan-fancying, Forestry Commission-baiting forestry consultancy like Ebor Forestry wasting their time on Twitter would you?

What global warming?

It snowed in London this week.

This of course brought the whole country to a standstill or at least it stopped all those softy southern bastards who live in the south getting into work and making a complete bollocks of the nation`s economy for once and gave the rest of us some respite from their self-serving bungling ineptitude.

Meanwhile, up north Ebor Forestry battled through the snow flake we got in York and made it into work and swiftly set about sending an email to that smirking Paul Hudson off the moving television at paultheweatherman@looknorth.bbc.org informing him that he might like to consider forestry as a career and that judging by his completely useless weather forecasts he would fit in well with the Ebor Forestry ethos.

Once we had vented us spleen at Mr Hudson, our numerous planting gangs started to call in reporting deep snow on pretty well all of Ebor Foresty`s planting contracts across West Yorkshire. This meant we had to hurriedly rearrange our team of highly trained tree establishment teams onto other Ebor Holdings enterprises such as paving over front gardens to provide off-street parking for all the "second car" 4x4`s none of our customers knew how to work properly now that they were needed.

Having reassigned what seemed like half the population of Poland onto meaningful work, we did what what Ebor Forestry knows best which was to pull a nice rug round us legs, slip on some amusing Simpsons slippers we got the Christmas before last and set about writing some COTs.

Just like the Forestry Commission set about an impressive but ultimately misguided planting programme of new conifer forests in all the wrong places in 1919, so now we have the Condition, Opportunity and Threat assessment designed to keep redundant foresters in gainful occupation in 2009.

Check out the FC`s foresters` form-filling fecundity at http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/ewgs-cot.pdf/$FILE/ewgs-cot.pdf

And while we`re on the subject of snow, I have to take exception to the numerous images of snowmen that have been paraded across the local and national media this week.

As an overweight, white, balding bloke with a propensity to wear scarves I am offended by the countless stereotypes that have been presented for public amusement on the moving television and will be sending a stiff missive to Christa Ackroyd in the BBC Look North Newsroom.