Sallygarden Smallholding - The Forum For Sustainable Living

Anyone else any experience of forestry and grants and suchlike ?

OK - we moved here in October 07 and purchased with the house, 0.75ha of Grant Aided woodland.
Basically it's been a bit (of a lot) neglected - deer have laid waste to most of the ash trees... the alder's fared slightly better, but still overgrown, most of the ditches are in dire need of re-cutting.

Anyway - we got the letter from Wexford saying our second inspection was due (eek) so we phoned a local forester to come and have a look (also just to let him know the state that we'd bought the place in and that we weren't responsible for the neglect)
Well he's just been - and charged us €100 for the privilege of telling us that unless we replant most of the forest at our own cost, we don't stand a chance of passing the second inspection and getting the second part of the grant

I'm completely new to all this. Is it normal for foresters to charge so much for a 15 minute walk round and a bit of teeth-sucking and tutting ?

Thanks

Hi Twinkle

Oh gosh, €100 sounds like a lot to me. We have oak woodland plantation that came with our house too, 13acres. You can ask your local Teagasc Forestry Advisor to come out and have a look for free. They will show you how to prune the woodland and give any free advice. They run the odd course and open day on woodland management so worth getting on their mailing list. If you prefer the 'close to nature' approach to woodland management look up pro silva Ireland. http://www.prosilvaireland.org/

Where in Ireland are you? If you let me know what county you're in I'll post up a contact name, number and email here for your area.

I wrote a post on my blog a little while ago about our journey on the woodland management learning curve. A highly recommended book is mentioned in the post, which I haven't managed to afford yet, but hope to get it soon.
http://sallygardens.typepad.com/sallyga ... index.html

Thanks for that SG... I'm in Clare, near to the Galway border.
x

The Clare contact is Aine O'Callaghan, tel 091 845200, mob 087 2197086, email aine.ocallaghan@teagasc.ie

Good luck and let us know how you get on. Don't part with anymore cash.
x

aw thanks for that - that's brilliant.

Rang both the Teagasc and then the forester today.. turns out that the fee was for him coming out and doing the assessment, but also filling in and signing our grant form and writing the site report (has to be an approved forrester) plus re-drawing the species map and handling any subsequent appeals.
So not as bad as we first thought.
Teagasc said that sounded like the sort of fee that was appropriate, but to shop around if we had any more requirements... they also advised us more about the grant system... so not as bad as we first thought.

Still have 500 new saplings to plant and all the Ash to shape (what the deer have left of it anyway )