paul standley
03-04-2014, 06:14 PM
My daughter was recently asked if she could provide and erect a Maypole for a Spring Rural event in South Wales on the 14th April.
She has her own emerging greenwood/woodland craft business and usually works on smaller craft items so a 14ft Maypole request took her a bit by surprise...!
Anyway, since I haven't posted on NB for a long time I thought I'd chronicle the way we are building this Maypole in two or three short threads as a way of easing myself back in and in case anyone wants to make one for May Day this year.
First find Your Tree...
We are fortunate to have links with a Woodland community Enterprise in our area who manage a couple of hundred acres of coniferous woodland, mostly Larch plantation but with some pockets of mixed deciduous trees. They have a percentage of trees that get damaged for various reasons, squirrels, wind etc and so we asked them if we could have a straight Larch about 14/15 ft tall with a butt of around 6" diameter and they were glad to oblige and found us a tree with a damaged top that would have been felled anyway and dropped it for us there and then...
The community woodland Larch does not yet have the Japanese Larch Infection Phytophthora ramorum.so moving the tree of the mountain was not a problem.
http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=11978&stc=1
So down it came and we hauled it over to the Nissan, strapped it to the roof rack and headed off home to think about what to do next. We decided that we would peel the bark as it would look better so that's for part 2...
By the way....The more "in the know" of you will no doubt be aware that historically, Birch was the Maypole timber tree of choice but finding one straight for 14/15 ft isn't easy around here so we decided that Larch was a fair substitute and readily available for cheap or free.
She has her own emerging greenwood/woodland craft business and usually works on smaller craft items so a 14ft Maypole request took her a bit by surprise...!
Anyway, since I haven't posted on NB for a long time I thought I'd chronicle the way we are building this Maypole in two or three short threads as a way of easing myself back in and in case anyone wants to make one for May Day this year.
First find Your Tree...
We are fortunate to have links with a Woodland community Enterprise in our area who manage a couple of hundred acres of coniferous woodland, mostly Larch plantation but with some pockets of mixed deciduous trees. They have a percentage of trees that get damaged for various reasons, squirrels, wind etc and so we asked them if we could have a straight Larch about 14/15 ft tall with a butt of around 6" diameter and they were glad to oblige and found us a tree with a damaged top that would have been felled anyway and dropped it for us there and then...
The community woodland Larch does not yet have the Japanese Larch Infection Phytophthora ramorum.so moving the tree of the mountain was not a problem.
http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=11978&stc=1
So down it came and we hauled it over to the Nissan, strapped it to the roof rack and headed off home to think about what to do next. We decided that we would peel the bark as it would look better so that's for part 2...
By the way....The more "in the know" of you will no doubt be aware that historically, Birch was the Maypole timber tree of choice but finding one straight for 14/15 ft isn't easy around here so we decided that Larch was a fair substitute and readily available for cheap or free.