New doors for the milking parlour

ROBIN HALL

The old pine doors into the milking parlour have suffered wear and tear over the years. In particular, the two doors where the cows enter and exit during milking were in poor condition. I am delighted to have now fitted the second of two new oak doors, and this is the story of where they came from.

As part of the management of the woodland at Plaw Hatch, I have been removing selected trees for both saw logs and firewood. This enables younger trees space to grow and makes use of trees that have grown older or that are growing in difficult places. Having extracted the larger pieces, the next step is to have them sawn into boards. For this we hired a portable sawmill, which came with expert owner/operator, Alex Jordan. After seasoning, some of this wood was given to local carpenter, Wolfgang Kotz, for him to build the doors. With help from Richard Evans, I finally completed the fitting of these doors earlier in March.

I am very pleased to be able to use hardwood which is sourced onsite for these doors, and we now have a good stock of such wood for future projects. This is a small step towards reducing our dependence on imported timber products, and although the Farm’s woodlands can only provide a modest quantity of suitable wood, it’s very satisfying to see home-grown trees used in this way.