Forestry in Poland

With forestry operations on my mind, and felling, or at least, extraction,  with fairly large scale equipment about to begin in Old Copse,I remembered a visit to Southern Poland 25 years ago. While walking in the Tatra Mountains I came across a clearing in the woods to see a group of nuns from the local convent supervising a couple of adolescent boys using working horses to help with pine felling and extraction. The mountains are too steep to use machinery, and heavy horses are ideal for the job. They were used extensively in the rural areas, for farmwork and for transport in and around the villages, as well as for forestry work . This visit was shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall, the repercussions of which were still to be felt in rural Poland. I don't know how much things have changed in forestry work since then. 

I managed to dig up a few, now rather faded, photographs. It was a beautiful sunny late summer day, and everybody was enjoying the occasion, with the work being done at a gentle and leisurely pace. 

We looked into the possibility of using 'heavy'  horses in Old Copse, particularly as the felling will take place on a SSSI site. Working horses have a lower impact than machinery, and as they work, 'scarify' the forest floor, which encourages regeneration. Unfortunately the use of these horses for forestry has been in decline for many years and is now a niche activity in the UK, and sadly, the daily rate is too expensive for us.