cutting down trees

[curtis]

Apart from the time I asked permission, I had other fires and waited till the wind was in the right direction and the smoke went away from the village and across the fields and vines.

[niemeyjt]

Don't bother.
Burn your stuff up a bit at a time with no huge smokey fires & I'm betting nobody will comment.
If the Maire turns up it'll be a good time to introduce yourself & plead ignorance.

Just to add - 1) check the wind direction and 2) not in a drought when everything is tinder dry.

(there's the inner pyromaniac speaking)

[Polarengineer]

100 plus trees. You must have sufficient land to establish a biodump. I try to encourage others not to burn, but to chop branches up to about 40 to 50 cm and lay them down in a row to form a burrow. When the bits are small they do not take up much space at all. Leylandii are very resinous and produce a lot of black smoke if burnt, but if the fire is hot enough, the flames will be huge. Likewise the burrow will take a bit more time to rot down, but it will become really good earth later. I feel all gardens should have a bit set aside for compost or biodump where everything organic can be heaped up. I never clear up fallen leaves and if you set up a camera to watch the leaves on the lawn and set it to take a frame an hour, you will see the leave come upright and get drawn into the ground by the worms.

[Blaze]

@Polarengineer Agreed. At our old place, we had 10 ha of resinous wood (laricio de corse) and after élagage, the branches were left to rot down naturally.
Fallen leaves get left for the worms to pull down, it doesn't take long !

[Hotrodder]

This was the first year I didn't rake up fallen leaves. It was just too nasty to try to go outside to do anything. Where they fell and stayed during a very wet winter, the grass has gone and slippery muddy patches are left that are treacherous to walk on. I won't be making that mistake again.

[hughnique]

In answer to Blaze's suggestion about M.Beauvillain, aptly named as it turns out, the conciliator, bless him, arranged for said forestry man to attend to give a cost to trim back the trees and dispose of the crap. 300€ just to trim and then possibly the same to clear a few branches, yup give me a devis. That was 3-4 weeks ago since when not a dicky bird, so contacted the conciliator again, who in turn contacted the man with the cutting machine. The job has been revaluated and the cost now is 900€ just to cut and store the fallen branches in a corner of the field, until he can give me a cost to clear the rubbish, absolute piss take, and typical French Artisan practice, they all think we've got loads of dosh just waiting for them to come along and rob us. So my quest continues but I am not in any rush to get it done, especially now the birds are starting to nest.

[Hotrodder]

The famous Prix Anglais.
They tend to assume we are not only rich, but stupid as well.

[hughnique]

Dodgy plumber, dodgy roofer, and now the woodcutter, wonder why we don't use them.

[Bayleaf]

I've seen plenty of English dodgy rip-off cowboys too - they come in all nationalities.

[niemeyjt]

I wonder how the P&O plumbers and electricians will get on now P&O have new staff?