Forestry Now

Dermot McNally 0:04
Hi. My name is Dermot McNally, and thanks for joining me. Today, I spoke to Sean O'Connell, who was born and raised in Dublin, but now lives and manages a forest near drummer here in Leitrim. We spoke about how he planted broad leaves back in 2004 and the continuous cover Pharisee approach he took after buying a 26 year old conifer block, which came up for sale beside I hope you enjoy Sean's insights.

Sean Ó Conluáin 0:32
I'm living in Leitrim at the moment. I have a very speckled history in terms of where I've come from. I was born and raised in the center of Dublin, far away from trees, and I've ended up many years later, being very, very close to trees. We explored looking for somewhere better to live. Eventually, we moved up to Leitrim, and that's how my my story with trees started brilliant.

Dermot McNally 0:59
From what I understand, you planted your first forest beside the house back in 2004 Can you tell me what you planted and why you decided to do that? Sean, yeah, well,

Sean Ó Conluáin 1:10
there was a bit of a story as well to that, because at the time, and it still is the case, that the trees planted in Leitrim, the majority were monoculture spruce plantations. Pretty much planting broad leaves at the time was very much a minority thing. But when we started looking into it, we were very lucky that we had an inspector from the department who was very open. There was nothing, there was nothing involved in the rules at the time that prevented you from planting broad leaves under the normal scheme, most people planted spruce, but he encouraged us to plant whatever we wanted to plant. So we ended up planting a whole mixture of all kinds of trees. In the few years before we planted I started reading up books about to develop woodlands and all the rest of it. And there was a book called The woodland way, which influenced me. It's an old look now, but it very, very much influenced me. They talked about planting blobs of trees, doing nothing in squares, making making everything kind of rounded. Now, many years later, I joined pro Silva, and they talk about the three legs on the stool, the you know, economic, social and environmental. But we didn't realize that at the time, the social probably was very small s it was really for ourselves. So we really want to have access to nature. That's one of the reasons why, more recently, we've been opening up to different events and so on, to allow people to see what's going on. So when, when we originally planted, then we had a vision, and it was very much a biodiverse forest, broad leaves, but all kinds of broad leaves. When we originally came here, we we had a house, a little cottage, an old cottage on eight acres. And then subsequently the piece there was a piece of land adjoining it came up for sale, about 16 acres. So we had of we planted onto all of that, 25 acres, would, would, would, a fair bit of open space there, subsequently a spruce plantation, a good old monoculture, totally unlocked at almost never visited, as some of the some of the spruce plantations are in Leitrim and throughout the country, I imagine, came up for sale beside, right beside us, and we bought that, you know, that added to the whole thing. So we ended up, then with, with what I consider to be three, three pieces, a total of, I kind of still think in terms of acres, but a total of about 45 acres, 15 that we planted in broad leaves, 15 in spruce, and then the remaining 15 is a whole mixture where we left spaces. We were like I was encouraged in those books to leave space, leave open space for nature, and leave open space for whatever. One of the features of the of the site is that there's a high voltage ESB line that cuts right through it. So over recent years, probably the last eight or 10 years, I've been trying to develop those as, in their own way, biodiverse. And then a anybody who's into wildflower meadows, they know that what you are supposed to do is you're supposed to remove the grass after you cut it like you know, to keep the soil from becoming too rich, because the Wildflower is like a poorer, poorer soil. There was a good bit so in the last few years, what I've been doing is. I have a neighbor who does what all the farmers do around here, they he bails, cuts and bales basically, you know. And I'm, it's still, that's very much still an experiment. I'm still hope there's a lot of biodiversity in the in the ground. I can see lots of little things growing, but very few flowers, if you like. And there are obviously, like most farms in Leitrim, there'd be problems with rushes and so on. The other thing that's happened is I'm noticing much more bird life and animal life, and I think part of that is the mixture of the forestry, both types like and also this open space.

Dermot McNally 5:37
Were all the broad leaves in an intimate mix, or were they in individual plots? What way did you do that?

Sean Ó Conluáin 5:43
Sean plot is too big a word even. Yeah, so they were in plots, but very small plots. You know, it wasn't a linear thing. I was very much influenced by this notion of almost replicating nature that you have might have 20 or 30 trees of a type of the species, and they were very, very much suited to the to the terrain and the land like so if there's a particular place, sorry, I should probably mention, you mentioned oak. We went for two, two types of oak, but I was getting very conflicting influence, either advice about whether oak would grow or not, you know, whether the soil was suitable for Oak. And different people said different things to me about it, you know. And somehow oak, oak is a very kind of a romantic tree in Irish people's minds. You know, it's the top of the pyramid and the Bren laws and everything else. And so whether we realize or not we have this, I almost like a romantic relationship with it. So I was really keen to have oak. Any of the oak that I planted has grown, maybe they don't grow as faster as like the birch and Alder in the in the peaty soils have done really well. But where I planted oak, they certainly survived. And in recent years, and I'd love to talk about it, one of the things that's happened is we almost have an invasion of Jays now, the friend of the forest, or like every morning here. Now there's, well, not, maybe not quite every morning, but every couple of mornings. This year has been a phenomenal year for acorns. You know, last year, yeah, all the oak for some reason, I know they all together. They've given up these millions of acorns. But we're very fortunate at this stage that we have a population of jays, and they're planting like Mads, you know. And they're lots of baby oak all over the place. You know that I didn't plant

Dermot McNally 7:51
the way you planted. That verse in 2004 that sounds very much familiar in the sense that the new CCF planting scheme is is advocating for smaller clusters of spec species to be intermingled so that you couldn't even call them plot sizes. So where was that a conscious decision? Or was, as you said, was it just primarily that you knew that was more of a natural kind of a formation than putting in rows of one tree, and then rows of the next three, and whatever.

Sean Ó Conluáin 8:26
Yeah, it was certainly I didn't have much knowledge at the time. You get a lot of experience through doing it. And I, I love quoting. There's this Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, who who says, you know, life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards. Certainly, I was very influenced when in planting the trees, and particularly the access to the trees so they there were a couple of principles that I picked up from those books. One was, don't put straight pathways in, but put in a lot of access, but make them all rounded. Like, yeah, so you, you don't go straight through. You go around and put curves in, leave plenty of open spaces.

Dermot McNally 9:13
Well, look at, let's talk about your interventions in the broadleaf section before we move to talking about the conifers because you mentioned ash, and if you had ash, you have die back, and you mentioned under planting. But let's talk about everything you did since the trees established, then in there,

Sean Ó Conluáin 9:31
in those early stages, everything, everything grew. Yes, there was no problem. And then eventually, as they started go to grow up, I did some Halo tending, I think is the right word. Maybe you should have done a little bit more attending around the oak patches, but they tend to take care of themselves a lot some of the oak patches, you see, one of the the challenges where you've got small patches is that the more. Aggressive trees tend to dominate, you know. So I had birch and Alder around the oak patch, but the birch grew up much quicker than the oak, so I had to do some interventions, taking out the birch around the oak patches. But it wasn't a big job, you know. And and all the time, you know, there were some neighbors who helped me cut some of the trees down that I'm talking about tending. But I would have done it on a kind of a quid pro quo, if there was work involved in doing it. Then they got timber out of it, basically, and then I developed a whole system around firewood that I that we use. We have a fairly large stove in the house, and also a masonry stove that generally keeps the bulk of the supplies the bulk of the energy in the winter. Did actually apply for the woodland improvement scheme after I had purchased the spruce, so that allowed me to do some enrichment planting under the ash and also some regen, if you like, in the in the spruce as well. So I was under story planting in the in the spruce, as we were taking out the spruce, you know, when we bought the spruce plantation, I was confronted by, really the theory. What would we do with it, you know? So here is this spruce plantation planted in 1987 untamed. And what will we do? And it's on different types of soil as well. So there are parts of it on a Peasy wet soil, and there's parts of it on a much more stable kind of it's raised up a little bit. So eventually, and the same story I had with different advice. So I got various advice from from different experts. And they are experts about it was too risky to try continuous cover or to try so with that continuous cover would have meant going in and doing kind of selective thinning. Initially, you had to put in racks, obviously. So you put in a rack so you get access, but you put the racks fairly far apart, and then you do, you mark individual trees and take out trees between the racks. And I had people saying, oh, geez, don't do that, because the whole thing is going to come down.

Dermot McNally 12:23
I'll get back to my chat with Sean okonline shortly. But if you're in the market for forestry lands, go to forest sales.ie. Where you'll find forest for sale across the country, and all the information you need to make a decision that's forest sales.ie. Now let's get back to the conversation with Sean O'Connor. The forest was 26 years at this stage. So the conifer block, just to put it in context, people in Leitrim start seriously thinking about cutting solid conifer blocks that have performed well anywhere from 26 to 34 years old. So, so this was the context that you have bought a mature block of conifer that really the de facto approach would have been to leave it for another couple of years, and clear fell the whole thing. But this is where you took the decision to attempt a conversion to a continuous cover forest. Isn't that it?

Sean Ó Conluáin 13:20
Yeah, and it's really interesting, if you look upon it that way, like some people would have said to me at that stage, it's 26 years old. The blocks were you put now, you know, just do a semi clear fell so, and that was certainly an option to, particularly that lower section that I talked about, you know, a, you know that it's, it's hard to say the wrong trees, because people blame spruce, but you know, it's the way they're planted, and where they're planted, and everything else, and mono culture as well. But, but a, a an option was to cut a block of it out and to replant, you know, immediately. But on the other hand, I had these 26 year old trees that looked fine. They were doing very well. And there was a whole thing about envisioning, like, I'm 26 years down and I'm back to to my lifetime kind of thing, you know, I won't get a chance again to wait another 26 years to allow the trees to grow into a continuous cover forest, you know, so, so it all boils down to a judgment call on risk. And you know, if, if I were to go and do interventions, could cut out selected thinning and so on, but what was likely to happen to the remaining trees now I would be getting an income. I get an income every time I do an intervention, or, you know, unlike the broad leaves, you know, so every time I did an intervention, which is about every two or three years. So I started off that about 10 years ago, the transformation to continuous cover and the. Aggressiveness of which you intervene is a whole balance between you know, you want to let light in so you get regeneration, hopefully natural regen, or trees that you've planted underneath, but you don't want too much for two reasons. One is that if you let in too much light, then you get grasses and everything growing that you don't want to grow, and they smother up the trees. But also the remaining spruce are really exposed, you know, and particularly from the rocks, you know. So once you put in the racks, even though wind, we've all learned an awful lot about wind in the last few years, and particularly from aowin. But if you look at even around here, the way the wind, the storm, has impacted on spruce, it's very difficult to say exactly how wind is going to blow trees down, you know, because, you know, there's a questio forest right next to me here, and the outside of the forest is fine. It's trees inside it that have fallen down, you know. And I don't think it's related. There isn't a rock going in there, you know, it's just whatever, you know, combination of circumstances and turbulence and so on. But, but I suppose, as a general principle, what I was facing was that if you if you go too aggressively, the chances are that you're going to get windrow and you're going to get a good few trees down. But if you don't, if I didn't go and cut in enough, then I wouldn't have enough light to get my understory starting to grow up. So to start the process of a multi age, multi diverse, continuous cover forest, you know?

Dermot McNally 16:54
And so how did it work in practice? Then you started to thin. And this approach hasn't changed since there has been small pockets of wind blow, but overall, Sean, it has moved in a fairly linear direction. You are getting there? Are you?

Sean Ó Conluáin 17:12
I think so, yeah, certainly in part of it, you know, there was the storm in one particular area, blew down a lot of trees, you know. Now, when you say blew down a lot of trees, and I'll come back to this later on, there's nothing to do with the storm, but getting machinery into a kind of a peaty forest in Leitrim is very, very challenging, you know, because the machines themselves do a lot of damage, you know, and then the do you repair the damage? Or what do you do like, you know? And it goes totally against my when I go back to the three legs of the stool of the economic, social and environmental. The social thing is basically, for me, being able to access, being able to walk around, being able to enjoy, you know, observing nature and everything else. But as soon as when the machines, the harvesting machines, and particularly the harvester go in on a peaty soil, then, you know, accesses just rule out you can't get in, you know. And that happened me on two occasions, like, you know, and I didn't really realize this is what's going on. But yeah, having said that, you can always hold back with continuous cover. Like, at the moment, I'm due to have harvester harvesting in for a selective thinning. The trees are marked. They've been marked for quite some time, and I'm due to have contractors in to do that. But as you know, there's been an awful lot of rain recently. The soil is very the ground is very wet, and I don't want to do a lot of damage, so I'm, I'm just holding back a little bit. You know,

Dermot McNally 18:56
one issue that has been discussed about continuous cover is because you're doing small interventions that you're taking a small amount of trees out, and by virtue of that fact, you've a small amount of brash to put under the wheels of the machinery that's coming in. An alternative argument posits that clearfell might be very unsightly, but it does mitigate some of the possible compaction issues or damage the soil, simply because you've got a huge amount of volume to put under the wheels of the machinery. What is your experience of that being like managing the forest in a continuous cover setup?

Sean Ó Conluáin 19:37
Like for me, it's just a big challenge. You know, the clear fell is, is obviously a solution. But as I said, it's like snakes and ladders, like you clear fell, you're back to starting block again, like, you know, and and just from, you know, maybe from an economic point of view, it's attractive. Of you know, because you clear fell and you get your your pension, or whatever it is, like, you know, at the moment, even clear felling a section is not that attractive because of where wood prices are at. You know, the whole thing, it's a the fact that my trees in the spruce section are older, means I've got a higher proportion of saw log, and that will stand up a little bit like, you know, but it's probably much more for me, the notion that I'm going back. So these trees, like the trees you're talking about, you know, if we were to clear fell, they're almost 40 years old at this stage. I don't know how you put a value on that, you know. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of there's a lot of regen, natural regen, going on. And if you do get some trees down in the storm, there are two considerations. One is that you'll get some of the value back, because the trees can be harvested, you know, might be the same value that you would have got if they were all still standing. But the other thing, if trees are left on the ground, or even if they're broken and so on, this has a high biodiversity value, you know, so, so and forests are not like us, like, you know, they, they, they all want to grow. Everything wants to grow again. They don't need us, like, you know, Nature doesn't, you know, Nature doesn't need us around. It's going to continue. You know, yeah, we haven't spoken about deer, and maybe I should talk a little. Let's get into that. Yeah, my friend the deer. So I, like, initially, I wasn't aware of deer being around at all, and if they were, they probably would have been like any urban Irish person would have treated them, oh, look at the deer. Or, you know, they were lovely animals and everything else, you know. But it probably was about eight years ago, 10 years ago, when I really noticed that they were having some, some impact. I planted what I would consider to be a kind of a heritage orchard, a whole selection of mostly apple trees in three main places. Now there wouldn't have been, you know, there was about 20 trees in one place and 10 in another, and you know, a few around the place, following my principle, but over a period of about six months, they were all ruined, totally ruined, totally ruined, you know, and the whole the natural region inside the spruce, they tend to nibble on the top of a lot of what I would have planted as well, like, you know, so Oak and beach, or whatever. Like, probably more beach. So they just nibble on the top. It doesn't ruin the tree, but it doesn't do it any good, like, you know, so you're not going to get a good, good tree out of it. Now, more recently, so we had a meeting recently, you know, based on the all Island strategy, you know, the government put together. And the reason of the approach, and there is a kind of a designated person, I think it's a great approach. And I'm really looking forward to building up a network of landowners around around me here, I have had hunters in but it's extraordinarily difficult. The hunters would need to be living very close to me, you know, they asked me, When did you see the deer? And you know it, I mightn't see them at all. I can see the droppings. I can see the damage, you know, but I don't see them. And then they the hunters, they're, they're all part timers, or then, you know, so hobby, so they need to be here at the crack of dawn or late at night to do something, you know, and that's almost impossible. So having a strategic approach is going to be really, really important, you know,

Dermot McNally 23:56
yeah, so, so hopefully that that comes sooner rather than later, because I presume it's affecting a lot of what you under planted.

Sean Ó Conluáin 24:04
Then the most soul destroying thing is, you know, when I planted oak inside, like I would have planted oak a where the the ash dieback was, and the oak comes on, and when it's about five or seven years old, and it's a nice size, and then the deer comes along and just ruins it. Like, yeah, so, and then you start off again and do it. Or are now, these would be trees, like oak trees that are maybe two, three meters tall, like, you know, and that's really soul destroying, but very often they're nibbling at the regen, the natural regeneration that's going on. So you, when you, when you, when you think of all you've gone through about, you know, the selective thinning and getting in the right amount of light and everything. And then the animals come along and just ruin it. And I've seen. Pictures in Wicklow, for example, where, you know, they effectively stop regeneration, you know. So they're, they're big enemies of the whole continuous cover concept.

Dermot McNally 25:13
I'm not sure if you were in Baron's court for some of their field days. And they talked a lot about deer and and they manage a large area there, and they take a landscape approach to the deer with the adjoining neighbors, but the deer were a major threat to their CCF ambitions, so you're no different.

Sean Ó Conluáin 25:33
Yeah, just to tell you, like I know in Bren scort, I've been there several times, they used a drone technology with thermal imaging to count because it's very difficult to know. And at our recent meeting, we were talking about that like I was saying that, is there any stock taking about? How do we know the number of deer and we don't, and there's no count nationally. They're guesses, kind of and and the the approach we're taking is very much to be on the basis of, well, if there's less damage, then it must mean there's less deer, basically. But I think we really need to get serious about it and have a much more I don't know what to call it, a targeted approach to using technology to count the deer in a specific area and and, for example, pulling like, I would love if the neighbors, all my neighbors around here, all the farmers, like they're all impacted barns. Court had developed it, I'm sure, you know, they've developed a whole industry around venison like, you know. So they, they, you know, it's very profitable what they're doing. So they're, they're living with the deer, yeah, just a number of which is probably where we're all gonna have to end up like, and we don't want to kill off the all the deer like, you know, but, but there, there's too many of them, like, at the moment,

Dermot McNally 26:54
is, is it a viable proposition some people might ask to put up deer fencing and, and I know that's a loaded question, so but I still, I'd like to hear your take on it, and just so that people know where the reality of

Sean Ó Conluáin 27:07
it when we put when we put up our fencing, like part of the whole thing at the beginning was put up fencing, and the fencing was usually put up around drains, so to speak. And the logic was that we didn't need to put a kind of a six or an eight foot fence along to keep the air out, but if you put it on the right side of the drain, they would have to go down into the drain, and then couldn't get up over it, so to speak. And generally speaking, we did that. But I've come to the conclusion that they eventually find a way in, you know, and and brambles grow up over it. And they, they like deer, are very, they're very, very smart animals, like, you know, and they can come in, they'll find a way in. And I know, you know, my forester, Paddy Purser, well, quite apart from the whole cost of it, like, you know, it's phenomenal. It would be phenomenally costly for us to put a deer fence all the way around the whole property and to maintain it, you don't just put up the fence. You'd have to maintain it, you know. So it's, it's a non runner, basically, for us. But Paddy, Paddy basically said that to me, you know, forget it like, you know, it's not a, not a runner in them.

Dermot McNally 28:23
Let me pause the interview for a second to ask you this, could your business benefit from increased profile in the forestry sector? Well, if so, maybe you should be advertising on Ireland's only dedicated forestry podcast, with new episodes coming out every two weeks. So get in touch with forestry now to see how we can make it work for you. Back to the chat with Sean. So I suppose really getting towards the end of what we're going to talk about here, Sean is, what are your plans now going forward? You've survived many big storms. The forest is growing on deer, a major challenge. But is there anything new coming on board, or anything you're going to try that's going to bring the forest further then?

Sean Ó Conluáin 29:04
Yeah, I'm very, very happy with the whole, I'm sure you got the whole sense of the why, why we're doing this, you know. And certainly I'm not doing it as a hobby. We do get money out of it, like economically, every few years we get, we got a kind of a bonus. I could always go and do a small clear fell, if needs be. And certainly, you know, if we end up having to think about going into a nursing home or something, we could always do that kind of thing, you know, but it's not on the plan at the moment. Yeah, I was very impressed with all of Lehi and her approach on kindergarten there was, this was the recent pro silver had an AGM and an open day kind of thing, and she, she put the whole the social side first in looking at forestry and bringing people in so that they kind of can see the benefit. Feel the benefits and get them involved. And initially, her family, like all, if you like, an extended family, the people coming in, but also the community itself. And I think in nature, I'd love to really explore that. You know, I attended a session on social farming, and I know there are some people who use forestry and social farming, so that might be at the back of my mind, the challenge, the challenge for me, and I have put in application to the the NP it's NPWS, isn't it, the farm their farm plan scheme. Unfortunately, it wasn't successful, but they kept, they keep your application, but I put it in on the basis of a totally integrated approach, of broad leaves, the these wildflower meadows, if you like, and also the spruce, and integrating the whole thing together in the form of a natural corridor that links into at both ends of of where my my boyfriend, meadows, if you like, are going. It links into the special area conservation and into the bone River at the other end. And I that would be at the back of my mind, what, what I'd like to do, but I'm very happy with with all the challenges. And we really enjoy, we enjoy the woodland as well. If you follow me, I mean, it's hard in covid we really had, and when I say we, it was the family, most of whom don't live here, but we really enjoyed being in the place where we're living at the moment. You know, it's, it's a very, it's a very healthy place psychologically, but also from the point of view of your near owned they say that I was reading an article about it that living in a city and living in nature, which is what we're doing, are two different ball games, so to speak. So we're really enjoying it.

Dermot McNally 32:16
There's a common thread when you talk to a lot of people involved in forestry, especially owners that have planted and live near and are active in their forest, there's a huge personal satisfaction from being involved and being in the forest and having walkways through even as much as be able to walk through it with the dog, it brings a great sense of satisfaction. So they more of the same than going forward, we've gone through a right bit of stuff. Sean, anything else you want to add, or maybe advice you might have for people who are starting out in their forestry journey, who have a forest and haven't made interventions?

Sean Ó Conluáin 32:59
Yeah, you almost touch on it there? But I didn't mention it like one of the things I did, almost by accident at the beginning of the broad leaves, was I put in lots of trails, you know. Now they weren't I, to a certain extent, in my mind, I was thinking of harvesting, but they're too small for harvesting, you know, but they're absolutely brilliant for access and walking around. And you can go, if you're, like, in a small holding, like, like we are here, I can get around on my 35 tractor and make interventions or bring tools around so the building in access from the very beginning, and maybe also really looking at the whole harvesting that you do, like I, I was surprised we talked about the damage that machines do, but I know on the continent, it's, it's, it's quite common from the beginning to actually build in roads into the forest, you know, because You ultimately have to do it like so why not plan it from the very beginning? I didn't do that, you know? And there's, there are lots of considerations for where you would put a road so that you can reduce the cost of building the road, so to speak, which is, may not be an option later on,

Dermot McNally 34:19
you know, as it stands, Sean, and I'm sure you've you've read this in the T's and C's of the department rule books, but you cannot put the road in when the forest is planted. It has to be closer to a harvesting intervention. But it defies logic, as you say, because a forest road goes in late. If it goes in late to a conifer forest, it can disrupt the whole balance of the forest and cause wind blow at the entrance, but in all those years of maintenance, you're missing out on an access route into the forest, and it makes every intervention or every trip to the forest more awkward. So yeah, it seems a no brainer, and I don't understand why the. Don't review that policy.

Sean Ó Conluáin 35:01
And probably the word, the emphasis I put on is by design, you know, so from the start, you're designing in all kinds of access, yeah, you're going to need them. So you don't have to build a road, sure, but you know where it's going to be. You don't. You don't have to build all these paths, because essentially, very often, it's just leaving the space, you know. So it's not, not not really planting. Now, I don't know what the rules are about that, but they don't have to be huge spaces, you know. And the same with the open spaces that we talked about, you know that they're built into a design, so you don't like traditionally, they will have just planted trees everywhere, right up to the edge. I think we got away from that, but, but, but I'm not sure that we've got to the stage where you, you kind of are designing in the environmental, social and economic things. You know, design all those things in. So do you, you get your access for machines, eventually, much easier. Maybe build your build your fully build your road, and also the access from a human point of view.

Dermot McNally 36:06
Sean, when you did start learning about forestry, you had already done a bit of reading yourself. But where do you go for information, or where would be a point of knowledge for people starting out, that you'd recommend?

Sean Ó Conluáin 36:21
Yeah, I think Tagus. I certainly start with Tagus advisors, you know. And and their webinars are brilliant as well, or even they have events the fabulous research center, and there's great stuff going on. And then, of course, I've been very influenced by pro Silva, you know, and again, there are webinars. And, you know, there's this online course where you can do a course and get a qualification, and it's free, you know. So, so there's tons of stuff like that, you know. But, but, but I, what I found, as well as that owners like myself, and there are lots of them around, are very open, and even like places like Barnes court, you know, they're very, very open to share their experiences. Not everybody's going to have a Barnes court, but you can, you can, you can learn a lot from what they've done over the centuries. They've been at it for centuries, you know. And there are other houses, the big houses have great stories about trees and planting trees and forestry, which is pretty much unknown, I think, in Ireland, you know. But they typically have domains, and they're really interesting trees. So visiting gardens, like associated with big houses, is also an interesting occupation.

Dermot McNally 37:47
Yeah, they've had the succession issue for generations quite often. So they've managed to hand down skills that aren't in the I suppose you could say you're a first generation forest owner, and the majority of owners in the country are in the same booth. So to have children coming up growing up with it is wouldn't be that common, I suppose. Sean, so this is where the challenge is in getting succession planning organized.

Sean Ó Conluáin 38:19
Yeah. And you know, that's where the big houses come in. I just finished reading a book, and knock Fane is the name of a I think it's potterton as the author. But it's about life in the big in a big house, and particularly, most of the big houses were owned by Protestants. But this is set in the 50, 6070s in Ireland. But what comes across is the depth the 250 years or 300 years that they've been passing on from one generation to the next, and how that passing on takes place. But the knowledge and everything now, I was struck by how they in any of these big houses, they have a whole host of gardeners and foresters and everything else, like in barns court, they have professionals. I'm here by myself, but I get advice from people, you know, and I don't think we've I think most Irish people are going to be a bit like me in terms of the way we do it, like in Yeah?

Dermot McNally 39:23
Well, they have the scale to have the scale that justifies the permanent in house expertise. And for most of us, we we do it ourselves, and that's where we have to learn our trade, and we can't expect it just to fall in our laps once we plant the trees.

Sean Ó Conluáin 39:43
But if you want to finish on a note, a poetic note for a couple, I'm very you know, there's this whole mystique that Irish people have with trees, all the lots of place names around, you know, kildara and Derek all. I'm killer, like, there's especially oak. Oak is linked into so many place names. But we have, we have a kind of a It's not just a romantic link, but there's a deep link, manakhan Magan that you would draw out some of this thing here, our link with land, or link with mythology and so on. So the good old story, the kill hash that everybody knows, which links trees as being trees as being the old Irish way of life. So Ka the yen amid faster ganymed ta deren the guilty. Er Lor Niel trocht. Er kil cash. Na tylach, es Niel Kling for a cling go brawl. So the notion that at the end of an era is when the trees are down, and we it wasn't the trees at all. It was talking about a way of life, a way of life, the Gaelic tradition that was coming to an end in the 17th century. But I, you know, I think that's when you're involved with trees, you kind of feel that as well. So I do get a kick out of it as well. And I'd encourage anybody who's listening to soldier on.

Dermot McNally 41:14
Very good. Sean, thanks very much for joining me,

Sean Ó Conluáin 41:17
grand You're welcome.

Dermot McNally 41:20
That's it for this podcast. Feel free to comment or subscribe for more episodes. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai