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The Tamarack Outdoors Blog
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All the latest news, recommended products, kit lists and experiences from Mike Rushton and the Tamarack Team
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The Woodsman Course 2016
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By Mike Rushton
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14th October 2016
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The weekend of the 7th to 9th of October was the inaugural Tamarack Woodsman Course. It has taken about a year of planning, preparation and scheduling - so all the course staff at Tamarack were really looking forward to it. It's always quite surprising how much time elapses between an original course idea (ideas often stemming from around the campfire) and actually running it, but there are many factors to iron out - course content, timings, site suitability, equipment and marketing. Suffice to say, we were itching to get started.
On this course we delve into the old ways of the woodsman - working with traditional tools to manage a woodland. This course is ideal for anyone who owns, rents or manages a woodland, but anyone interested in woodlands, trees and working with wood will find it to be a really interesting weekend. Many aspects of woodland management were covered, from tree identification, tree biology, woodland management systems, tree felling and working a woodland with hand tools.
All the attending students tackled the tasks given to them with gusto. I found it really enthusing to have so many questions fired at me over the weekend, a good sign of student/teacher interaction. When working with natural materials the outcome is never guaranteed and it was great to see people persevering and getting great satisfaction from producing a workable tool, or item, from something taken from the woodland. The excellent riven oak fenceposts the students enjoyed producing will become a 'real fence' in the near future and stand for decades.
So what a great maiden voyage for The Woodsman course. A few subtle changes to the course for 2017 and we will all be looking forward to the course again next year.
Thanks to all the students, a great group to work with and a lot of good crack around the campfire... Mike
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