An Effective way of implementing TREES on the FARM!

Watch the whole series on ''Trees on the Farm & Native Woodland'': • Native Woodland and Tr...
In this video, Andrew shows us an example of Agroforestry tree planting: the creation of tree coops in grazing or crop fields. Hereby a biodiversity oasis is created in the middle of the field that can also give shade to livestock, improve drainage and field fertility, and more. The round design makes for cost-effective and easy-to-put-up fencing, protecting the trees from livestock and deer.
Once the trees are properly established, animals could potentially roam inside the planted coupe as well. This concept is developed by Andrew St. Ledger of the Woodland League.
Ireland's new Forestry Programme 2023-2027 (which is still awaiting EU approval): small woodlands on Farms are being promoted under the 'Native Tree Area Scheme' which supports the creation of small woodlands (up to 1ha) without the need for a reforestation license. Besides covering the costs of the forest creation farmers will be rewarded with a significant premium of €2284/ha/year for 10 years.
For more information visit: www.celtnet.org/
Filmed & produced by Julius Silvan: / @juliussilvan
Music Credits: Achaidh Cheide by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
This series is made commissioned by CELT with the support of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to promote woodlands & reforestation. CELT is a registered Irish charity, promoting the Natural Environment & Sustainable Living through education and raising community awareness.

[@kennyhagan5781]

This guy actually knows what he's talking about. Watching him brushing dead twigs off of a living branch absent-mindedly while he is explaining something, as if by reflex.....that tells you how much he really is doing with this simple seeming project. I applaud him and his lovely trees. BRAVO!👏🌲🍂

[@ev6558]

I feel like someone who knows what they're talking about wouldn't say "coupes" and then "coops" when the word is copse.

[@patrickmorris8934]

​@@ev6558They're all forestry terms, along with coppice, that all come from the same French root word 'coupe'.

[@ev6558]

@@patrickmorris8934 Shame the video isn't in French.

[@patrickmorris8934]

@@ev6558 Why would it be in French..?

[@anthonyburke5656]

That is a good statement “a three dimensional system”

[@thomaskelly123]

real education, appreciated

[@downbntout]

Biodiversity, always beautiful, and better

[@sophiareygrace6656]

lurveeee the concept!

[@MrMisaKulicka]

These sort of enclosures are used to good effect along riparian zones in Scotland; deer tend not to jump in, even with stock (sheep) fencing; the theory is that although they can jump in, they're worried about not being able to get a run up to then jump out again. Using a standard length of fence works well and irregular shapes can be created to end up with a more natural shape once the trees are mature enough to not need protection.

[@CELTskills]

Thanks for sharing those inside from Scotland! We can relate well to the landscape overthere and share ideas. Cheers!

[@gauvaindf]

I am from France and the other day a young deer was stuck in a plantation completely surrounded with a 2 meter high fence... I suppose he had come in from a tree which was lying near the fence, but it’s still quite a stunt because he was far from being an adult.

[@EthanPDobbins]

Deer can jump 6-8 foot in the air from standing. They probably just don't do it because they are lazy lol. I'm in north america and the whitetail here would rather try to run through a fence and break it than jump it unless it's your garden fence, they'll jump that any ol time

[@billirvine9078]

Scotland is decimated with deer,and other beings.

[@maearcher4721]

I love it. Not only he planted trees, but he thought about how the trees will look in many years to come and used great variability(mozaic) of native species, which is always the best for nature. And now the pasture has better grass and sheep can hide between these trees and bushes if wind blows bit too much. It's win-win.

[@lawn38]

If only more land owners had his level of intelligence and common sense. I wish him all the best.

[@TonyM540]

They have but for decades they responded to the market and produced more food because that’s what they were asked to do.

[@none2068]

KZbin algorithm did not disappoint ! I found the videos with Andrew so informative. Such a shame this series of videos did not continue.

[@Munq]

i smiled when he said “operating in tree dimensions”

[@acquisitium]

a wellmade video. thanks for that

[@koreanature]

My best friend, that's a great video. I will always cheer for you in Korea I'm looking forward to a great video. Have a nice day.

[@artbyadrienne6812]

Love your accent. Glad you're creating some safe space for the trees to grow. 🌲🌳

[@Kormac80]

Working with natural regenerative processes is key to the future of agriculture.

[@nate081304]

Love this, like a temperate version of Syntropic Agroforestry. Mindful planting that incorporates building and fuel materials through management (coppice/pollard, etc) into edible systems really makes a lot of sense.

[@r.guerreiro140]

Forget this fantasy Specialized farming are in such a way more productive than that mess you call "syntropic" that you will have to syntropize wild areas if you force a ban on conventional farming

[@greeneyeddevil1]

Really awesome work

[@ce1581]

The groupings of trees held cool air that blew into our home during summer ! It was lovely .

[@thankyou9835]

Now we’re working in tree dimensions 👌

[@balooey86]

Truly Tree Dimensional!

[@joshthompiano]

Brilliant.

[@Ukepa]

good video... never heard of tree coops but it looks a good idea

[@Enhancedlies]

What a find! Im in awe you are such a small channel! Cant wait to dig in to the rest of your videos now

[@buddha6784]

Great useful education. Very much appreciated.

[@spencersanderson1894]

What an awesome idea, should be taken up by more farmers and land owners. I believe the word coup is of French origin, I do a bit of Coppicing and I’ve heard it used in that sort of work.

[@anemone104]

Yep, French or Norman French from couper, to cut or coupe with an accent on the e ('has been cut'). Refers to an area of cut coppice (a coupe, pronounced coop) also known as a panel or fall or the one I use, 'cant' - depends where you're from or who you've been speaking to about woodland management. Click on the anemone and have a rummage, more vids on this winter's coppice will appear soon. 'Coop' is a small, usually wooden house you put a broody hen in or you can 'coop up' another individual of livestock or poultry to isolate it. Here in the UK we were 'cooped up' in our homes during lockdown (or not).

[@jameswright1187]

it's about trying ideas and testing idea's so people in the future can see what u have done , and learn from it, Absolute LEDEND! ENOUGH SAID!

[@Getschakter]

super interesting!

[@samdumaquis2033]

Interesting

[@RaniVeluNachar-kx4lu]

Roots and the mycorrhizal fungi that grow symbiotically with them to produce the complex subterranean ecosystem. I copied from Wikipedia: A mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association between a green plant and a fungus. The plant makes organic molecules by photosynthesis and supplies them to the fungus in the form of sugars or lipids, while the fungus supplies the plant with water and mineral nutrients, such as phosphorus, taken from the soil. But I am hearing a lot about these woodland ecosystems from a lot of regenerative essays and videos. There are also bacterial ecosystems that exist between grassy green plants and bacterial decomposers in a similar symbiosis.

[@SarisChannel18]

I had a dream about circles around individual fruit trees, and in one of those circles I saw bucks fighting. I think this video somewhat answers my curiosity. I imagine many of the seeds of weeds will float around the rings with the air current.

[@7thsluglord363]

Any trees are good, but ill say that in places with wide open fields, like my area in America, rows of trees, tree lines, are VERY important to stopping wild winds from coming through and ripping up all the loose top soil and dust bowling. Id like to see less wide open fields and more of them with dense tree rows around the edges, and even through the middles if the field is not a small one. Id be happy to see pockets of trees like this in fields, but id be even happier to see thick, long, rows of trees.

[@jjmartin6422]

As a grower in the Arizona desert and major in Agriculture, definitely need the rows as a windbreak to stop dry souls from being blown away

[@oracle7552]

I appreciate the insight.

[@MadPutz]

Circle or oval shape makes it easier for large mechanized farms to deal with - depending on the turn radius of the equipment.

[@peterbathum2775]

here's hoping this practice spreads. makes great sense to me but im not a farmer. Here in the us, I see many that keep woods for property and field borders, hunting, timber and firewood harvesting, or because its on a slope too steep to tractor; a few with patches amidst the rectangles; but some want to plant as much of their acreage as possible for maximum profit, so clear it all to the dirt , except for industrial mechanized wheel watering.

[@terrywereb7639]

Interesting concept...condusive to alley cropping! And, when mature, natural shelter for livestock.

[@RaniVeluNachar-kx4lu]

The Rush Meadow ecosystem is a grassy/bacterial symbiosis and so the two basic organisms are different than the Tree/fungi ecosystem. Probably why the rushes don't survive in the tree/fungal ecosystem as the fungi are not adapted to provide the rushes with the mineral nutrients as well as they do with trees? It's really that specific apparently.

[@tylerk.7947]

That may play a role, but more likely the rush isn’t in the forest because lack of light and because the ground is now better draining and drier. The symbiotic bacteria would certainly be present in the soil of the forest along with the fungi. Just because it’s a fungi dominant soul doesn’t mean plants with bacterial associations can’t grow.

[@b_uppy]

They have found out that there can be mycelium in grasses. My theory is that if they avoid overgrazing and do mob grazing instead (keep the grass at least 7" tall), it will provoke mycelium. Mob grazing involves high stocking rates, (many head of ie cattle) that are monitored and moved frequently. This promotes more even grazing and better forage recovery. One would need to protect young shrubs and trees so they can avoid being eaten. Mark Shepard developed a method of farming that uses biome-appropriate, food-producing trees, shrubs and vines alley cropped between rows of annuals or (usu) perennials/graze. Livestock are used to manage crop residues, fruit fall, culls, weeds, pests, fertility, etc. He wrote a book I highly recommend called Restoration Agriculture. I highly recommend it. It takes a lot of the expense out of farming and uses sensible methods to restore biomes to health while still being useful to humans as well.

[@stewartthomas2642]

Love your stuff kick on love it 👍 ❤

[@peterclark6290]

Very good idea that could be called 'nature forts' where the local pest predators can wait for the next opportunity. However trees are also integral to the water table and these should be integrated with radial lines of trees that connect the 'forts' or 'coops' and provide that underground function. Bee hives, bird boxes and a pond would complete the picture.

[@TomInIreland110]

I've had a similar experience with tree tubes as you've had with fences. We were told it has to be the 6ft+ tubes or nothing! The cheaper 5foot ones do fine, with very little herbivory on the trees (in a very deer dense area). Better to spend the budget on good pressure treated timber stakes for the tubes. That way, all your materials can be used again and again. Nice concept by the way.

[@anemone104]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z3mrdmBtbNyDosU Seen this a LOT. The vid this link takes you to shows sika deer damage. Muntjac, though smaller will 'charge down' tree tubes and eat the trees inside. Also bigger fenced areas will get deer jumping in unless the fences are 8'.

[@downbntout]

Not a fan of the copper arsenate poison used to 'treat' lumber

[@RaniVeluNachar-kx4lu]

He's obviously an astute arborist. But there are microscopic organism that are as fundamental to the success of the Tree or the Rush ecosystems that are being omitted in this discussion. Perhaps there needs to be references in the comments to links to sites that will elaborate the areas of deficiency in this talk?

[@urbandad885]

20 spruce trees for old Jim. The right vegetation for the time and place, planted in arrangements designed for a given purpose.

[@palarious]

very cool

[@RaniVeluNachar-kx4lu]

Maybe the deer looked at the circle and "thought" that it looked like a deer trap? Maybe they weren't confused. Maybe they had some instinctive knowledge from millennia of hunting and trapping by our ancestral primates?

[@beetooex]

Could i ask you to explain one point a bit further please? You said 'the rushes can't grow because the soil has been improved aerobically''. Do rushes only grow in anerobic conditions? I'd assume they'd been shaded out as the canopy closes.

[@mihacurk]

Yes the rushes grow in waterlogged soils, i.e. in marshes etc. If you improve the soil to the point where it has enough air in the pores, the other species who can’t live in waterlogged soils can outcompete the rushes.

[@sineadconran4964]

❤

[@tomwalsh96]

Where are you located. I would imagine deer density and availability of other feed play a large role in whether ornot they jump the fence

[@MegaPierzak]

That was a common idea in Poland, but now farmers are deforesting what they can just to make huge, monoculture fields... 😢

[@micah_lee]

Trees actively acidify soil while in combination adding organic matter and thus increasing cation exchange capacity

[@RaniVeluNachar-kx4lu]

I hope to see someday millions of mixed cultivated and natural use lands in Borneo. Imagine similar circular rainforests on the order of maybe 50 kilometers in circumference instead of 50 meters BORDERED with another 75 kilometer belt of palm plantation and then again a larger ring of original rain forest expanding out from the middle ring of palm plantation for another 50 kilometers? It would be a two state, series of concentric and alternating zones of palm plantation and rain forest, palm plantation and rain forest. Would it work? Would the investors back in Jakarta be happy with such a mixed use scheme? They might look at it as a waste of economic yield? Or they might realize that it could be the answer to the big problem of how to have your economic cake and eat it too? I bet a few dozen or maybe a few hundred families of Orangutan would be happy with that.

[@harrythehobbit3772]

do you have to do much intervention to plant the initial circular band of trees into the reedy ground? was thinking there may be a competition issue between the reeds and the trees. Seems like a brilliant method to provide a win-win in terms of quality for biodiversity and agriculture

[@RaniVeluNachar-kx4lu]

He's talking about the volumetric increase in density and overall biomass in the system. The health is obvious. It's diverse and complex and resilient. This is great for the regions of the English and Irish and Scottish farmlands for rewilding. This is also why we desperately need to protect massive, complex equatorial regions like the 'Amazon and the Borneo Rain Forests. They are massive, highly complex, with even greater diversity and relationships between specific plants, animals and microscopic life that are not found anywhere else. We can't afford the loss of millions of hectares of these lands. I know the Brazilian people want to expand their range and economic opportunities into the previous off-limits rain forests. But converting these unique and pristine regions to Cattle Grazing Pasture is really a very short sighted Win with a massive Lose for the people of Brazil and Indonesia, and the aboriginal peoples of the Amazon and Borneo. We will never know what we have lost, but it could be in biological significance on the order of Mrs. Pauline Einstein deciding to forgo marriage and not ever born Albert. We can't know the loss, but it would be massive.

[@toastrecon]

3:15 Interesting because that's not a baby tree, that's a horsetail, and the genus (Equisetum) is older than anything with leaves. Some of their ancestors grew up to almost 100ft tall.

[@metaldetectingwithlugnut]

I bet Larry has more assists while on his back than any other player.

[@TonyM540]

Please don’t blame the farmers ! I grew up on a farm back in the 70s / 80s and at that time the agriculture policy was to drain the land in order to produce more grass. There were agricultural grants for drainage and “ improving” the land. Farmers were financially rewarded for doing this. We are now living with the results of these government policies in the form of flash flooding in our towns and cities. There needs to be a ban on all future land drainage and instead make grants available to farmers to plant trees. Many fields have an area of low lying ground that is prone to flooding and this is where the trees could be planted. The trees will absorb the water through the root system and transfer the water up to the tree canopy where excess water evaporates back into the atmosphere.

[@eoghanjoyce6473]

You’d have to wonder how far can you plant the trees away from one another

[@juliawitt3813]

I wonder if you have heard of the proposed reforrestation of the Connemara region of Eire. Was never taken forward.... it would be great to know if this màn thinks it might work.... what a project for humanity that would be......

[@CELTskills]

Reforesting connemara! Interesting! Who was the proposer of that innitiative?

[@9Curtana]

Operating in Tree Dimensions??

[@johnd7108]

Now turn a hardy breed of pigs onto the woods and it will really help

[@-zSoloSz-]

i always thought it was called a copse

[@CELTskills]

You might be right;)

[@Charactermatters650]

He isn’t fooling me a bit - he is clearly in league with the “wee folk” and using this ruse to make more “fairy rings”!

[@REB4444]

What's the diameter of these tree coops?

[@CELTskills]

Andrew used 50m fencing wire (circumference), giving a diameter of about 16m , but with 100m wire that would be about 32m

[@tedtimmis8135]

Question: Why is there so much grassland and moors in the British Isles? In most of the Eastern US and Canada, open grassland quickly becomes forest without mowing or grazing. Is the same true in the British Isles?

[@nathanh641]

There's sadly not much land left there that's not overgrazed by sheep or deer

[@pio4362]

This video is about Ireland. You live on another continent on the other side of the world with a very different climate.

[@christianbender6877]

Farmers have been doing this for centuries ? :p

[@ryankc3631]

Those trees really appreciate the increase in CO2 as they use it to grow and make more oxygen.

[@UTOPIANSutopian]

no ticks?

[@columlynch4229]

Ticks are not a problem here in Ireland. 👍

[@tangoone6312]

.

[@EMidMSO]

Climate Change: Timely; shade, shelter & natural rubbing posts

[@petrosros]

Tree Coops? You mean Copse, unless you have discovered a written variant of Mythological celt language.

[@matthewparton7373]

Bill gates thinks planting trees is a waste if time 😳😳

[@lesliegrayson1722]

Great for small farming and beautician gardeners... but just like permaculture its not practical, economical, time efficient, fuel efficient. Modern farming is so intricately refined that its scary.

[@EthanPDobbins]

Looks to me like ruining good hay/pasture ground that people have maintained for millenia. When that canopy gets thick there won't be any more grass. The ancestors that cleared that ground and cut the grass with scythes knew what they were doing when they cleared it.

[@edcew8236]

Ireland shouldn't need the EU autocracy to approve everything.

[@hvacsoldier1554]

Nobody needs the EU Autocracy.

[@____________________________.x]

The only thing EU wants with Ireland is as housing for more non Irish. You all should start noticing this 💁‍♂️ Remember how you lost all your trees in the first place, we did that to you 😐 Now watch while you lose your cities too

[@pio4362]

@@____________________________.x "we did that to you" - which is why you imperialists have no rights to speak about Ireland ever again.

[@r.guerreiro140]

Sorry, but you have any idea of the diesel needed to work around those circles? If you want to implant animal refuges inside crop fields, and it's a great thing to raise the biodiversity on cultivated lands, at least ask farmers how would be a more rational and machinery friendly shape

[@EthanPDobbins]

Nobody wants to ruin their land with that brush and filth whether it's a circle or a square or a triangle. They cleared it to begin with for a reason. Crop fields all over the world already have strips of wooded areas between them this one included, he says that's why he bought it. There's no sense ruining good agricultural ground by starting a brush farm in the middle of it. Ain't anything those trees can do that's worth the loss of ground.

[@knoll9812]

Grazing land not much diesel

[@pontusvongeijer1240]

This video is fake.

[@salmonoven]

Is this method also work on tropical and arid climate?

[@CELTskills]

I wouldn't see why not (?) :)

[@RangerLife]

Its a COPSE! /kɒps/ noun a small group of trees. Not Coope thats ann enclosure for animals ! :p

[@lyssasletters3232]

❤