Day by day in working forest is much the same routine each and every year. Spring brings new growth. Summer is clearing, cleaning away weeds and maintenance. Autumn thinning and getting the cut wood ready to work, Winter, if wet and cold is a time we cut stakes, post and other fencing wood. And so the circle continues. We now had a big garden, room to grow all we needed, Nice veg and good fruit. There was space to have laying hens, I also breed rabbits for meat and fur,( something now, looking back I would not repeat.) There was alway work to be done, Most days from spring through to Autumn in the longer days I would be up and out has soon as day light came, Just light enough so I could see what I was doing, Feed the hens and rabbits, then in the garden for an hour or two before I had to start my day job at 7.30am, Then It was a walk up across the park, get the tractor out its shed, fuel up if needed, the off up the Myarth to work. The "Myarth" is the name of an area, where most of Glanusk estate has their main Forest block, It a mini mountain planted up all over. This planting only happened after the Wars, it started after the first and continued on after the second, its been forestry ever since. Cecial Thomas, the old gent I worked with, told me, that when he was a lad, they had to take a cart load of wood up to the top of the Myarth to make a beacon to celebrate the kings coronation. It was treeless. He also said, that where you entered the Myarth, the road way in, there was a stand of very mature larch, that was being clear felled and replanted. That when he was a lad, he could remember picking a potato crop from that very ground. Cecial was 86 when he died, On the Tuesday, we were both up in the barn, peeling and pointing fencing stacks. At around 4.00pm we were stood warming ourselves by a fire we had lite in an old oil drum, There Cecial said to me, " I`m will be glad to get home today, been feeling a bit on the wrong side all day". He was never one to complain or ever say if anything was wrong with him, always very active and fit for a man of his age. But that night he passed away in his sleep. The Next day I was back up the barn waiting for him to arrive and start work, He did not turn up. Billy came around 9.00am and Said, We lost Cecail last night, I just did not catch on, thinking how can you loose someone , did he just wonder off. Then realizing he had died, It really choked me up. He had been so kind to me for all my time working together. He often would make me laught, with little things, he said, Like he only worked part time now, that was 5 days aweek instead of the 7 days he had worked most of his life. And when a toff went by one day in their car, He said, " just like keeping a pet dog, They eat good food and do nothing for it". Always a smile, liked to stop now and then for a smoke, Life was his wife and garden. Around mid October- November time was planting, Replanting where trees had been felled and also new areas. Each year we would go either to Abergavenny or Raglan where there was two good commercial tree nurseries. Both produced good sound plants. The one at Abergavenny also had a tanalising plant where we took all our prepared fencing post and stakes to be treated. They always said that our post and stakes took more liquid than any others did. That was because they had a year drying time in the barn, We would take a thousand stakes there each time, When we picked up our plants, It was always whips 18-24 sizes. Larch, spruce or pine. what ever was required for the plot. over my eight years there we planted trees every year. That would amount to a good many thousand. Looking back now some fourty odd years later, It nice to see how they have grown, and every time i passed by there, not very often now, I always felt like I had done something worth while, It all look so good. I will continue on, there is so much that I could say, but it would take another life time. Still hopefully I`ve got tomorrow to continue, see you then.