Like many other farms in NI, we have an abundance of trees across our fields, most of which are ash trees.

Sadly, ash dieback seems to be killing off a lot of these trees and even though a few are making a slight recovery, there is going to be a massive void in a few years.

The dead trees become very brittle and fall in big lumps rather than the whole tree falling at once. This is a real problem in cutting ground. We go around the hedges in the spring and gather up any fallen timber, but by the time we come to cut the ground there is loads more timber lying in the grass. It doesn’t leave things simple for the mower.

While these dying trees are a problem in the field, it is a lot worse on laneways and roads. If and when any branches etc fall off the trees and damage a car or cause an accident then we as landowners are responsible. Nobody else wants to be accountable.

It is extremely easy for the local council or road service to just shift responsibility onto the landowner.

We have quite a lot of these dead trees along the road and it is a very real issue. Do I leave them and cross my fingers that they do not cause a problem? Or do we try and deal with it?

Action

In the end, we have decided to take action, but nothing has been straightforward - you cannot just saw the trees down and draw them away.

You have to consider the traffic on the road so as not to hit something or cause an accident.

Then there is the added issue of telephone and fibre optic cables along the roadside. If you damage these then I know who will get the blame.

I thought long and hard about it and then decided to get a professional in to deal with the problem.

He sorted out the traffic management and brought in the right equipment. It was a job very well done and everything ran very smoothly.

Overall, it took a full day and when I saw the difficulty he had trying to avoid cables I was glad I had not tried it myself.

I had thought that there was no need for traffic management and that we could have directed the traffic ourselves.

After seeing the way some people were in such a hurry that they would just drive over the top of you, I was glad that we had a traffic management team to deal with it.

Irony

It ended up being an expensive operation, but an essential one. Every time there was a storm I would be afraid of something happening these trees. At least now I have not the same concern.

There are a few things that I find very ironic. First is the fact that I got a grant (through the Countryside Management Scheme) for planting these trees. Yet no-one had the foresight to see the problem that they would cause.

Secondly, there is the companies who put all these cables along the roadside without the slightest interest or acknowledgement of the problems caused by the trees. They come along from time to time and cut a few light branches and that seems to satisfy them.

It is incredibly sad that the landowner has to carry the whole burden and no one else wants to take any responsibility. I certainly do not want to see anyone hurt or to cause an accident, but it is a heavy cost (both financial and physical) for us farmers to carry.