So I started my adventures with willow in 2014. The idea was to start to produce a bit of our own firewood in a sustainable way.
I did the first proper cut of it last year (2022) and had some good results. This year I decided to film it all and show the work involved.
It didn't take long to chop it down and log it, then I got the children to help to move it the day afterwards. A nice job for a warm and dry winters day.
I'd say we got a builders bag full of wood, maybe a bit more. This was from about 30 trees spaced at 1m apart.
I'm looking forward to managing this in the coming years, it seems like an incredible renewable resource. Hopefully it'll produce even more as time goes on and the roots get established.
Watch the video and let me know what you think - do you think it's worth it?
Do you grow and manage any wood for firewood with coppicing or pollarding?
Fire wood should be managed just like any other crop, as a child, my brothers would log any fallen tree around the farm they worked on, but that's not enough, we must manage all of the natural resources on our planet.
ReplyDeleteI think careful management is key. By having managed areas awe can leave some to go more wild. We have some big oaks here that drop branches, and we use those for firewood as well. I'm lucky and there is a fair bit of wood on fathers farm to log up as well as he no longer burns wood - we spent a fair bit of time growing up moving it about!
DeleteWhat does it burn like? I would have expected willow to go up fairly qickly.
ReplyDeleteI like it, it burns hot and quite fast, but in a stove that is easy to control that's fine, gets it up to temperature fast. Mix it in with some other stuff and it's great.
DeleteI often walk through old woodlands and see evidence of coppicing. Hazel is supposed to be excellent for hurdles. Have you ever made sheep hurdles Kev? Black Ash is said to be ready to harvest when it's eight years old. Great video. Very clever how it showed you harvesting it so quickly.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I always see trees that have been coppiced or pollarded. On my fathers farm there was this big old gate post (which I ran over once but that's a stroy for another time) and you could see where it had been taken from the tree above it.
DeleteI've not made hurdles yet, but it's something I'd like to do. I have some stands of hazel I've planted and a few in the hedges here, I'm sure they would have been used for all sorts of things.
Just about anything one can do to produce their own firewood seems worthwhile to me. I especially like your choice of the willow which burns hot and fast in that when I start fires in our wood stoves, I feel I need that type of wood to get the fire going before adding a bigger log or two of hardwood for the sustained burning. Great video!
ReplyDeleteYeah, people moan about willow as a firewood but it has some real advantages as well. Builds a good bed of embers.
DeleteKev, I had never heard of coppicing before I read William Cobbett's Rural Rides. It sounds like a very sensible practice. At The Ranch, the nature of trees - mostly pine and oak - are such that it does not seem practical (and, we have enough deadfall that finding wood on a regular basis is not a problem).
ReplyDeleteSounds like that's a book I need to read! Yeah, coppicing was big around these parts, it was a good way for a farm labourer to earn winter money, they'd buy a section of coppice (a cant) and then make products with it all winter to sell.
Delete