Wood day in the village.

Wood, wood,
Chop, chop
bNrrrn, nbrrrn

This is the time of year of wood on the mind. The stoves been lit every night for 3 months now and we have atleast 2 more to go. It is another year where there just isn't enough stored by the house and we have to collect and cut more dry wood. As well as making sure we have cut and prepared enough fresh trees for next year.

Collecting more good dry wood in the middle of winter with there having recently been snow could be harder. At least the days are not too cold and we are lucky (in this sense at least) to have many dead elm trees in the village. Most of the large elms died maybe 10-15 years ago when the Dutch elm disease reached here. We have been slowly cutting and pulling these down, especially where they are a hazard for falling on roofs or even people. As they are mostly still standing and without bark they are very dry and stay that way even though it has snowed.

These have been burnt already so I was looking for an elm to cut for supplementing the diminishing stack when I found this one recently fallen in the storm. Perfect!

Loads of wood cut up first to transport it to the house. Unfortunately uphill this time. Not too far but I'll safe the longest bit of the walk for tomorrow.. or maybe I'll use the land rover..

Only needs to be cut to length and split if needed. A good mixture of thick and thin pieces. Soon stacked and ready for the cold winter nights. They say wood warms you atleast 3 times, once when cutting it, once when carrying it and once when its burnt. Though I was using the chainsaw that was stilll true today.

Here, the wood of elm is second only to oak in terms of heat given and coals left. We can leave a fat log in a closed up stove and there will still be coals more than 3 hours later. The branches are great in the bread oven too.

There is a small forest of young elm trees that we are trying to help survive but it seems once they reach a certain height and age the disease takes advantage quickly. This spring we will choose some trees again and sheet mulch and plant some aliums and other beneficials around them. The village would have been even more beautiful with the large trees in full leaf. What we have planted has a long way to go.

There was also one beautiful big Oak tree that unfortunately fell down in a heavy wind storm we had a year back. It will provide us with fire next year too.