OK, I admit, it’s only a very small thing, but it feels good, and like a step in the right direction on the path to becoming self-sufficient, which in many ways is our ultimate aim with Waterloo Farm. The picture shows the pile of kindling that we generated by stripping the branches from the (soon to be completely deceased!) Weeping Silver Birch [see here for the post about it]. Big son and I spent several hours (some in the rain, we were enjoying it that much!) with the secateurs, loppers and bow saw making the kindling out of the smaller branches and as you can see, there was actually quite a lot of it! It will need to be seasoned (dried) for a year before we can use it, but it will feel like a real achievement when we come to burn it next winter, knowing it is available because of our hard work, and better still, was free!
In the longer-term the plan is to plant our own ’short rotation coppice’ of poplar or willow – basically our own little woodland of fast-growing trees that can be coppiced (cut down) in batches every year to give an annual supply of firewood. It takes around 4 years from planting to get your first load of wood, so we are planning to get planting this winter to hopefully have our own sustainable wood supply by winter 2013/14 … how cool is that?!?!? Of course, next year we’ll not only have the kindling from the Silver Birch, but also the logs, which just need cutting … hmm … think we’ll need a chain saw for that 
Tags: Coppicing, Firewood, Kindling, Self Sufficiency, Short Rotation Coppice
Categories: Living the Country Life, Posts with Photos, Self Sufficiency
Now that IS commitment – getting excited over a pile of firewood
(I’m only jealous – we are officially without heating until we have a new boiler next week!!!)
[...] can now move ahead with our plan to prepare a spot of the paddock for our planned short rotation coppicing, a fancy name for producing sustainable wood for our planned wood [...]