Gathering winter fuel

When you rely heavily on firewood for heating and cooking you have to think ahead. even soft wood needs 12 months to dry and cure outdoors before its sawn, split and stored for burning. The wood delivered today will be burned in the Rayburn ( winter 2014/15) to provide hot water, central heating and cooking. Use it before its cured and you end up wasting heat to drive off the moisture you get tar deposits in the flues and chimney plus a smoky miserable fire and not much heat.

We are fortunate that the Estate sells and delivers firewood locally in five tonne lots but you do need a bit of space to manoeuvre and stack the logs. This year all of the wood was split by hand but as we're getting older the idea of a hydraulic splitter is more appealing. We need a log splitting coop with joint ownership of the machine and operations. All of this necessary handling; sawing, splitting and stacking keeps you warm too.