Having always lived in the country I have grown up with log fires and wood-burning stoves. Heating a house, or even a single room, with wood is hard work. If you have some woodland the trees must be felled and the firewood must be cut, split, carted, stored, and seasoned. Alternatively you can buy the firewood from a supplier, and arrange delivery, then move the wood from wherever the supplier’s truck tips it to the place where you will store it. Then at least once a week, but probably more frequently, the wood must be brought into the house for burning, and the ash removed. If this all sounds like hard work that’s because it is. However there are also several rewards: a wood fire looks attractive, the smell of woodsmoke is delightful, unlike fossil fuel the production of firewood is sustainable, and once you have the logs you are not vulnerable to any interruption in your winter heating fuel supply. A log fire brings a room to life and makes it more welcoming.
In this rambling house we have three wood-burning stoves. During the winter we only use the one in our family room on a daily basis. The other two are lit at weekends and holidays, and also when the weather is particularly cold. Over the past few days of the Christmas holiday I have brought in large quantities of firewood daily to feed our three fires and this has caused me to dwell on our firewood arrangements. We purchase seasoned logs cut to the size we specify from a local woodyard. They sell by the metric tonne and they even supply a printed ticket from their weighbridge as ‘proof’ that we are receiving the quantity ordered. We try to order our logs in mid or late summer, obtaining a sufficient quantity to see us comfortably through the winter. Last July we had 2 tonnes of standard 12-inch logs and 1 tonne of 18″ logs costing £208.60 in total. They are tipped near the house and then I laboriously move them by wheelbarrow and stack them outside the back door, covering the top loosely with a plastic tarpaulin (green logs contain up to 50% water and even dry logs seasoned outdoors may contain 20% moisture so it is vital that they are kept well-ventilated in order for them to remain dry). The wood is mainly beech, with some birch, oak, and a little ash. As a general rule the denser the wood, the more heat you will get from it, and this usually means that firewood from slow-growing trees is best.
On dry autumn and winter days we send the children out into the woods to collect twigs for kindling which we store in the greenhouse and in the cupboard under the stairs. Even if damp when collected they quickly dry out. You can never have enough kindling to last through the winter and I sometimes supplement the twigs with pieces scrap timber or old pallets which I cut to size and then split with a little hand-axe.
When being stored outside the house logs often become damp from the rain. However if they have been well seasoned the damp does not penetrate far and the logs will still burn well on a fire that is already lit. It is only starting a fire that requires really dry wood. In theory a fire can be easily lit with a few sheets of screwed-up newspaper, a few dry twigs, and then some dry, ideally split, logs on top. However often we cheat by using a firelighter block which makes the job really easy.
In 1854 Henry David Thoreau, in his book Walden, wrote that ‘Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection’. I think this is as true today as it was then. When our supply of logs is stacked outside the house in the autumn I know that whatever misfortune befalls us during the winter we should at least stay warm. I would urge anyone who is able to burn wood in their home to keep at least a small supply of logs in case the central heating fails.
Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year.
Chestnut only good they say,
If for long ’tis laid away.
But ash new or ash old
Is fit for queen with crown of gold.
Birch and fir logs burn too fast,
Blaze up bright and do not last.
It is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E’en the very flames are cold.
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for queen with golden crown.
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.
Apple wood will scent your room,
With an incense like perfume.
Oak and maple, if dry and old,
Keep away the winter’s cold.
But ash wood wet or ash wood dry,
A King shall warm his slippers by.
A week of unusually heavy snow has given many drivers in the UK an experience that they have either not had before, or that they had forgotten about. My 50 mile drive home from work on Monday evening (2nd February ‘09) which usually takes around 1 hour 20 minutes took 3 hours 30 minutes. Worse, there were several modest slopes that my car struggled to climb at all. Once rubber tyres lose their grip on snow, or snow that has been compressed and polished by other vehicles into ice, it is very difficult to regain any traction.
