Securing this Winter’s Firewood Supply
One of the traditions in estate management is that grounds and garden staff go out to the woodlands in the winter to bring in firewood. We find that this is not practical, mainly because there are hardly any frosty days nowadays which would allow us to take heavy vehicles through the woodlands and work on our steep woodland slopes. Therefore, we use the relatively quiet time in September to bring in wood supplies for the winter, when the conditions in our woods are perfect. We have ‘long-term’ wood supplies at the top of the property, where we also store leaf compost and manure. Fallen trees are chopped into suitable lengths in the woodlands and then brought up on a trailer.
This wood represents the following year’s supply and will be split into user-friendly logs by our woodland contractor later in the year. Before this wood is brought up, last year’s batch is transported to and stacked in our woodshed for consumption over the course of the coming winter.
At the same time, the first batch of wood is taken to the house, slid down a custom-made wood shoot and stacked on a shelf in the cellar.
