The first tree felled

Firewood is something we need quite a lot of. Not only because it gets quite cold in autumn and winter but also because we cook on a wood fired range.

Both the range in the kitchen and the fire in the lounge are connected to our hot water. During summer we get most of our hot water from the solar panels at the North end of the house but in autumn, winter and spring we have to use wood to make sure we have enough hot water.

This last winter we ran out of wood and had to buy three loads of wood. So this season we are going to make sure that we have enough wood in store. And that is why I just chopped down one of our 25 metre (80+ feet) pine trees. Now "chopped" is not quite the right word because I used our current Husqvarna 345 chainsaw. It is actually a bit too small to cut down trees of this size but with a bit of extra preparation, planning and care all went exactly as I wanted it too.

If you look carefully at the base of the stem you'll see that the "hinge" is still attached. That shows two things. One, that I could have made the cut a bit deeper (and possibly a bit higher), and two, that the tree came down in a very controlled way. In fact it was so controlled that I made most of the cut (which I had to do from both sides of the tree because the tree was more than 45cm or 18" thick), put a wedge into the cut to stop the tree from sitting down on my chainsaw blade, completed the cut, took the chainsaw out of the cut, and gave the wedge one more tap with my hammer and then very slowly the tree started falling down. It was a textbook drop and the tree fell exactly where I had planned it to go.

It took me two days to cut off all the branches, cut them to firewood size, cut the stem into rounds for splitting into firewood and transport it all to the shed. I used my tractor and a trailer to move all of the wood. This was one of the two loads of wood. You can see that the trailer is actually so full that the springs are completely flattened out.

And this is the first load of wood stacked in the shed in front of the splitter. Unfortunately I cut a lot of the rounds a few centimetres too long to go into the splitter, so my choices with those pieces are to split them with an axe, or cut a small slice off them with the chainsaw. Depending on how well they dry I'll go with the axe because it doesn't use any petrol.

I'll have to fell at least three more trees to make sure we have enough dry firewood for the next season. Even though we have a very large shed I'm not quite sure yet where I'll put the other trees to let them dry before I split them. With each tree weighing several tonnes I don't really want to move them from place to place too often because I don't aspire to become either a weightlifter or a body builder.

There is something about firewood that you only become aware of when you start making it yourself; it keeps you warm many times over. First when you cut the tree down, then when you cut the tree into smaller, bite size, pieces, next when you load the wood onto the trailer, again when you unload and stack it for initial drying, once more when you split it and stack it into the next pile for further drying, yet again when you take it to the house for burning and finally when you actually burn it. I guess that is why wood is such an eco-friendly way of heating.

Oh, and in case you're wondering why a greenie like me is cutting down trees? Since we moved here we have planted over 200 trees and now, more than two years later, I'm cutting down three. Not a bad exchange really.