I thought I would share a poem I found about firewood today! Given that we like lighting fires for cooking, sharing, making drinks etc in our forest school sessions!
We are also completely wood fired at the smallholding here, a log fuelled Esse for cooking, heating and hot water when the solar thermal panels are out of season, and a small log burner in the lounge!! So useful thoughts for what burns well in those too, especially as we seem to have ash die back in the woods so need to carefully monitor and fell!
Also it’s now the first of September and officially the start of the part of the year where we can trim hedges, gather firewood for next year and do a bit more work around the place without disturbing wildlife with their young.
Social distancing smallholding style!! We have an absolute load of work to get on with here on the smallholding and with the nice dry weather that has started we have made a start!!
Moving the chickens and ducks to new turf. Wood chipping paths and flower beds and around new raised beds!
Having cleared the Polytunnel a while back, we have started some seeds in there and in the house. Today we have started in the veg garden, turning the beds from an absolute weed ridden state into something we can actually plant into!! So we have seeds ready for starting in successional sowings there!!
We have started a few projects for the boys for play, including a bean teepee…
These times are going to be difficult, but I am certain, no determined that we will come through it and be more organised, sorted, prepared and ready to face the new world head on. We are using this as an opportunity to finish projects started, start new projects, action plans we’ve had on the back burner for an age it seems.
So as for plans….
Weeding (there is always weeding)
Growing veg and fruit
Dyeing all the yarn
Clearing and sorting first the house, then the barns (I’ve started this as a wet day job and am part way through upstairs…. slow work with two small helpers though)
Finishing the new cottage
Building a tree house (if W gets his way it will be two storeys!!)
Making a garden or lots more garden areas
Gates, trying desperately to keep the errant hound in and the free range children!!
Processing the giant log pile into useable stacked logs ready for next winter
And there is likely to be more but I’ll add them to the lists as I go along!!
James has fitted a winch to the front of Ally the gator with the help of a fabulous neighbour!! He decided to use it for hauling in some of the logs cut at the bottom of the hill by pipe stream and along the woodland edge of the field!!
Here is gator, winch and trailer system on its maiden voyage!!!
Slow but far less back breaking than barrowing or carrying a trailers worth of logs up the steep hill!!!!
James has been working ever so hard at the small holding wood pile!! We have both been chainsawing up branches and small trees that needed to be tidied up and he has then been collecting the logs in Ally and then splitting them with an axe or his chainsaw!!
By the end of a couple of weeks hard graft we have this beauty!!!
Tyddyn Bryn 