Ashes to ashes? Worrying times.

Thursday 15th November 2012

I missed posting yesterday, for not only is the house in a totally disorganised, dusty mess at the moment, but Sue got the dreaded Ofsted call on Tuesday. Please don't get me started on this subject, or anything to do with the way successive governments have bullied teachers and mismanaged the education of our nation's children. Suffice to say it's been all-consuming, disgracefully stressful and I'm not even allowed to tell anybody if it went well or not for two weeks.
Anyway, now it's over.  As is my rant.

Last night, in the murk, I got a wonderful sight of a flyby barn owl which eventually settled in the branches of the oldest Ash tree. It's been spending more time in the proximity of the farm buildings of late and I've even found a few pellets in the stables. If I ever get time I may investigate these further and post my gory findings.
More surprising though was a very unseasonal bat, a pipistrelle I think. I guess it was lured out of hibernation by the balmy temperatures we've had for a couple of days, 12 degrees late in the afternoon yesterday.
The Little Owl too has been calling more persistently of late and I actually saw it briefly in the gloom as it broke the skyline and alighted on top of the telegraph pole by Don's gateway.

At this time of year though, there's a price to pay for this warm weather and this morning was a real pea-souper. All I could see of the garden for the whole day were the four Ash trees standing majestically. They give the garden structure and are a valuable home and food source to all sorts of wildlife. As with all trees, the older they get the more valuable they become in so many ways.

So you'll understand my affection for them and my worry about the effects of the dreaded Chalara fraxinia, or Ash Die-Back as it's quickly become known.
It would be so awful to lose them, and there's no way I could replace these wonderful specimens, even with a different species, in my lifetime. I've just got my fingers crossed. I've heard it said that mature trees could resist for years, so I can get going with my underplanting now so that we at least have some height in the garden if the Ashes eventually have to come down. As for the saplings at the end of the land, well I'll be surprised if they are still there in a couple of years.
Ash is by far the best wood for me to grow and coppice for fuel. I'd never rely on just one species, or plant up a monoculture, but I still need to have a bit of a rethink.

I just hope that, in ten years time, my ash wood is by some miracle coming from the trees at the end of the land and not the dead old trees near the farmhouse.

Wednesday 14th November 2012
Not the best start to a very stressful day.

Burning wood - carbon friendly energy explained

Thursday 1st November
After a stormy and very wet night

 

Several times I have noticed the same car travelling very slowly along the back road. I can see it across the fields from my land. Today, with the aid of my binoculars, I managed to find out what was going on. For leading the way, about 20 yards ahead of the car, was a Jack Russell. Yes! You've got it. This is someone's way of taking their dog for a walk!
I've still not got to the bottom of the other car which drives up and down beeping its hooter. If the air is very still I give a concerted yell to SHUT UP. Twice it has worked! Although it's about a kilometre away, I know that I can hear my guinea fowls calling from there, so I reckon my voice can easily travel that far on a light westerly breeze.

I'm not sure what the point of these two stories is, I just wanted to tell them.

Onto the serious stuff.

When I was at University, quite a few years ago now, I became very aware of environmental issues. This was at a time when you were considered mildly bonkers if you spoke about the greenhouse effect, global warming, acid rain, water conservation or heavy metal pollutants!

How much things have changed, though how little things have changed too.

When I used to do a lot of conservation work, we seemed to be endlessly removing hawthorn scrub which was encroaching on more specialist habitats. Passers by would always ask how chopping down trees could be an act of conservation.

Today, I burn wood for energy (of course, I never did this when I lived in London as that was a smokeless zone). And people ask me how sending all that smoke up the chimney and burning all those trees can fit with my environmental beliefs.

So here goes. My attempt at an explanation. (No complicated chemistry, I promise!)


Basically, we need carbon in the air, but not too much of it.

If you think about it, most living things are made of carbon. In effect you, me and the trees are storing carbon, keeping it out of the air until we go up in smoke.

So, again, how can burning wood be carbon friendly? All that smoke, all that carbon going up the chimney.

The answer is to look at the dirtier choices:

If we burn coal or oil, that's basically carbon which has lain buried deep inside the earth for millions of years. If we didn't extract it, it would stay there causing no harm to anyone. But as soon as we bring it to the surface and burn it, up goes all that carbon into the air.

Wood, on the other hand, has spent its whole life taking carbon OUT of the air and converting it into ... well... wood. So when we burn it, all we are doing is putting that carbon back where it came from. We are making use of all the sunshine that has been stored by the tree during its life to give us energy.

Of course, this does not work if we go chopping down vast swathes of virgin forest, but if the wood has been grown deliberately for purpose and if it is replaced by young trees, then all we are using the trees for is to store the sun's energy and carbon until we need it. And while they're storing all that carbon (think how much a tree weighs), then it's not in the air.
Of course, there's the added benefit of the beauty each tree provides and the habitat it offers.

So there you have it.
In a nutshell, burning wood is carbon neutral.

Ash Bark Beetle



Tuesday 30th October 2012
Full moon to the West, rising sun to the East

Three days ago, when it was still British Summertime, the gloves came out, along with my best woolly hat, complete with woolly flaps that go round and under my chin. Give it a couple of months and I'll have acclimatised.
I actually quite like winter. The rawness. The crispness. The instinct to snuggle down in the safety and warmth of the home. The woodburner heats the lounge to toasty warm, while the luxury of the electric blanket awaits up in the bedroom.

On a still day, the smell of wood smoke wafts through the air, somehow warming the heart.

The trees we have planted on the land are not quite yet earning their keep, but long term we will harvest them for wood. Another step towards self-sufficiency.
In the meantime we rely on oil and coal, since mains gas has not reached these here parts. We've bought in some top quality, seasoned oak logs too, but using these is a luxury. Sadly, coal still works out far more economical.
But we do manage to scrounge some wood every now and again. Sue has enjoyed using the electric chainsaw to chop up the Ash which Don gave us earlier in the year. Ash is reputed to be one of the best woods for burning, particularly as it burns pretty well while still 'green'. It coppices well too and we have planted a fair stand of it at the bottom of our land to heat us when we are old. (Actually, by coppicing we should start getting something back in a few years.)
 
So, a couple of days ago, I collected in baskets of wood to store on the hearth ready for the cold winter nights which are upon us. Imagine my horror when I noticed that all of the ash logs were riddled with holes!
I brought some into the house anyway, but by early evening there were little beetles crawling out and venturing across the carpet and up the walls. We carefully obliterated each and every last one, fearful that we had unwittingly just opened the door for woodworm to infest our house. But something was nagging at me. Surely woodworm prefers older wood than this, and why were no holes visible in the core of the wood? And if this happens to logs when they have been stored for just a few months in the stables, then how do people ever use wood as a fuel source without their homes being eaten away?

For a while it seemed that my long term plans for growing wood for fuel were in tatters.
 
However, a quick search of the internet explained everything. This was not woodworm, it was Ash bark beetle. Well, that was a relief.
Still not great, as we don't particularly want armies of tiny beetles crawling out of our firewood every night, but not the disaster we thought it might be. We'll just have to store it near the back door and get it in as we need it.
 
At least the ash seems to be burning as well as people say it does.

There is an old rhyme, almost mandatory to quote when discussing wood as fuel, which goes:

 

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year
Chestnut only good they say
If for long it's laid away
Make a fire of elder tree
Death within your house will be
But ash new or ash old
Is fit for a Queen with a 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
Elmwood burns like churchyard mould
Even the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a Queen with a 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
Oaken logs, if dry and old
Keep away the winters cold
But ash wet or ash dry
A king shall warm his slippers by.

 

Next week I'll try to explain why burning wood is good for the environment.

For now, I'll leave you with today's stunning sunset.