Sustainable firewood from derelict ancient woodland hazel coppice cut with a Husqvarna 350 chainsaw.

Описание: This is how I heat my home: I fell the coppice - it's derelict and 50 years since last worked (see my other vids). I use the brash as dead hedges to keep out deer so as to prevent damage to regrowing coppice and impoverishment of ground flora by grazing. The 'price' I pay to the owners of the family farm on which I work for the firewood is this: a 'proper job' of the restoration.
I cut each piece to the same length (two saw lengths, 5 feet) and sned everything very tight. To get all the lengths as straight as possible, I cut out the bends - occasional short lengths go to waste and I leave them in the wood, often in the base of the dead hedge. The dead hedges act as dead wood habitat and the lengths extracted are straight and similar length which means that the processing into logs is as efficient as possible, using a log brake (see the log brake vid). Cutting out a standard 'product' may take a little more time than cutting 'random', but this is more than made up for by time savings in extraction and cross-cutting into logs in the brake.    • Easy logs. A firewood cutting 'hack' for s...   shows how.
By the time the logs get to the wood burner, the moisture level is below 20%. My neighbour opposite saw me bringing a van and trailer load home and was surprised to learn that I was wood fired (no gas or electric for central heating) on a former Council estate. In all the years he has lived opposite, he had never noticed smoke, which shows how clean well-seasoned and dry-stored wood burns. This also shows that kiln drying wood for domestic use as recent 'advice' calls for is totally unnecessary as well as being much less sustainable because you have to use energy to fuel the drying! Just season it properly and store it under cover.
I never burn coal. Because it smokes and smells. Because by burning coal you are taking sequestered carbon out of the ground and sticking it into the atmosphere. By burning wood from coppice, you are using in-cycle carbon. Same goes for gas and for electricity made by burning coal or gas. Nuclear? Don't get me started. Fracking? Fracking stupid. F-bomb euphemism fully justified in my view....
By restoring derelict coppice, I am providing a potential for jobs in the rural economy and I am managing part of an ancient woodland for nature conservation gain and preservation of our rural heritage whilst the regrowing coppice captures carbon at a far greater rate than new tree planting. Trees do not sequester carbon: Peat bogs and maerl beds do, but that's another story.
Shutting up now. If you agree or disagree with any of this, why not comment?
   • Coppicing for firewood and biodiversity: R...   will take you to a vid that that shows fresh cut derelict coppice and a big cord of firewood set to season in the wood.    • Derelict hazel coppice produce: own-use fi...   shows other aspects.
Other vids show the coppice process - well how I do it - including the felling and dead hedges.