I had an interesting dilemma this week as I did my regular trawl of the woods for dry kindling and fallen trees. We own half of a block of woodland that has been largely untouched for many years – being old bog it is seen as being of little value, and not worth clearing and draining. There is no boundary, no fence and so the question of who owns what is rather vague, on the ground at least.
Anyhow, as I wandered about, I couldn’t help but notice that a large amount of standing deadwood and fallen trees lay rather tantalisingly but quite clearly in the bit of the woods that isn’t ours. Hence the dilemma. Clear it, assume that the chances of anyone noticing or caring are slender, but take it knowing it is from someone else’s land, or go and knock on the door, ask them, and risk the answer being no, and then the whole issue of being able to wander about the whole woodland freely potentially coming up.
Is it really ‘better to seek forgiveness than ask permission’?
Over the past century, the issues surrounding the rights to gather firewood have been of less importance than they were in earlier times, but as more and more people turn to log burners to heat their homes, suddenly firewood has become a commodity worth protecting.
I was lucky and my gamble paid off, though as I stood in the kitchen of my neighbour, with him holding court in his big chair, with wife and sons stood about, I felt very conspicuously the newcomer, poking around in territory where none had trod for a long time. Making my request wasn’t helped by the fact that a lot of people here in South Down can’t understand a word I say. After much consideration amongst the family, a couple of ‘what is it ye want?’s and some weather based small talk, I was granted my wood collecting rights, and breathed a huge sigh of relief.
I’m still not convinced they thought I was a bit mad for bothering to ask, and that perhaps I think the whole wood is theirs, but the end result is a good one, and I’ll be hauling deadwood out for a while yet.
Interestingly there is a widely held misconception that the Magna Carta granted us all the right to collect firewood from common woodland (of which there isn’t much), but sadly it didn’t – only after paying for a license, the purchase of which our lovely government has now abolished. However, if you are feeling like exercising your right to forage, English common law does permit you to pick the Four ‘F”s – fruit, fungi, flowers and foliage, but only on land where you are legally allowed to be.
We’ve been collecting pallets for the stove and the half round-house we are building Steve. The local farm centre gives us their fertilizer pallets for free, We are using them for the roof and for kindling in the stove. We also collect wood and seaweed some times from the beaches near us.
The half round house ended up being made with tree trunks because we couldn’t get any square bales. I bought 6 round bales for the cattle other day. Wish I had paid to bale some of the rushes.
Small square bales are like rocking horse shit around here. When we made that roundhouse I got round bales and then put it through the old baler. If you embrace the whole wacky building thing then there is no end to what you can start to make walls with, especially if you have any clay soil on your land. We used clay/straw/horse shit as a very effective glue in the cordwood wall, and as a clay plaster.
Have you found Michael Reynolds yet? He’s a lad, and his can/bottle building is amazing. Have a look at the Garbage Warrior video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrMJwIedrWU
Yes I have seen him before. It is a great video and bottle/tyre buildings could be a way of recycling all the stuff that goes in land-fill.
My name is Dennis and I live in a small, approx 200 year old cottage in SW Scotland. I am not sure if I am leaving this comment in the correct manner but here goes. I buy my my firewood from the Forestry Commission in the the form of 3 metre long logs that I saw and split. One load keeps both our cottage and my 78 year old uncle’s in wood for two years. Recently I have been offered access to a neighbouring farmers woodland but the wood is far too good to burn as there is a goodly amount of elm in the woodland with quite a few burrs showing which will be put to better use than burning.
Welcome, Dennis – yes your comment arrived safely. I have to have the annoying captchas because otherwise the amount of automated spam comments would be huge.
I haven’t approached the FC here yet, but it sounds like it would be well worth it.
If you have access to elm, then certainly it would be a terrible shame to waste, as it is such excellent timber.
Do tell more of your cottage – I think the old 2 or 3 room cottages here are pretty similar to those in western Scotland/
Hi Steve, Thanks for the welcome. Jessica, my wife and I live in a old 2 bedroom Galloway cottage, That is to say long, low and narrow. It is semi-detached and the other half is owned by my uncle who moved from the south of England to live next to us. The earliest map I have found so far that shows the cottage is 1854. We have owned it for about six years and now that I have retired for the second time, first time from being a Police Dog Handler and second time from being a Silversmith/Jewellery Designer we can finally get on with sorting out the place. I’ll send some photos once I manage to find some. This is a link to a little video of me making a ring for a friend’s daughter after she appeared as a book judge on Blue Peter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epiBR1S9qaU
We also have a small field and a large garden to sort out. At present the field is home to six rescue/ex-battery hens. They were in a sorry state when we got them but they are feathering up nicely and beginning to look rather nice.
Hi just found you blog and find it really interesting. Re the small straw bales most of us generally only make enough of the that we know we can sell as the large bales both straw and hay require far less handling. If you know you are going to need some order them the year before. I know it’s hard to plan that far ahead sometimes but mist of us will make them if we know we are going to sell them. Best regards roger
Hi Roger, where are you based? The problem around these parts is that there just aren’t that many small balers still in service. At the Quarries Farm where we were before I was lucky enough to have a really well maintained Super Hayliner which made life easy, but all my neighbours here either have round balers or get the contractors in.
Bales for construction need to be a good bit denser than you might normally bale, and I had a job getting them consistent, but that’s lack of experience on my part.
Given the terrible weather we’ve had here this year. I reckon that only a few people will have straw that didn’t see any rain – can you get away with a bit of wet on it as long as it dries before baling?