Last winter  we were the masters of firewood.  Ample supplies, thanks to kind folk,and having our own huge sycamore fall over in the wind. The summer of 2015 saw the woodyard completely cleared, as amazing volunteers helped us split, chop, and stack the whole lot inside. But yet the woodstore wasn’t completely full at the start of this winter, and we were terribly complacent about finding new supplies to be ready for the months after midwinter when we really get stuck into the supply and it typically gets properly cold here, so we are lighting the fire(s) far more often. The solar thermal does little now until March, so the range is doing a lot of work.

So it was that we came as close as we ever want to be to running out (bar collecting fallen birch over in the woods, which is plentiful but not terribly dry), and bought in a load of dry larch, which was surprisingly reasonable, and which burns well. This afternoon we got the first half of the log mountain into the shed, which is starting to look reasssuringly full once again, and tomorrow we’ll have it all stacked.  Lyra is now big enough to carry logs back and forth and had a great time helping. Children do love to be given a job to do. The focus now is stockpiling trees to process for winter 2016/17, and so on it goes…