Marko

Well that's the six years up of this trial. A write up is on http://www.rustical.co.uk/woodstuff/growing-firewood-year-six-update/ Spoiler alert - Euc wins for 'grow your own' firewood logs for wood burners, hybrid willow wins for branch logging / biomass for wood boilers.

There is an update on http://www.rustical.co.uk/woodstuff/growing-firewood-2018-update/ Euc is winning (on this moss ground). I have put some into a clay soil this spring to see how it performs on that.

I haven't. I was waiting for someone to invent a small scale, cheap method. I guess if it was easy it would have been done by now. Still hoping though and still really interested. The coppice would make perfect feedstock so I do need to explore this properly.

Bought as seed from abroad. This batch was not particularly easy to germinate even in commercial propagators but in recent times the seed compost has been questionable so it may not be a viability problem. I probably got less than 10% germination.

Just posted the 2018 update on www.Rustical.co.uk In summary the Eucalyptus is leaving everything else in its wake! Phenomenal growth. Its hard to beleive this was just a seed in a packet this time four years ago.

Didn't work for me; lots of mould even with our strong westerlies blowing right through them. Back to IBC's and the like for us.

Tom, I grow trees as a crop for for biomass but also receive some arb arisings delivered in ad hoc whenever convenient to the arb guys. The more arb arisings I receive then the less I need to harvest from my own crop as my end market doesn't change. So for every ton of tree removed from an urban setting, the equivalent is saved in a rural setting. I very rarely see this taken into account when environmental calculations are being made. Maybe on the great scale of things it is incidental but I am fairly sure my model will not be unique.

Wood chunks come into their own for use in wood boilers (especially top loaders) and wood fired pizza ovens - a niche market but, as postage is prohibitive, one that anyone with a branch logger can provide to local customers. The willow below was cut and chunked this this week. I am hoping that someone invents a practical (ie profitable without grants) small scale charcoal process as this would be the perfect feed stock.

I agree but I will leave it to see if it is a continuing problem. At the moment it seems to be confined to stools on the periphery but, as they are falling into wind, I think it is more to do with weight than weather. In any case the Euc is outperforming the hybrid willow in terms of speed of growth but it remains to be seen how it coppices.

A quick update after an interesting development with the hybrid willow. To recap, we have a trial plot of hybrid willow to see if we can grow nice sized firewood logs on established stools rather than harvest them for biomass woodchip or wood chunks. A few stools are 'failing' with nothing more than the weight of the branches. On a brighter note, the pollarded ash is doing well. The picture is 1.5 years of regrowth on the trees pictured on page 1 with the hens. A bit of a write up can be found on http://www.rustical.co.uk/woodstuff/growing-firewood-2017-update/

Do you share the batteries with other units? would you stick with Husky if you had to buy again? Ta.

Recommendations and thoughts appreciated for a battery saw for coppice work (4" - 8" poles in the main) and occasional hedgerow maintenance. I can't think that the batteries would be used for anything else so the full set up of charger, batteries and saw would be just for this task. Stihl, Makita or Something else? Top handle or rear handle?

There are two ways to fix the gender pay gap at the BBC. They have chosen to run round giving pay rises to women. Anyone with their own business would have reduced the pay of the men. Public money is a wonderful thing.

Not a fan... but the hens love it so it is worth growing it just for them.

The stuff we have around here (a regular 'crop' is dug out of really top quality moss land after being hit with a plough as the land shrinks or the drainer. The oak is like rock, sparks fly (even after a long bout of pressure washing) and chains don't last long at all. It will be inetersting to see how you get on with yours.

Voles do seem to like alder, I have them singling out the alder trees at very much the growth stage in the photos. However, they are attacked from the base which is often fully eaten away. I cant see it being voles if there is two foot of green stem before the die back.

Technically it is possible, very easy and cheap. However it will not add anything to your google ranking. If anything it will detract from it. The only real way to benefit from multiple domains is to establish separate websites (with different content tailored to a different focus) such that you get two bites at the cherry.

Nice stove and an even nicer gas bill from here on in. Adding to the need of an install cert. I noticed a new way to increase Landlord Building Insurance; the type of heating now needs specifying and having a wood stove now puts up the price.

Did anyone ever find a way to grade out the twigs and small stuff?

It was a 1.2m model and I think cost £600 but I had to collect it from where they were dropping the rest of the arctic load at a UK distributor which was a bit of a pain. I think there are a few more getting in on the act so you can get a similar on delivered for the same money on ebay now. This isn't the same manufacturer but it is very very similar to mine (my chimney is in the centre) [ame= ] [/ame] Unless you keep it on a stack of pallets, it isn't portable. They are very very heavy. My guess would be the wrong side of 600kg

Neapolitan is sooo last year. Pizza t'Wigan is all the rage.

For years and years I promised myself I would build one and . I collected half a pallet of materials and had watched every youtube construction video there was.... but never actually did anything. A year ago I decided life was passing me by so I imported a pre built one from Portugal. Never looked back. They are brilliant not just for pizza parties but for slow roast vegies and meat. I still would have liked to have built it myself but life is too short! My outstanding challenge is to build a base for it (a year later and it is still sat on pallets). Which leads nicely into my top tip.... The place where I had always intended siting the oven did not work. Even the slightest winds seemed to make it play up. It only had to be moved 6ft before it worked perfectly. Fine when a pump truck can move it, not so fine if you have spent many hours building a cob one in the wrong place. Our first homemade wood fired pizza – Rustical is a blog page of our first not-so-round pizza For those of you with branch loggers - a pizza oven is THE best use of wood chunks. They flare off quickly and provide a bank of red hot 'coals' which can be moved about easily to bring the oven quickly and evenly back to temp in between pizzas. Last tip: Build one or buy one but don't spend another year thinking about it.

As a farmer I want all agricultural subsidies scrapped. I do not think food prices will rise. I do not need to see subsidies scrapped across the EU; our post brexit import tariffs will level the playing field and put money back into the public purse. If the public want a nice view as they drive through the lake district then they can pay for Rangers to manage the landscape and implement whatever environmental schemes that are deemed cost effective. 'Farmers' as we know them are all about to retire. What we will have left is industrial food producers who can afford to step in and buy up productive land as family farms sell up. With scale comes very much less dependence on subsidy - the efficiencies make it much less of a knife edge issue. No doubt there will be a few artisan farmers who make a living in the margins but the changes are upon us and I don't think it to be all bad at all. See - not addicted! Studies have shown that only 25% of the subsidies 'taken from your wallet' reach the producer and that is why it is not the issue it is made out to be. The people creaming off the other 75% are the ones who are going to scream.

Very similar still - rural is very rural. Communal wells and limited electric (but wireless internet better than ours). The general feeling was that in Soviet times they had money but nothing to spend it on and now the shops are full but money is very much divided between the haves and the have nots. The banking system is in crisis and many crops were left standing because there wasn't the money to harvest them. All of which is fixable. Big Finance and Big Agri are circling awaiting their opportunity.

I went to the Ukraine in January this year to visit a number of farms right across the country. They have their own issues which whilst quite different to ours, still make it difficult to farm. Example - one chap farmed 166,000 hectares BUT had to rent the land off 110,000 landlords. Big agri is in the wings and they will be a real force to be reckoned with especially with their EU aspirations.