Big J

It's really common in these parts. It self seeds with extraordinary vigour, even in places where there is no evidence of local hemlock trees. There is a lovely mature (ie, over 100ft tall) DF stand near to us with a complete carpet of 20ft hemlock underneath if. It's very pretty.

I love hemlock. It can become a little dominant though as it's so good at self-seeding

A useful article: https://ag.tennessee.edu/woodycrops/Documents/ConferenceReports/9thBiennial/3JohnPurse.pdf

Probably glaucescens, with you being on the east. You'll be too cold for nitens unfortunately. Glaucescens will still outgrow any native species. Speak to Bryan Elliot at Eucalyptus Renewables about saplings

Eucalyptus Fast growing, good firewood and being a broadleaf will blend in fairly well too.

Pretty decent, to be fair. It certainly goes further off road than a normal van, it has extra ground clearance and a skid plate. For day to day driving, it's much more practical and comfortable than a Hilux. I'm 2.03m, and the driving position is great for me, there are 3 seats up front and the storage space in the back is very good. Also 45-55mpg depending on how you drive it. I have the 130bhp engine and it's brisk. It's also £10k cheaper than an equivilently specced pickup. I have a lot of extras on mine, but I wish I'd specced the EAT-8 Auto gearbox. The manual is fine, but having since driven a Peugeot 308 with the same gearbox, I wish I'd stumped up the extra £1k for it.

I wasn't overly impressed with the BF Goodrichs I had on my Navara 10 years ago. They seemed a little skittish in the rain and snow. I agree that they lasted forever though - I got 75k out of mine. It was extraordinary 😲 I have the offroad/grip control pack on the Berlingo, so a bit more ground cleareance than standard. I think A/T tyres should be OK.

My Berlingo is needing new tyres (just coming up to 30k now). It seems that my desire to have modest off-road ability (so an 80:20 road/offroad A/T tyre) and all season capability is unusual. Very few A/T tyres seem to be all season rated, and I like cold weather grip. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. My tyre size is 215/65/r16 Thanks in advance

They are reliant on a well insulated house, and we're a little way behind the Scandinavians on that front. I believe that their electricity is a little cheaper than here too, which helps.

Can biomass be sustainable, in principle? Yes. Is biomass in the UK sustainable. Not even close. We don't have anywhere near enough wood fuel in the UK to support the RHI grant funded boilers that are currently installed. As such we're reliant on imported (often from afar) timber. Then, due to the economics of storage, almost all wood chip is kiln dried, using the heat from burning kiln dried wood chip. The carbon cost is monstrous. The grant funding (as others have alluded to) is grotesquely generous, and represents a massive effort at wealth distribution from those that don't have (the average energy customer/taxpayer) to those that do (the people that can afford to put £100k into a boiler to heat their stables/country house/kiln that's generally just a steel shed). I'm not saying that I wouldn't do it myself if I was in that position, but the whole scheme is badly thought out and ripe for abuse. It is telling that in Scandinavia, wood fuel heating is increasingly being phased out in favour of air and ground source heat pumps. Finland and Sweden are both over 70% forested, with abundant, high quality fuel that is cheaper than here. And they still choose not to burn it, rather directing it into wood fibre/pulp type applications. Where biomass is (I feel) sustainable is small district heating systems that use air dried fuel to heat a few dozen (or more) houses. The timber is locally sourced, sustainably harvested, naturally dried and the carbon footprint is low. This is a world away from the CHP plant at Sandwich in Kent taking Euc. chip from New Zealand.

Smaller low loader. I tend to do bigger sites now where I'm in the same place for weeks, if not a month or two. The haulage cost is recovered fairly rapidly.

Many thanks I would still have bought the Logbullet, but I wouldn't have gone down the large forwarder and forestry tractor route. The Vimek will be more productive than the Logbullet, but it's much more expensive, and I think regardless, I needed the Logbullet as a stepping stone. It's a great little machine - productive and cheap to run.

So sorry to hear that Andy. Thinking of you and yours. I shall raise a glass to him this evening.

It is raining again, just incase you're wondering 😝