Big J

Pioneering is always the trickiest thing for a tree. They don't like to grow in open fields, especially if there is a seed bank for grass. As such, the first couple or three years are relatively stunted, but you'd expect 2m/year as an average over 3 years for nitens, a bit less for other species. I'm all for increasing NB woodland cover in the UK. But it has to be done in conjunction with a larger rollout of crop tree planting, and concerted efforts to control grey squirrels. To use an analogy, sitka (and eucalyptus after the 2nd year - it's not as easy to establish as conifer) is like a Toyota. Dependable, reliable and will get you there (ie, to your objective) every time. Native broadleaves are like a 1970's British car. Hard work, requiring huge maintenance, knowledge of the quirks and limitations, and in the end there is no guarantee that it'll actually get you to where you're going. It's a long, slow leap of faith. Englands 11-12% forest cover is awful. It's admittedly better than is was 100 years ago (5% then), but it needs to be 25-30% really. That way, we can properly help our native species recover, and at the same time negate the need to import the vast majority of our timber supplies.

I should have been more specific. I meant within the UK. They are no incongruous with their surroundings, and more preferable to conifer at 10 years old. It's not a question of greed. It's a question of growing a crop for a demand that exists and is not presently met. An argument for planting something like eucalyptus in amongst other species is that it can work as a nurse crop, drawing the other trees up. The euc can then be felled when at an appropriate size, providing excellent firewood. The UK has a massive timber need, which is not met by our woodlands. We import 80% of our timber in the UK. This is now considerably more complicated thanks to Brexit. In order to get someway towards self sufficiency, we have to plant large areas of fast growing trees. Native broadleaves are all well and good in moderation, but they should be limited to difficult to work and marginal land.

Yep The UK is a country in which the primary species are foreign, fast grown and evergreen. I don't understand the hostility towards eucalyptus. Have you actually been to a euc plantation?

Nonsense 😄 There is a lovely 4.5 hectare block of 10.5 year old nitens near Totnes, and you cannot distinguish it from the other woodlands in the area from afar. Close up, it's a lovely, light and airy stand, with a pleasant eucalyptus aroma and captivating rustling of the leaves as the breeze filters through. Having spoken to a number of locals, canvassing opinion, they all seem to love it. Much preferable to a 10 year old native broadleaf woodland, which might best be described as squirrel infested, or shit

And those readings will be stretching back into the dry spell with frosts that we had at the start of the month too. It's much wetter now. I always thought that Scotland was wet, but we never had issues with things going mouldy when stored in sheds/barns over winter up there. Not the case here.

The daft thing too is that if you bring logs in at 22%, within 12-24hrs of being stored close to a stove, the MC drops to 20% or below. I've been doing that with spruce that I'm mixing in with the ash at the moment. It's not dry enough, as it was only felled 7 months ago (and recently split - it's averaging 28-30%), but within 8 hours of standing by the stove, it's 20% or so. I don't mind the addition of the moisture to the air either as our indoor humidity has been a little low this year (25-40%, depending on external temperature).

You can't. My 2 year split and seasoned (1 year stacked outside, 1 year stacked in a wel ventilated, completely protected from rain shed) ash, which came originally from dry windblown trees, is sat at 21.5%. Sub 20 is impossible in Devon in winter as the equilibrium moisture content is higher than 20%. The regulation needs to change to sub 25%, rather than 20%. 20% is fine and doable on the continent, with the drier and colder winters, but it doesn't take account of our maritime climate.

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.

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

It does put it into perspective somewhat. Whilst I fully appreciate that this newer strain is much more transmissible, if only 2.5% of people succumbing to it (extrapolated from those daily figures) have no preexisting health conditions, why lock down an entire country? If you're over 70, regard yourself as being in lockdown/tier 4 until you've received the vaccine If you have preexisting health conditions leading to a higher risk of death with covid, same as for the over 70s. If you're overweight, seriously limit social contact until your weight is within the normal range and you are fit. This cannot be considered as the same as people over 70 or with serious preexisting conditions, as 95% of adults with serious weight issues really only have themselves to blame for their size. I also appreciate that long covid is a consideration, but how does it compare from recovering from serious flu? The twice I've had flu in my life completely floored me for a week, and took over a month to get back to full strength afterwards. Perhaps a good use of government funds in the face of this pandemic is to spend less on funding people to stay home and more on say, buying them a treadmill/indoor bike/rowing machine? Much like a car, when properly serviced and cared for, there are far fewer breakdowns.

It's worth noting as well that Pekka at Logbullet treats breakdowns as development opportunities. So instead of "well why did you overload it and break it?" it's "well that bit could be stronger, I'll make it stronger and send it out to you, FOC". This has extended past the end of the official warranty too

It is cheap, but then rates tend to be a bit lower down here. We enclosed a 23 acre field with 6ft deer fence and if memory serves it was between £8-9.

You're looking at around £8-9m, depending on specification and terrain. That's for a 6ft fence, with gates extra. Can be a touch more or less depending on spec though.