dudders

Securing the load does make sense, as people get killed by stuff falling off, witness that girl whose car was crushed by a large log coming off a lorry a few years ago. I once was going up the centre lane of the M11 and noticed cars ahead were swerving to one side and the other. When my turn came, there was a filing cabinet standing right way up in the middle of the road. A few miles further on we passed an artic bulker full of scrap metal, bits of the load sticking out of the top, no net. It was funny enough, but not so funny if a lump like that lands on a Nissan Micra.

Great to see these old mills still going strong. Here's one I could watch again and again - a steam-driven mill in California, sort of straight out of The Waltons:

Well - that would have put me way out of order then, some years back. After making a neighbour's hay each year, I used to come out of his field entrance onto a blind bend. The tractor had a foreloader on with a flat-8 bale grab sticking way out on the front of it. On the back, I was pulling the baler, with the bale-sled behind that! Don't think there was an HSE in those days...🤫

Less than you think. You know that the Landy takes 1.74 cu.m. if you fill it level to the top. Heap it up a bit in the middle to make up another .26 cu.m. and you've got a 2 cu.m. delivery.

If your cu.m. bags actually do measure 1x1x1m, then 2 of them are 2 m3. But, as John says, your truck bed is only 1.74 m3, so that's why it's difficult to get them all on, but you can do it by heaping them up a bit to get that last .26 m3 on the load. I'm assuming you're emptying those bags into the Landie, not loading them in as bags, which you could only do by leaving the tailgate down.

Beautiful job - you can be proud of that.

That old 520 was the same as my old Sanderson Teleporter, based on a Ford 5000 tractor, reversed. A bastard to start, as the ancient motor needed a complete rebuild. It was a pig to drive, with poor visibility and the old thing had been bashed around so much before I got it - everywhere you looked had been in a fight. Got rid of it in the end coz the hydrostatic transmission started to fail and the repair was going to be a huge bill - engine-out job. It went to Poland, where I guess they'd do the job for peanuts. Replaced it with this 10-year-old JCB 520-40 which has been great. Little machine, but really punches above its weight. Good visibility, easy to get in and out. I don't like hydro-transmission, but I guess they've all got it. Just make sure it's good before you buy one, coz that's one big repair job if it's dodgy.

This is a link to Fylde Guitars latest newsletter: Welcome to Fylde Guitars Newsletter WWW.FYLDEGUITARS.COM One of the topics is called 'Bending guitar sides' - Roger's in his workshop and shows how the piece of walnut you produced on your mill gets worked on to produce the sides of a guitar. Fascinating, I thought, although I did skip a bit... Have a look.

That's fine IF you know he's a council stooge, but how do you know? He won't be wearing a badge if he's out to nab you. They got a taxi-driver round here recently - couple of guys asked a driver to take them somewhere and when he dropped them off they told him they were council 'enforcement officers' and booked him. Took away his licence, so screwed his livelihood. This might sound like entrapment, and so be invalid, but it isn't entrapment if it's your intention to sell firewood illegally and the officer just gives you the opportunity to do so. The moral of the story is to know your customer, and if two strangers turn up asking for wood, insist that they either buy more than 2cu.m. or certify that their bootful is not for domestic use.

It won't be anything as dramatic as police. Someone will tell the county council, who will detail an 'officer' to pose as a buyer to see if you're going to sell him some wood. When you do, you'll get a letter in the post informing you of the fine that you have to pay. Funny how all the most repressive states the world has ever seen rely on their citizens grassing on each other... Sadly, it's the way this country is going - increasing red tape will gradually throttle the life out UK enterprise until we're all shuffling papers for the state, and importing everything we need from countries like China. How hypocritical that the state imposes tight controls on UK producers, but is happy to allow imports from countries which don't have half our regulations. Get a nice job working for DEFRA , the NHS, or any other gov department or agency (HETAS, Woodsure?) and you're made for life. Sick pay, maternity pay, paid holidays, promotion, car, office, travel, coffee machine, loadsa perks and then a golden handshake and nice fat extra pension when you retire early because of 'stress'. And don't miss out on the compensation when your line manager says something nasty, or you trip over your own bag and hurt your wrist. It's a cushy number, but such privilege doesn't deter these people from being on the backs of the rest of us doing real jobs. Parasites. This latest regulation is nowhere near the end of it. It'll be bonfires next, then woodburners, and so on until we're not allowed to fart. Sorry to rant, but I've just got in, soaking wet, having unloaded logs in the dark after slithering around in mud all day and I think of all those civil servant types knocking off at 4.30 thinking they've done a day's work. Wouldn't swap places though! Anyway, I've got my regular buyers lined up and very supportive they are too, when they know the situation.

Yep - it's like me saying to a customer "I'm a non-certificated facility, but I apply the appropriate testing standards and equipment to make sure this firewood is dry." But that won't work, will it? It's one rule for them and another for us. Haven't we just been hearing a bit along those lines quite recently? 🤔 I'm about to refer this cock-up to the Competition and Markets Authority, on the grounds that this company has been given a monopoly and is free to do, and charge, whatever it likes, with no competition, which was not the intention of the Act. I don't hold out much hope, because the CMA isn't that different from Woodsure, so they'll look after their own.

Looked at pic.3 and went "phwoar - beautiful!" Reckon the people in the next office will think I'm looking at porn... 😜

Very few farmers are happy with Red Tractor, same sort of scheme. Doesn't deliver, costs rise, petty bureaucrats make farmers' lives unnecessarily difficult and they keep introducing new rules. Sounds familiar.

Agreed it's only going to get worse. Ultimately they want to get rid of wood-burning altogether - any amount of smoke will be too much smoke. This is the thin end of a long wedge. I've got some local guy on the Nextdoor forum complaining about bonfires and wood-fires. He's asthmatic and says any amount of smoke makes his life a misery. People like that will swing it in the end. But I don't know about them taking no action. Enforcement is down to County Councils. If they get a whiff of someone selling wood illegally, it's an easy way to slip another £300 into the coffers. I reckon it's better to be prepared for the snoopy geezer and be able to show evidence that it's run to the letter of the law.

Giving the buyer a receipt, which includes the SOD-U declaration, for every single sale, is no more time or work than just giving a receipt, except that the buyer also signs it. But you must have got this certification yourself by now, so you know the hoops we have to jump through to gain certification. I should add that some of these hoops are extras, added on to the legislation by Woodsure. I'm pretty sure some of these extra conditions are unlawful, ie: not backed up by law, but will be checking up on that. The legislation only requires Woodsure to monitor the MC in firewood sold in small quantities. According to the Act, if I send them a sample which is below 20%, they must give me certification. But the company adds the following demands: 1. They will inspect the premises from which I'm selling - if they don't like it, no certificate; 2. I have to prove to them that I acquire the wood legally. Simply telling them so is not enough; 3. Every year, I have to provide them with my previous year's sales figures; 4. I must have public and product liability insurance; 5. I must not have any prosecution pending or in progress, for anything at all. Not a single one of the above is a requirement of the Act. They're all slipped in by a bunch of self-serving pen-pushers. Now the money. As said before, I only sell a surplus of firewood that I accumulate here on the farm each year. I guess that last winter I sold about £500-worth. Peanuts. Some customers drop by for a bucketful - seriously. £1 a bucket - they chuck them onto the barbie at the end of a party. Most open up the car-boot and fill it for £20. Everyone gets to see a meter reading under 20%. It's relaxed, it's life in the country, it's local, it's take it easy. But can you see why I'm not happy to spend £500 getting certified, even without the irrelevant hoops? Woodsure have buried their charges at the end of the Application Form. You can't get to the costs until you've completed each page of the Application Form up to that point. That's called 'transparency' in today's double-speak. But in 2019, they were charging £423 for the first year and £329 every year after that. Plus a charge for random inspections, plus travel expenses. No thank you. So, unless I can find a way round it, they've put me out of - very small - business. Not to mention making life that bit more expensive for the consumer, who has to pay for all this tripe in the end.