Fellow Woodlarks walker Robert tries to shame me with a photo of an impressive woodpile at his place. Now I know that size isn’t everything but after some hard work yesterday which even Joshua got involved with, our bigger logs have been split and the pile here in Wales grows as you can see below.
The mid sized logs pile you can see in photo one is now almost six foot high on its back row and three foot high on the middle row. On its right are the big logs which can only just squeeze into the wod burning stove. On its left are smaller logs and on the far left twigs and bits of wood for kindling. But in case Robert wants to catch up I should warn him that in my old wood shed I have another pile of about 100 chopped logs and, perhaps, 100 branches and planks still to hand saw. And up by the snake barn* there is another pile of bigger logs and trunks awaiting a chain saw. My guess is that wahat is in the woodpiles you see below is only a third of what is here in terms of existing logs, branches and planks.
And I still have two or three fallen trees in the fields to chop up and a stack more to chop down as I change the shape and increase the size of the woodlands here. I reckon we must have at least ten to twelve years supply of wood on the land here already but, given what bonkers Boris and Carrie Anoinette are doing to fuel prices with their green agenda, even that may not be enough.
There are no snakes to my knowledge in the large corrugated iron barn known as the snake barn which sits at the bottom of the vegetable garden overlooking the house. But it is where I store asbestos left in various places as a parting gift by the previous owners, ahead of its removal to Wrexham waste disposal. And so it is termed the snake barn to deter Joshua from going inside.
