Willow Coppice For Firewood - Short Rotation Firewood

so I think Willow is a great firewood much underrated always remember when my brother was selling firewood and people would go there's no Willow in it is there but those people know nothing I tell you because Willow is all right mixed in with other stuff it's [Music] ideal so on to the third section of my Willow just going to cut five trees across this one hasn't seem to have grown as well as some of the other sections I don't think I guess it varies a bit h on water and for now I just brought my chainsaw up some gloves bck hat chainsaw trousers just as a basic lot of stuff but you can see got quite a lot of Bramble cover Willow doesn't like competing with stuff very much and over here you can see last year's which we need to finin back the year before which coming on quite nicely now so I'm going to start chomping this up I'm going to cut up high one cut drop it down but I might might Chomp where it stands I'm not quite sure yet kind of whatever's easiest there isn't huge amounts here so there's not no point in being kind of yeah I don't set myself up a new base really to do stuff so we're going to cut this see how it goes now my last video about this I had loads of questions about kind of how much wood does it produce obviously it's not huge amounts but what you do get is some nice size Timbers that don't need splitting which is kind of Ideal what we're trying to do is reduce labor with this obviously the base piece little bit bigger I'd say still doesn't need split in probably you could split that in half you can see I need to clear myself a bit of a space to get myself somewhere to work really that was meant to be the idea between this pathway between here and the Hedge if you can see up there but unfortunately unfortunately the brambles have kind of got away from me in there I should have run a mower up there or something really ideally pay attention where the camera was okay a lot of people ask me how much does it produce that's the amount from One Tree there but got quite a few more to go but it kind of gives you a rough idea of what we'll produce probably get a builder's bag full of these kind of 25 [Music] trees so the battery's gone flat on the saw for the first time but we're getting a little pile see how far I get today I don't remember I'm going get today and there is a storm blowing in it keeps threatening to rain it's spotting the brain and I am a fair weather Forester at the moment no way I'm getting wet today so let's go and get some more batteries so coming back up here now you can kind of see the trees you can see the trees kind of I placed them a meter space in but you can see here one two three missed out four but didn't come in so and I imagine they'd be hard to establish with everything else gr around them so now I Cho these when I chop these down I'll put some extra trees in there just knock in some big cuttings and hope they take okay it's going be quite a quick job but yesterday I went back to change the batteries and it started to rain so I gave up but let's get the rest of this down shall we it's not just about firewood so I'm going to pull out some poles about 5T tall and I'm going to strip the B from them and maybe use them for hedge and Stakes depending on how short I get but while I've got some nice th ones here that's why I'm do this one's probably a bit too thick actually this one going to be cut up for [Music] [Music] [Music] firewood [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] ah a [Music] a not one of those days where I got to go pick the kids up from school oh chainsaw trousers and a helmet it's like instant sweat isn't it oh well get you fit [Music] it [Music] [Music] ah so there we go it doesn't take too too long uh this is a 10 m wide by about 6 M strips there five rows of trees there was some trees missing there so obviously poor management from me kind of setting it up and not making sure that they all kind of survived they did take a long time to get established here so that's probably reason why but you see we got some good range of firewood so this is one pile and we got another pile over there but I mean you know it's not it's not small that small you do have smaller bits and it always depends how far you want to go with it how how much not everyone wants to cut up 1in sticks like that but I'll tell you this winter I've been loving having sticks like that kind of intermediate so you got all my kid in put on load of sticks like this put on some bigger sticks on top and The Willow Burns hot gets a really good bed of Ash in the fire and let you put other stuff on top of it so I think Willow's a great firewood much underrated always remember when my brother was selling firewood and people would go there's no Willow in it is there but those people know nothing I tell you because Willow is all right mixed in with other stuff it's ideal but yeah you can see got that pile there got this pile here and we've got about 20 Stakes that I can get the kids to strip the bark off and I can use them for hedging or for propping up stuff in the garden I could cut some longer ones I have now got the rest of this to manage which I'll do in another video so this is the last 2 years just once a little bit an hour spent in there now we'll probably sort it out to be honest with you it's not going to take me very long I also need to do something with all the Brash you can see I've just stacked it here this time I've not dragged it down further away and what I might do is borrow my brother's chipper and Chip it and then I can use that biomass somewhere else on the small hold in which I think could be really really good but it's just getting a chipper here be ideal to have one here all the time but that's never going to happen so I collect this up might do some hedge L first and some other jobs collect up all my Brash and then have a day here with a chipper chip it all down and then I can use it for paths and what have you but so it gives you kind of there's lots of different things you can get from this Willow and some of these longer bits here in uh the two-year growth I might use as binders for hedge Lan as well so you know there's lots of lots of different possibilities from quite a small space of land really obviously looking forward got another two years until we've done all this once uh this is kind of the middle year now and then it's whether we kind of do this on a 5year rotation or whe we have a g and leave it for a couple years but I should say we've got a good Builder's bag full of wood there if not more I don't know how much firewood is these days I haven't never bought any uh kind of supplements it a little bit it's provides lots of materials I always coming down here when we've got something to Scouts and stealing sticks and stuff so that the Scouts can cook their sausages on the fire and things like that so kind of you know it's a really good resource to have I've never I've no regrets on planting this little strip of Willow Copus um the question I always get asked is kind of how how much wood does it produce well it varies and also it's not worth it on such a small scale what I'd say it is uh you know not counting your labor it's just nice to kind of give yourself a little bit of Independence even on this kind of small scale considering how much wood we burn uh but we've got lots of mature trees here I'm a carpenter as well so you kind of you know all those things add up to kind of having quite being s quite self-sufficient in our firewood but thanks for watching guys uh hope you've enjoyed this and I'll see you next time

Channel: An English Homestead (Kev Alviti)

Views: 2,316

Keywords: organic, organic gardening, permaculture, ecogrowing, growing with nature, tree growing, willow, willow coppice, short rotation willow, wollow, willow firewood, firewood, manage firewood, small coppice

Id: MwNrcm-niKQ

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024