Passive Solar Gain

I'm loving the mornings as we move through autumn into winter, sunshine floods straight in to the barn giving a delicious natural warmth. The sun combined with heat from the wood burner soon creates the perfect temperature. We're yet to get our underfloor heating system working so fingers crossed this will add some extra heat when the the nights draw-in further and the icy conditions set in.

More Trees Please

We're in the process of applying to be part of the MOREwoods tree planting scheme run by the Woodland Trust. The idea behind the scheme is to encourage people to plant native woodland tree species. We've had a site visit by the Woodland Trust and while we're close to the sea the number and variety of species already growing in our hedgerows indicate that we can plant numerous native species on our land and within 10 to 15 years we'll have something that looks like a woodland. There are 2.5 acres to the hectare, we plan to plant out around 1.5 hectares (you need a minimum of 1 hectare to be part of the scheme) so we'll be planting roughly half of the field with trees.

How the trees will look

So why are we planting all these trees? Hmm, I'm not entirely sure of the definitive answer to that. We're aware of peak-oil so without a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion the costs of all fuels are likely to keep going up. As oil and gas prices go up so will the cost of wood to burn. I think going off grid for the sake of it is perhaps a bit extreme but having greater control of our energy supplies for the future is probably fairly sensible. A woodland that is large enough to sustainably heat our property seems to be a good idea. It's a bit like an insurance policy just in case the worst case scenario happens...

'As Peak Oil bites and energy becomes scarce the effects are likely to include steeply rising energy prices leading to the end of growth and beginning of century long economic decline, stock market and financial meltdown, bankruptcies and pension collapses, much reduced public services incl the NHS due to collapsing government income, breakdown of transportation and supply chains, shortages of food and other basic commodities and perhaps even breakdown of law and order. In short, Peak Oil has the potential to destroy our current civilisation.' (from Transisiton Group Cornwall website)

Phew!! Well if it turns out that the people of the transition movement have been getting all fidgety for no reason then we'll have created a beautiful woodland and helped species diversity, it will be great to see squirrels, deer, badgers, foxes, birds and rabbits not to mention seeing the plant life change as the pasture slowly turns to woodland. We'll also be able to chop stuff and build things which is always cool.