I bought a wood

Joy Lo Dico acquired a smallholding for pleasure – and then the price of firewood started soaring

‘This will be a money pit,’ my friend said.

He’s just been for a walk around the 120 acres of broadleaf woodland I bought in Gloucestershire in 2015.

He was half-right. When I was still pretty green at woodland management, it was; the price of education, I called it.

But events have conspired in the wood’s favour. Seven years on, it produces local jobs, better accommodation for the birds and bees and a supply of fuel for the neighbourhood. It’s also in danger of actually turning a real profit.

Rewind to 2014. I was in full-time work in London and decided I needed a peaceful bolthole in the countryside. I found a cottage surrounded by woods (120 acres is about 80 football pitches – not a small undertaking).

To my eyes, it was perfect and untouchable. Groves of cherry, stands of ash and oak and a helluva lot of hazel – probably why it was called Hazel Woods. My business is called Voltaire’s Wood, after my dog.

But it wasn’t perfect. Its first disease was ash dieback, carried by spores in the wind and now killing off most of the British ash population. The second was neglect: the wood hadn’t been thinned or tended in 50 years.

While there were fine veteran trees, large areas were felled during the Second World War, replanted and forgotten. There are pockets of trees which are clearly reaching pensionable age that have never grown fatter than six inches wide, for lack of light. That’s before the tragedy of the overstood coppice – when coppiced trees are neglected and their rods grow out of control.

From my perch in London, I spent much time thinking about the woods. The experts Oliver Rackham and Richard Mabey were my guides in books. Local foresters came in to teach me what I was meant to be doing.

The price of education was high. In

2018, we cut down two tonnes of wood; the following year, ten tonnes. The costs, in the thousands, never matched the income.

Then came 2020 – and COVID.

I moved my perch to the woods. By now, dieback in the ash was advanced. Whole stands of trees became leafless. What to do? First, make safe the footpaths and bridleways. But how, after this tree pandemic which will see a third of the trees die, would the woods regenerate?

I’d found a few locals who knew the woods well. They come in with chainsaws, diggers and timber trailers to deliver the logs. We brought in heavy horses to haul the logs. We bought a log-splitter, splitting the wood into metre-long billets. We left them to dry over the summer and then cut them to ten inches, ready for delivery, and started selling firewood.

A healthy woodland needs turnover. The theory is that before humans took over, the megafauna – mammoths, bison – would maraud through the woods, knocking down sections of trees and allowing the light onto the forest floor, which, in turn, kicked off the next cycle of growth.

Letting the forests grow high has been the undoing for wildlife, insects and flowers. I had been naive in not wanting to touch the trees. Harvesting them was of long-term benefit to the woods.

It was also, by accident, perfect timing for a healthy rise in firewood sales. The number of wood-burners sold shot up during COVID, and so did firewood sales. The costs of shipping in wood from the Baltics – where much of the kiln-dried wood comes from –rose precipitously.

This year, as the energy crisis loomed, locals wanted to stock up early. Prices went up in our area from £130 a cubic metre to £170 for seasoned logs, or over £200 for kilndried wood.

Our own prices ticked up from £125 to £160, with – unusually – a stacking service included. We remain so low-tech that we carry the logs in heavy-duty sacks to people’s woodsheds – ‘we’ being two strong, capable, charming young men. I sit at home doing the accounts.

Since December last year, firewood has been cheaper to burn, at just 10.37p per kWh, than gas at 12.81p and electricity at 39.21p.

Though there’s a lot of ash, there’s a limited amount we take out every year, and not every ash tree will go to firewood. Some are left in situ –great fodder for the fungi and a good place for wildlife to hang out. Larger logs go through our small sawmill, to be used at home or sold on to local furniture-makers.

The price of education has been paying off. This year, we have put around £10,000 into the woodland coffers, after costs. Next year, we expect that to double.

And the woods are happier, too. Trees are rapidly filling the gaps in the canopy, the understory is buzzing and I’m pretty sure the volume of birdsong has gone up.