Looking ahead

As a world economy, we are addicted to fossil fuels, of which we are running short. Not to talk about the climate chaos. The 50 years anniversary of the "Limits to Growth" this year has sadly been a celebration of stupidity. We (globally) have tracked the "business-as-usual" scenario and not implemented any of the suggested policy actions to stabilize our civilization. Dark clouds form at the horizon here in Europe. For some people, the downpour has already started.

One of the key energy sources in the future will be wood, since the other ones will disappear one after another. In the past, when we got water power and nuclear power on board, we did not stop burning wood. We just added energy on top of existing sources. At present in Sweden, we burn more wood today than ever before.

When we wean ourselves of other energy sources, I am confident that wood will remain, but we will also here need to reduce our consumption.

Our new place has a high efficiency wood burner, and we got a shed full of dry firewood, so the upcoming winter will be fine.

However, we need to look further ahead.

Taking down some trees

Summer is not the best time to fell trees, since they are full of sap so the logs are heavy and the leaves make a mess. However, I wanted to remove a clump of trees so that I can get my cultivation fields prepared as soon as possible.

Therefore, we removed 30 birch trees and pollarded 5 trees this summer and started to cut up the wood.

Electric chain saw, transforming electric energy into firewood energy potential, operated by a visiting worker

Temporary drying racks, with a seasoned expert coming in to inspect

The wood needs to dry and cure for more than one year. We store the wood outside on the south side of our barn under a metal roof.

Some more logs to cut up

We still have some logs to cut up and split. Wood warms us many times. This is a good job for a cold, but not rainy day.