Chopping fire wood

We have lots of branches waiting to be chopped up for fire wood. The were originally growing on hedgerows around the site but we chopped them back as the hedges were enormously overgrown last year. We then fed them to the goats. They ate the leaves, twigs and bark.





We've been cutting them into lengths of about 30-40cm. We still have plenty more to do.

We have, however, no solid fuel heating system in place yet. We can blame a company called Solarlec for that. They were supposed to install a super-advanced bio-mass boiler for us in October 2014. Despite handing them a deposit of £3300, we were given one excuse after another for the next 5 months. By then we started to threaten legal action. We were then told by Solarlec that the location of the proposed boiler (the garage) was the wrong place to put such a piece of equipment. This was rather odd as they visited us in September 2014 and advised us that the boiler needed to go into the garage. The regional manager therefore offered us a new visit by a technician or our money back. We immediately asked for our money back and it was agreed it would be returned to us within 2 days. Two weeks later I was back on the phone to them asking for my money. I demanded to speak to the highest authority in the company when I called and was put through to one of the directors. The cheque was in my hands the next day. There was never an apology or an explanation as to why we were so thoroughly messed about by them.

Solarlec are promoted by TV personality Kate Humble whose farm was fitted with solar panels by the company. I hope she got better service than we got. All I can say about Solarlec is never do business with them. Find someone else.

Meanwhile, we are soon to start searching for a decent company capable of installing a wood fired boiler and a wood burner for our front room. We now have quite a stock of wood to burn so fuel will not be a problem.