Max Campbell splitting firewood in his woodlot
With firewood season already upon us, Jackie Miles explains how she and Max Campbell established a woodlot on their property in Brogo to meet their own firewood needs. (Note: Originally published in the CMN Newsletter, Autumn 2013 and reprinted here in the lead up to the CMN Woodlot Field Day in Tantawangalo on Friday 5 May 2017).
Our first woodlot planting was in 1993. Although we have a lot of timber on the place we can’t get a car anywhere near 95% of it, so a compact, conveniently located woodlot seemed a good idea. We also have a Voluntary Conservation Agreement over about 3/4 of the property, which does allow a certain level of firewood collection, but we prefer not to be pushing the car into the less disturbed parts of the block. I was also working at Bridge House nursery then, and in Bega Valley Tree Planters, so was into growing and planting stuff. From the angle of minimising our carbon footprint, we’d read that growing and burning your own firewood stacks up pretty well compared with other energy sources for heating and cooking.
We began our first planting on the flat because we had a fenced area available from an old vegetable garden that wasn’t being used. This determined the size, which is about 30m square. We took the fence down once the trees were established. Success-wise, the initial planting went well. We watered it in the first season but not thereafter. We planted too close together – 2m x 2m I seem to recall, so some of the slower trees got suppressed and will never be any use. Fewer trees at double the spacing would have been sensible I think.
The second planting was in 2005 and was only protected by individual guards. This didn’t really work (maybe 10 trees remain out of about 30) as most succumbed to wombats. The third was in 2010 after the drought broke, and was scattered more naturally rather than planted in a block, individually guarded but with much more robust guards. Despite this a wombat has managed to kill one or two by burrowing under them and demolishing the roots, rather than flattening the guard and tree. I think in future we’ll go with this method, waiting till trees are big enough to survive without guards, then using those guards to do the next planting.
We chose Eucalyptus botryoides (Bangalay) as it is fast growing, reasonably local (not on our place, but it is in gullies up the end of the road), and friends who have it on their place said it was reasonable firewood, which most of the species on our place naturally are not. We also planted Eucalyptus tereticornis (Forest red gum) as a longer term thing as although it is slow growing we thought it might be ready by the time we’d run through all the botryoides. We’ll probably leave a few uncut to establish a population down there.
On the harvesting, we are so far nibbling around the edges, as the trees on the edges have tended to be the faster growing ones anyway. We’ve had no problem felling them, and the stump works great as a chopping block for splitting the rounds. I’m not sure what will happen if we decide to go after one of the larger internal ones. It could be problematic if they get hung up but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I just lay the branches inside the woodlot after felling to feed the remaining trees and they mulch down pretty quickly and don’t impede walking around in there too much.
We could eventually press the whole flat into service as a woodlot – maybe 4 times the area currently in use.
If you’d like to book into the Woodlot Field Day – planning for future firewood and timber needs on Friday 5 May 2017 contact Ali Rodway on 0417 246 896 or email info@fsccmn.com.
