Now I want to make it quite clear I'm not short of something to do!

At this time of year it's good to plan ahead for winter and I'm sourcing wood fuel from here and there  so the Dunsley Yorkshire boiler can be providing us with central heating and hot water through the winter months. One of the key issues is making sure your wood is well seasoned  which means as low  a moisture content as possible. Ideally chopped and split logs should be left for up to 2 years. Seasoned wood tends to have radial cracks coming from the centre. So I've been experimenting with ways to speed up the process

The first step is to weigh your original log

then put the weights of logs and date of measurement

Using the power of reliable English sunshine under a cloche I now speed dry out the logs

I'll see after a week or two if its helped speed up the drying process and reweigh the logs. If all goes according to plan on the log front (my whacky experiments not withstanding) we should be toasty for the winter. Here's a vid from the 'Ice Age' winter of 2010/11