A delivery of wood
We rely on our wood-burning stove to keep our reading room warm, and we are fortunate to get our wood from an excellent local tree surgeon, Neil Harford of Harford Services (harfordservices.com). Now, we would say he was a top guy, because the wood is delivered to us for free, but we are grateful when a truckload turns up as it did today.
What we then do over the following days is reduce the size of the logs down, using a chainsaw and old-fashioned axe. This is usually done by a combination of Richard, Stan and Craig as the weather allows. It’s very dusty work and the cleaning up afterwards (cleaning and sharpening the chainsaw, sweeping up and bagging the waste) takes (or seems to take!) about as long as the chopping.
But it’s all worth it. This gives us a supply of wood to season ready for the coming autumn when the wood burner goes back on. (We use a gizmo to measure the moisture content to be sure we’re not burning any unsuitable wood.)
Most of our visitors, turning up on a cold day, comment on how cosy it is in the reading room, and don’t want to leave…
When we have a surplus of wood, we sell it to members of the public. At the moment our stocks are low, but we’re hoping to build those up over the next few months. This is one of several income streams which is used to finance the day-to-day running of the archive, so we don’t ever profit from any sales.
Meanwhile, if anyone would like to help us chopping up wood as a volunteer, please do contact us on volunteering@richardrobertsarchive.org.uk.
