Firewood is now back on sale in the Forest Centre Gift Shop

We don’t just plant trees

We also thin them out (aka cut some down) as part of woodland management. This is essential in order to let light onto the woodland floor, and give other trees room to grow. Contrary to popular belief, woods can’t just look after themselves – over hundreds of years the plants and wildlife of woodlands have become accustomed to being managed so without it, they wouldn’t thrive.

Firewood and kindling prices 

To find out more about bulk orders and deliveries for the 2023-24 season please email [email protected].

Pricing for the 2023-24 season is as shown below: 

1 net	£8.50
5 nets	£40
10 nets	£75
20 nets	£140 (+ 1 free bag of kindling)
Additional nets over 20	£7.00 per net
40 nets	£280 (+ 2 free bags of kindling)
Kindling	£6.00 per net
Delivery*	£5.00

* Limited to a 30 minute drive time from the Forest Centre

If you want to understand the heat output of wood vs. different fuel sources here is a link to a research paper which can help answer your questions. Heat Output Tests (publishing.service.gov.uk)

Where it all began

In 2010 our team were thinning woodland at the Grange Estate as part of a Forestry Commission approved management plan. The woodland was thinned by 30% across all species, generating many tonnes of timber. If the team had left the timber on the ground, it would have affected the existing and emerging fauna and flora, as well as making access for future woodland management difficult. As part of the Forestry Commission approved management plan, dead wood habitat was created by leaving piles of brash and logs scattered throughout the wood, as well as ring barking trees to create standing deadwood. All thinning operations are carried out to help naturalise the woodlands, by breaking up the uniformed rows, creating more light to the woodland floor to encourage new ground level growth and to provide more room for the remaining trees to grow outwards, rather than just upwards. You can read more about woodland management here.

Having used as much of the timber as possible to create new habitats, there was still more timber left, and so our firewood enterprise was born!

In the beginning, everything was done by hand with axes and hand saws and stored under some tarpaulin. By 2013, things had grown quite a bit with the arrival of our new barn and workshop (thanks to funding from Natural England) including machinery to cut and split the wood. The new machinery dramatically increased the quality and quantity of timber that we could process, and the new storage facility meant that we could properly store and season the wood to an optimum 20% moisture content (there is some more info on seasoning wood here)

A growing woodland economy

The woodland economy is on its knees due to decades of neglect and a lack of investment, which has led to a skills shortage within the industry and many woodlands becoming uneconomically viable, due to poor access from neglected and overgrown tracks. The production of firewood and lumber, as part of a sustainable, certified management plan, is a means to cover the cost of managing our woodlands and protecting them for future generations. Our woodlands are under pressure from pests and diseases, deer browsing, squirrel damage and from closed canopies that give young trees limited opportunities to establish through lack of light. Thinning trees is part of the natural cycle of woodlands and we promote best practice management techniques in our woodlands to benefit ecology, diversity, the rural economy and access for our visitors. Money we raise from selling firewood allows us to create more woodlands - for the benefit of people, wildlife and our planet.

Our wood is licensed by the Grown in Britain scheme, whose sole aim is to encourage the use of British timber by individuals and businesses throughout the UK, which ties in perfectly with what we want to encourage – a growing woodland economy.

Funding to help grow the Forest Firewood Enterprise was received from LEADER funding administered by Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity. Find out more here: https://www.marstonvale.org/News/growing-the-woodland-economy 

For more information on firewood or woodland management please email us.

 

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