Winter in Spain is different from a typical British winter, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be cold in the evenings and mornings, and a fire is a necessity as the nights draw in.

The previous owner left us quite a nice stash of firewood in the log store which saw us into our first new-year here. But with a few months more to go before warmer nights, a delivery of logs was a necessity. What looked like a lovely mix of almond, carob and olive wood arrived on the drive, and I spent a bright afternoon warming myself up whilst barrowing it up to the log store. Our store was full again, but at a cost! We needed to be more self-sufficient before next winter.

In January we set about pruning some of our olive trees and kept back the larger wood for firewood. A carob tree that had self-seeded many moons ago in the wrong place went the same way. And a whole host of other pruning, re-shaping, and felling joined them. I made a simple saw-horse from some 3”x2” we had lying around, and set to work cutting everything down to log lengths and getting it stacked on long bearers ready to dry.

As the weeks and months went by, we saw the log stack grow ever larger. We even grabbed a long-forgotten tree limb from the side of the road outside the house and added that to our pile! In April we started a fresh stack so that anything we moved to the log store would be well seasoned. 

Now in early December we are starting to burn the first of our own firewood harvest. It’s incredible! Much of what we have is less than four inches in diameter, and some have scoffed at what we save for firewood. But it seems small is just fine for us, and we reserve the larger split logs for the coldest days when we want a fire to go through the night. 

We’re already self-sufficient for electricity, being entirely powered by solar. Our water is largely rainwater harvested from the roofs of the house and outbuildings. Time will tell if we’re self-sufficient for firewood or not. But we’re off to a great start.

Claire & Ed