First, second and third degree burns

I LOVE trees but I’m not sentimental about them. In fact at this time of year I enjoy cutting them down, turning them into logs and burning them.

I have two multi-fuel stoves and two open fireplaces in my house and I burn timber, leavened if necessary with a little turf. The stoves are more efficient than the fireplaces and safer if I’m burning timber that sparks.

But the open fireplaces are more fun because I can fiddle with the logs to get them burning the way I want them and because I can see, smell and enjoy the fire better.

I’m quite fussy about firewood. I pay a lot of attention to how it’s seasoned and stored and I have favourite species.

Probably the best logs that I can get easily come from ash trees. Ash needs no seasoning if it’s cut when the tree is dormant in winter. Even fresh summer ash will burn but it hisses a lot and produces a slightly acrid smell that’s a bit of an acquired taste.

And ash logs usually have a straight, clean grain which makes them a joy to split.

On the more acid soils around here there is quite a lot of birch. This is my second favourite. Birch trees break dormancy in February, over two months before ash. This means that the timber has to be cut early in the winter if you want to burn it immediately. Heavy logs of summer birch require seasoning. It’s a lively, aromatic timber that produces slightly less heat than ash.

Fruit trees provide firewood for a special treat. Apple, pear, plum and cherry, both fruiting and flowering varieties, burn with exotic aromas and bright, clear flames. They need careful seasoning but it’s worth the effort. An old Bramley apple tree that I took out of the orchard nearly a year ago provided the festive fires over Christmas.

Beech and oak are both quite good, though nowadays I get little beech and practically no oak. They both need long and careful seasoning but eventually burn with a clear, steady flame and a pleasant smell and they probably have the greatest heat output of any of our common timbers. Holly is good too, but it’s years since I laid hands on any.

The dense, red timber of hawthorn also requires long seasoning but it’s an excellent firewood. Blackthorn’s not bad either but it’s unusual to get it in worthwhile thicknesses. These harder timbers will rapidly make a saw blade blunt.

THERE’S a lot of elder in the hedges around here and I have some big, old ones on my own land that sometimes fall in winter storms. The timber is supposed to be completely useless but this isn’t true. The small wood isn’t good for anything but logs from the trunk and larger branches make excellent, slow-burning firewood if they’re properly seasoned. Elder is the very first of our trees to break dormancy and should be felled in November or December to reduce the seasoning time.

Sycamore provides a good, lightish firewood but horse chestnut is practically uninflammable. Willows, poplars and alder are pretty useless, though alder is the best of them.

After long seasoning they produce a light, indifferent firewood.

But these are all hardwoods. What if you can only get your hands on spruce, larch, pine or fir? These timbers heat rural homes over much of continental Europe but they do pose some problems. They need to be properly seasoned and are best burnt in a stove because they have a tendency to spark. Unfortunately they also tend to produce tar in the smoke which can completely block the flue of the stove. The upside of this is a wonderful, resinous smell.

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