At my wife’s family farm close to the Norwegian border in Värmland I have learnt from my father in law and brother in law about forestry; how and when to plant trees, deforest and fell. When I first came I was a London boy and a tree was a tree. I would be perplexed when they sometimes pointed to a forest and said look how beautiful, but sometimes they said: look how terrible, what a mess, And I thought a tree was a tree.

I also learnt, cautiously how to use a chainsaw and to run the equipment that makes wood chips. With all the waste products (small trees that need to be thinned, roots and branches) we make wood chips. They can be sold to heat towns but mostly we keep ours to heat our own house. The pictures below show some steps in the process.