Will’s World: Woodburning stove is a farmhouse favourite
© Richard Stanton Do you have any favourite possessions? I have a few that I’m very fond of indeed.
A pair of comfortable and durable walking boots that I’ve worn for years, a very functional penknife that keeps its edge far longer than any other I’ve owned, one of those backpacks that you carry small children around in (ours have long since outgrown it, but I’ve kept it for sentimental reasons), and a very fancy coffee machine the present Mrs Evans bought me for Christmas a few years ago.
Not because she was feeling generous, you understand, but because until I’ve had my first morning caffeine hit she’s the one who has to put up with me behaving like a grizzly bear who’s just been rudely awoken from hibernation.
But there’s one item in our home that I probably get more pleasure from than any other: our woodburning stove.
See also: Adapted Xerion and three-wheel Ploeger haul timber for Howie
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There’s something about sitting and watching the flames after a long day on the farm, especially on dark, cold winter nights, that’s enormously comforting.
I suppose it satisfies a deep, primeval instinct that has endured through thousands of years of human evolution. But more importantly, it saves us a bloody fortune in heating oil.
Hot property
I shudder to think what it would cost to heat this draughty old money-pit of a farmhouse without it, and it’s doubly cost-efficient for us with all our logs being free.
There are some benefits to all the high winds and floods we’ve had over the past few years, and ending up with a large supply of well-seasoned timber is one of them.
It must be the ultimate form of rural waste recycling, really, and I’m only surprised it hasn’t been given a trendy name like “heat foraging” or something equally pretentious by an ever-so-middle-class Guardian columnist yet. Give it time.
So given my deep affection for our stove, it was with a considerably raised eyebrow that I read about the Scottish government’s quietly introduced ban on them in all new-build properties going forward.
I suppose I can sort of see where they’re coming from with new houses, especially in urban areas, given that modern insulation and double-glazing mean you probably wouldn’t need one anyway. But having said that, why shouldn’t someone fit one if they want to?
Perhaps they have a good source of logs and want to support a local business that supplies them.
Maybe they have questions about the sustainability of woodchip-fuelled power stations or are concerned about grid outages leaving them without heat as our climate gets more volatile.
Or maybe, just maybe, they work hard every day and simply want to sit by one during their evenings.
It really should be down to the individual concerned, not some self-satisfied bureaucrat in an Edinburgh ivory tower.
Burning issue
I can’t really imagine that a few woodburners are going to make much of a difference to climate change anyway, but what do I know?
Perhaps I should ask the 70,000 people who travelled – many of them by private jet – to COP28 in an oil-producing country on the Arabian Peninsula. No doubt they have all the answers.
My real concern, though, is that this is the thin end of the wedge, and what starts with a ban on them in new-build houses in Scotland, ends up with a UK-wide ban on them all together.
If that should happen, I’m committing, right here on this page, to go full William Wallace on them. Who’s with me?
“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR WOODBURNERS!”