A sustainable future

Increasing the price of our firewood to £25 per bag allows us to keep environmental sustainability at the forefront of our business. Specifically;

For every bag of firewood we sell, we will plant either a conifer or native tree. We will increase the number of trees planted per bag in future years.
We use low-impact tree harvesting methods, protecting both the forest floor and naturally-regenerating tree saplings.
We’ve recently started using a product called Aspen to run our firewood processor, rather than regular petrol. Aspen is a purer, cleaner type of fuel that is kinder to the environment as it contains none of the harmful substances found in petrol. Although still a fossil fuel, until technology catches up and something like green hydrogen has been viably developed, burning Aspen produces up to 99% less harmful hydrocarbon emissions and benzene than standard petrol. We are breathing cleaner, fresher air while we work. It costs more than twice the price of regular petrol but the benefits make the trade-off absolutely worth it.
We are striving for a consistent and sustainable future. Sustainable for both us and the forest! Rather than competing on price, we will limit the volume of firewood we produce and supply every year to ensure sustainability, whilst ensuring each bag is well-seasoned, well-packed and ready to burn. We are continuously striving to improve this process. There is no such thing as firewood that is too dry; the less moisture the better. Our lodgepole pine and sitka spruce is seasoned until it reaches a moisture content of less than 20% (it’s often around 16%), so our logs burn efficiently, maximising heat output, offering a cleaner burn and making the whole process better for the environment.
We will deliver to a small but dedicated core of customers who see themselves as firewood enthusiasts; they appreciate splits with a low moisture content, delivered exactly when and where suits them best.
The way we stack our splits means there are less air gaps in our barrow bags, so they take up less space. This means we can deliver more bags at once, reducing the number of deliveries we make and lightening our environmental footprint.
Over the past five years we have been researching a variety of sustainable forestry practices on our woodland croft, and in particular have been broadly experimenting with continuous cover silviculture (CCS), which encourages natural regeneration. CCS avoids clear-felling vast swathes of forest, which looks unattractive and encourages plagues of large pine weevils (Hylobius abietis) that devour any saplings planted for the following five years. Instead we plan to thin gradually and create small wooded areas known as coops.
We’re already seeing the benefits of allowing nature some breathing space. For example, as well as the conifers naturally regenerating, we have hundreds of silver birch sprouting from seed in the peat. These go back perhaps 800 to 1000 years to a time when the Bilbster Forest area was a birch woodland. In the future, these coops will be restocked with native species, complementing the silver birch, pine and spruce natural regeneration.
We have been experimenting with the best ways of seasoning timber. We employ a variety of techniques depending on the season and weather, making the most of the Caithness wind and sun. We have developed a low temperature (<45°C) kiln to accelerate the drying process in the height of winter. We run the kiln efficiently using scrap materials leftover from processing splits. Our kiln is the polar opposite of some commercial kilns, which typically use up to half the firewood they produce during the kiln-drying process itself!
All the firewood we supply has been grown and harvested in Caithness. When you choose Watten Firewood, you’re choosing a sustainable source of firewood with a genuinely low environmental footprint.
Our business is very much a seasonal one, for obvious reasons. However, living in the far north means the season can be pretty long! Although this has been great for building our croft house, we would like to sell more firewood in the summer when the days are long and there is plenty of opportunity to reduce the wood-seasoning time frame. A few customers take the chance to stock up over the summer and, if you have the storage space at home, it’s worth considering joining this small group who are well-prepared for winter.

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