Sourcing timber for firewood

This summer I have been bringing in timber by the tonne from a site which was being cleared by developers. The trees were being cut down anyway - my buying the wood in no way brought it about as there is a barn being built on the site. It was sweaty work right in the middle of that hot spell lugging great boughs and branches into the van and trailer, but good fun. In the end I got about 30 tonnes of timber some of which is already stacked to season after sawing and chopping. The rest will be processed in a log processor - this is a nifty machine which runs off the PTO of a tractor. Load a branch on and the machine saws it to length, splits it and then carries it off on a short conveyor. The processor will achieve in a day or two what would take me weeks. I would have to do it a bit here and a bit there anyway which would mean that the whole thing would take many months - months when the wood could be seasoning.

Contacting your local woodland businesses is a good way of getting wood for fuel. Many forests that grow timber for building do not use the tops of the trees or the bigger branches, but they are fine for burning. Why not consider getting together with some like-minded friends and neighbours and clubbing together to buy a decent amount of timber. If the supplier can't easily arrange for delivery to you then you would need to arrange for this, and for somewhere to store the wood so this is not the ideal a solution for everyone. A local farmer with a tractor with front loader and a decent sized trailer should be able to do it for a fee.