You come into an empty house in the country. The storage heater has been on all the time that you were away (takes the edge off the chill). The central heating is turned on and, if it is winter (in early June it nearly is), you have a blower which disperses warmed air. Also, for the cold corner at the window, there is an electric portable heater. But the cook swears that at, say, eight paces, the wood fire alone, which is immediately lit, is the real agent that makes you feel at home. Its warmth comes to her at the cooking counter within two minutes of being lit. Admittedly it is a privileged fire, for it has at its disposal not only the remains of several ancient trees which had to be cut down for the safety of passers-by, but also the annual crop of trees, for over-enthusiastic planting-too-close some 20 years ago meant that regular felling had to be done to keep the others healthy and give room.
Maybe it is natural, and perhaps a wise precaution, to overplant rather than underplant if you hope to make open fires part of your survival or comfort programme. This plenteousness of supply means that nothing of less than three to five years' maturity in the logs will be used. And all the rhymes and wisdom quotes about this log having this virtue and another having that - true though they may be - hardly come into the equation when you have your pick of various thicknesses and origins and lengths, all well matured, to your hand a few yards from the fire.
First as to the starting tinder: a closely planted ash grove means that trees go to the sky and branch out very little. Those branches that do appear soon die off and drop, giving you excellent starting wood about an inch to two inches thick: dry and light. Then there is the birch for logs, not more than three to four inches in diameter, and one or two ash trunks from the aforementioned planting. A couple of oaks which had to be felled when their trunks were about eight inches thick (shame), even some willow, which is said not to burn. Leave it and it does. Hawthorn has had to come down to give the owners some light in the rooms, and these were of long-time riverbank growth, with trunks about eight inches in diameter. The whole of the tree burns magnificently with a lovely odour. Some of these trees would be poor enough fuel if used even a year after cutting. But after three or four years they all put a glow on your face as you light up. Y