Scottish trawlermen haul in their catch in the North Atlantic (Photo by Chris Furlong/Getty Images)
I live nowhere near the sea. But some years ago, sitting on a straw bale at a tiny Yorkshire folk festival, I found myself in tears as I joined in a song about fishermen who died almost a century before I was born.
The song in question, “Three Score and Ten”, tells the story of a single stormy night in 1884, and the horrific death toll that came with it:
And there were three score and ten, boys and men
Were lost from Grimsby Town
From Yarmouth down to Scarborough
Many hundreds more were drownedTheir herring craft, their trawlers
Their fishing smacks as well
They long did fight the bitter night
And battle with the swell.
But it’s not just the sentimental pleasure of singing a sad song with a catchy chorus that keeps this song alive. Fishing is woven deep into the culture of the British Isles: so deep, that despite today being only a tiny contributor to our economy, and with little political leverage, it may yet scupper Boris’s Brexit deal.
Why, then, does fishing stir people up? It’s not jobs or money. According to Commons Library research, the UK fishing industry employs about 24,000 people and earns around £1.4bn per annum. As a proportion of Britain’s £2.1 trillion 2019 GDP, that’s small change. And with 27,000 employees in the UK alone, Amazon provides more jobs today than the entire British fishing sector.
The BBC recently had a go, suggesting that ‘supporters of Brexit’ see fishing as ‘a symbol of sovereignty that will now be regained’. But it goes deeper than abstract ideas of control. The environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth argues that if we’re to find national identity anywhere, it’s in the relationship we have with our landscape we inhabit. And for the inhabitants of the British Isles, no matter which wave of migration brought us here since this landmass was settled in about 900,000BC, that identity has been bound up with the sea.
Wherever you live in the British Isles, it’s not possible to be more than 70 miles from the sea. We have around 19,500 miles of coastline: more than Brazil. The sea has sustained and shaped Britain for thousands of years.
The usual angle on this story is about commerce and colonisation. In its pomp, the might of the British Empire was inseparable from its maritime culture. This fact, and Britain’s decline from imperial grandeur, underpinned the recent controversy over singing “Rule Britannia” at the Proms . But so far the culture war has largely ignored those working-class men who plied the same waves not to conquer or trade, but to catch fish.
Fishing has been part of British culture since time immemorial, but especially on the North Sea coast. The monks of Wyke Hull were granted a special licence to fish in the Humber by King Henry II in the 12th century. Then in the 19th century, when the arrival of railways opened up new inland markets for fresh fish, a wave of migration to the area made Hull a fishing boom town. Often-illiterate fishermen set sail in ‘fishing smacks’, light sail-powered vessels of around 50 feet with a crew of around four men, to trawl for deep-sea fish as far afield as the Faroes and Iceland.
Working on a North Sea fishing smack was brutally dangerous: between 1863 and 1871 around 1,000 such boats were operating from ports along the northeast, and every year around 120 of them were lost to accidents. In Grimsby alone, 1,024 men were lost between 1880 and 1893, all from fishing smacks.
Nor was joining a fishing crew always a choice. The historian Peter Anson noted that of the boys and men who made up the Grimsby fishing fleet, “Most of the apprentices had been brought up in orphanages and reformatory schools.” It’s likely that of the “three score and ten” who died on that stormy October night in 1884, some had been forced into the trade.
This hard and dangerous work bred a unique working culture. In his 1934 travelogue English Journey, JB Priestley described fishing as employing perhaps the last of the wild men in this tamed Island of ours; fellows capable of working day and night without food or sleep […] and then also capable of going on the booze with equal energy and enthusiasm.
This culture was transmitted (as is often the case for working-class history) through myth and music. If they survived long enough to be drawn into the culture of working fishermen, apprentice smacksmen would soon learn the songs that beat the rhythms of working life at sea. Shanties and ‘capstan songs’, surviving today only in sheet music and the folk music scene, were tools of the trade: rhythmic tunes sung onboard to give the beat for hauling ropes to work the ship, or turning the capstan to winch in heavy nets.
Indeed, ”The Smacksman” is itself a capstan song, which contrasts the idyllic appearance of life at sea with its grim reality. Nothing could be more quintessentially British than this cheerful sing-it-on-the-job ditty about having a horrible job:
Once I was a schoolboy, on the shores I used to roam
And watch the boats go out to sea, at the setting of the sun.
I thought I’d like the seafaring life but very soon I found
It wasn’t common sailing when we reached the fishing ground.It was, “Heave on the trawl my boys, never mind the storm!”
When we get the fish aboard we’ll have another haul.
“Heave away the capstan, merrily heave away!”
It’s the same old cry in the middle of the night as it is in the early day.
The rhythms of fishing life occupied not just those at sea, but everyone onshore too. The whole community turned on the rhythm of the ‘long-tripper’ boats that by the onset of the First World War employed some 17,000 full-time fishermen. ‘Fishwives’ would mend nets, bait lines and process the catch, selling fish from the docks or carrying it to market in woven baskets. Even lullabies had a tang of the sea: the Northumbrian lullaby “Dance to your daddy” promises the baby “You shall have a fishy/When the boat comes in”.
As North Sea white fish grew in popularity, inland fishing declined. Britain lost the taste for herring (today, we export 93% of the British herring catch) and embraced cod-and-chips. Meanwhile, advances in fishing technology began to transform the industry from the dangerous sail-powered work of the 19th-century smacksman to something more industrial, increasingly carried out by huge trawlers with refrigerated holds and even on-board canneries, that could put to sea for weeks at a time.
Then, in the mid-20th century, a sector focused not on inland fishing but North Sea trawling collided with the ‘rules-based international order’ — and sank.
The 1970 Common Fisheries Policy was an attempt to address the growing problem of overfishing resulting from the ever more efficient design of 20th-century trawlers. It wasn’t the first such attempt to allocate fishing rights; the nations signing the 1964 London Convention on Fisheries are all now EU members.
But when Britain joined the EEC in 1973, it was allocated quotas set based not on the total catch by British vessels, but only on fish caught in EEC waters. And these didn’t include the more distant North Sea fishing-grounds where the bulk of the British trawlers worked.
Thus it’s both true and not true that ‘Ted Heath sold British fishermen down the river’, as the popular perception has it today. Yes, CFP quotas were skewed against Britain — but this wouldn’t have mattered had Britain been able to go on fishing further afield. And Britain’s ‘long-tripper’ fishermen were defeated not by Brussels, but by geopolitics.
In the 1970s, in another effort to manage the excesses of overfishing, the UN established Exclusive Economic Zones around coastal states, giving each state the sole right to economic exploitation of these waters. This triggered the Cod Wars between Britain and Iceland, over the right to fish off the Icelandic coast. At the height of the Cod Wars, British trawlers were shot at by Icelandic fishermen, and one large vessel was even shelled by Icelandic artillery after it was spotted fishing inside the limit.
Britain’s military clout seemed sure to guarantee victory in the Cod Wars. But Iceland had a trump card up its sleeve: geography. The Cod Wars took place at the height of the Cold War, and the US naval base on the Reykjanes peninsula in western Iceland was critical to America’s efforts to track Soviet movements via the key chokepoint between Greenland, Iceland and the UK.
So Iceland threatened to withdraw from Nato if the British did not stop fishing in Icelandic waters. Fearful of losing its naval base, the United States put pressure on Britain. Britain folded: the Cod Wars ended in 1976 with Britain agreeing to respect an exclusive 200-mile Icelandic fishing zone around its coast.
But by then there was nowhere else for the British fleet to go. As an EEC member, quotas for British territorial waters had been set meanwhile by the Common Fisheries Policy. It’s no surprise, then, that that the peak year for British fishing was around 1 million tons of fish caught, in 1973 — the year Britain joined the EEC.
Thus British fishing sank under the triple weight of European treaties, marine conservation and Cold War geopolitics. Neither the Right nor the Left saw fit to fight for it: too working-class for the 20th-century Tories, and too old-fashioned for the Thatcherites, nor was fishing ever a unionised power-base for the Labour Party. No one noticed as Britain’s once-thriving coastal communities slid into despair, becoming some of the most deprived in the country.
But if Brexit teaches us anything, it’s that ignoring something lots of people care about doesn’t make that thing go away. Today, fishing once again threatens to blow Brexit off course — and Boris may find that even his ‘compromise’ position is not enough to calm the political waters.
The Leave vote was as much about identity as substantive economic matters. And below the surface of Britain’s supposedly modern 21st-century culture is a powerful undertow of maritime memory, that has nothing to do with imperial grandeur — and everything to do with fish. Boris’ deal may yet founder on our yearning for the unquiet sea.
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Subscribe” but the market for wood pellets isn’t immune to the rising energy prices Putin’s war on Ukraine has wrought.”
Actually it is the West’s response to the war which has wrought…You could call it ‘Biden’s energy inflation’ more then Putin’s if you realize it is the Western Sanctions which directly are responsible. The war is one thing you can talk of on right and wrong – but the energy inflation is from the West’s response to it.
Like blaming covid on the children’s destroyed education and the Trillions spent in a global economy destroying way – when it is the ‘Response to Covid’ which is the actual cause.
Are you saying we shouldn’t put sanctions on Russia for its illegal war in the Ukraine? Instead the west should help Russia by continuing to buy oil, gas and wood pellets while at the same time supplying weapons to the Ukrainians?!? Neither moral or just, we either support one side or the other, We are supporting the Ukrainians if you’re not sure.
Supporting both sides when inflated prices are available has been going on since Adam’s time! Very good money in it!
If it wasn’t the norm, backward Middle Eastern and Africal countries would be fighting each other with scimitars and blow pipes instead of sophisticated UK /USA made weapons!
If it wasn’t for America you’d be writing and speaking German now.
We were told in the 1970’s by the UK government propaganda machine that the North Sea natural gas field discovery would be good for the next 100 years for domestic consumers.
What happened to that gas? Blown away, generating electricity by way of gas turbines!!
Yet again the silent majority have been conned and now paying the price for gross stupidity, lack of forward thinking and planning
The monopolistic energy companies are taking us for a ride with impunity. The government have no answers or are showing LEADERSHIP in the face of crises.
Those still with fireplaces will end up burning their furniture, doors, door frames and non plastic window frames this Winter then be fined for creating smoke in smokeless zones. The elderly and infirm will die of either hunger and or exposure.
People will be mugged for a cauliflower and logs. Troops will be on the streets to keep order as civil unrest manifests itself and martial law declared.
The government have had a practice run with Covid regulations.
Internationally the future is grim and history should remind us that such events are a recipe for WW3 to break out, the sabre rattling has already begun. Nobody listened to Churchill’s warnings either!
Britain is run by weedy, lily livered politicians who have only self interest at heart, the days of great Statesmen have long gone.
The MOD can’t stop immigrants in rubber boats so how could they stop the Russians?
The media are hyping up the energy crisis every moment to cause mass hysteria and depression. Better burn the newspapers and switch off the Internet and look outside the windows, if there are any windows left. The holes where windows used to be will see laundry hanging out of those holes, with holes in clothing to match the holes in the roads and eventually holes in the cars as nobody will be able to afford to replace them. It will be a country full of more holes!
Never mind wood pellets, a few pellets of Uranium 235 could supply all the energy we need but the dogooders and Green people won’t have it.
Why on Earth would anybody wish to live in the taxed out of sight UK?
You couldn’t make this up.
The sky is falling !
No it isn’t! If it was the Tories would have sold off the rain cluds to the French and you’d all be paying for your rain! I’m told the so-called CO² capture units are really capturing fresh air as it too is to be sold off, to the Chinese and you mugs are to pay for it by the gallon!
I think you’ll find stopping the Russians will be a lot easier. You see we tend not to use sophisticated weapons systems to destroy immigrants.
As for nuclear power would you b happy to store some of those depleted uranium pellets in your back garden? I would prefer to have solar panels on my roof and a wind turbine at the end of my road.
The only point I can agree on is the ineptitude of the politicians we currently have, they all see to dance to the tune of large multinational companies. How about growing a pair and standing up to all the corruption and tax dodging. Sort this out, put into place a plan to put sola panels on as many buildings as is possible, more wind farms and put hydro turbines on all weirs to produce small scale power locally. The solutions are out their, they just need the drive to put them in place. And stop asking people if they want them. Stop consulting the general public, just build the infrastructure we need to keep the lights on!
And I agree with you except for one point: you draw a distinction between the corrupt and the politicians! To knowingly work hand in glove with (and to benefit hugely from) corrupt wealthy people is IN ITSELF highly corrupt. It’s not stupidity or naivety that causes this: it’s greed: the stuff Thatcher said was good!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/solar-panel-waste-a-disposal-problem/
Solar panels are not environmentally friendly. Wind farms harm wildlife. You’ve been duped by the climate change hysterics.
Many years ago I worked on a big government project to determine the feasibility of disposing of radioactive waste by various methods. It was great fun working offshore and down mines on the government shilling.
None of the methods inspired any confidence however. But with Musk’s rockets getting increasingly cheap and reliable blasting the stuff into space would probably be the best option, with safeguards obviously.
Bravo Aris! Great idea.
(Though we should be fracking too).
Yeah but it ain’t possible to grow broad leaf trees in England due to grey squirrels killing them all when they are about 10 feet tall. Check out BBC Countryfile’s last episode when it managed to fit this revelation in between its usual climate change hysteria.
I still find it ridiculous that wood pellets (Biomass) are considered a ‘renewable’. I also wasn’t aware of the quantity of non native tree species and their detrimental effect on the natural environment. Thanks for the education !
It is renewable, with one important condition. The wood must grow at the same rate it’s being burned at. Stevens croft has been doing it at 44MW for years.
And we can’t grow new broad leaf trees because the grey squirrels chew them to death – all of them!
Wouldn’t it be better to have a mix of energy/fuel sources which I think should include fossil fuels, fracking and nuclear?
We’re suffering from global warming due to using fossil fuels so No. Fracking shouldn’t even be on the table and nuclear comes with its own set of problems.
Correct but sadly, unpopular I see. They’re all off to Lemming Cliff: really lively rhere this time of year I’m told: blissful!
The man made global warming issue has been vastly oversold. Yes, an increase in CO2 in the troposphere has a warming effect. But it is small and diminishing. Even the IPCC only ascribes 50 % of the warming of the past 140 years to man’s emissions. And because it is a logarithmic ( ie the inverse of exponential) relationship of temperature to atmospheric CO2, very little more temperature rise due to this cause can be expected. That is explicitly recognised in the use by the IPCC of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity as a measure of temperature change due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 – that is a logarithmic relationship. So man made global warming is not a great concern to me. However, the exaggerations, distortions, misrepresentations and downright falsehoods promulgated by extremists and the media, are a concern. And the mendacity of our political class on this whole issue is even more of a concern
I believe it’s better to think of native woodlands and the solar spruce plantations as totally different things. The conifer trees are crops they have a 30-40 year rotation but they produce the lumber we use to build with etc, many of the UK pellet producers for private usage (taking drax out of the equation) have pellet mills on the sites of the sawmills, producing pellets from the byproduct of the timber yard. This seems very sensible and efficient to me.
We are doing a lot to preserve native woodland, and are planting more, but in conjunction with the commercial sika woodlands which basically are like a field of wheat standing for much longer, also absorbing CO2 over their lifespan.
As with everything to do with energy and net zero, it’s taking the best elements from each technology and combining everything into the mix.
..agree for the most part: but add the CO² emitted from the burning to the loss of yree sequestration and it’s a definite no-no I fear: but I’m no expert so maybe someone will educate me on the yrue CO² cost?
Ah you’re wrong there about the development of native woodland in England anyway.
Check out the latest episode of Countryfile Andrew. A forestry expert in developing broad leaf forests stated, unequivocally, that he’d lose his job if he proposed funding the planting of new forests of broad leaf trees because it would be a complete waste of money due to grey squirrels comprehensively destroying the new trees!!
The ridiculousness of burning wood as an “environmental initiative” is apparent to anyone with a passing knowledge of energy science.
Fossil fuel is burned to cut the wood (chainsaws, or tree farmers).
Fossil fuel is used to transform the wood into pellets or to cut it down to size.
Fossil fuel is used to transport the wood to the biomass generator.
The biomass is burned to produce electricity as perhaps 25-30% efficiency. The rest is lost as waste heat.
The electricity travels long distances to the end-user at line losses that total 8-15%.
One of the main uses for electricity by the end user is to produce heat.
The only logical use of biomass is burning it as locally as possible directly to make heat. (ie: a woodstove, or perhaps a neighbourhood system).
The use of biomass to make electricity is for show. It’s of even less use than plastic straws.
…or tie in into bundles and insulate your homes with it! Cut out the “middle man”. Hemp is best!
This website is interesting. It shows where our electricity comes from minute by minute.
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
Promoting biomass against fossil fuels only makes sense as part of the Net Zero campaign.
How sure should we be that CO2 is really having the effects that are being claimed for it?
None of the scientists who question the claims ever seem to be given the chance to debate with those who do.
Reminds me of the C19 lockdown hysteria.
No don’t forget fracking, but this is a good idea too, and frankly we’ll need both.
Fracking is adding carbon to the atmosphere from non-renewable fossil resources. Something we should have stopped doing decades ago.
It makes more sense to re-wild conifer plantations than it does to give up arable land that grows our food. But when has doing anything that makes sense rather than money been fashionable.
When they converted Drax from coal to wood there was a lot of discussion about how much wood we would need and it was clear that the UK’s in-house supply is hopelessly inadequate. I wonder if anyone has the figures. It’s surprising how many trees you can plant in a small area. All the same, anyone with a woodburning stove knows how rapidly you get through the stuff and I wondered if it might be the case that you either plant trees and stay warm or else grow food and not get hungry. I don’t know the answer but if anyone does I’d be interested to know.
Drax burns 8 million tonnes of wood pellets per year, most of them kiln dried and imported. We give it hundreds of millions of pounds to do this. The UK’s entire production of wood for all purposes is about 2 million tonnes. We don’t grow wood at anything like the rate Drax uses, so the CO2 emitted is adding to the problem. Drax should close, although I’m willing to accept the idea of burning our plantations and replanting native species, then closing Drax.
Yes, fusion will save us all one day, but it will have to be more fission first, and not just Hinkley and Sizewell.
Kiln dried? how daft is that?
What fuel is burned to dry the pellets? Or to ship the wood? It’s not sounding that renewable to me
Look up hemp..
The idea of burning wood in order to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide is insane. Before it has been burned the actual wood is sequestrating carbon dioxide. When you chop down a tree and burn it that carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, and it takes years of re-growing forests to replace the said wood. You might as well say that burning coal is also making use of a renewable resource, since the carbon dioxide derived from burning coal will be absorbed by new vegetation, the said vegetation will decay and (perhaps) turn into peat and in a few million years the carbon will have turned into coal again.
Or you could build nuclear power plants and live in the 21st Century.
Sure but you’ll need a heavy winter coat while you wait: ‘takes 10 years or so I’m told!
Learn to knit it provides warm clothing from a sustainable source. Get moving. Become more reliant upon leg power, go to bed an hour earlier than you would normally, this not only cuts down on energy consumption for the need to keep warm, just pile the coats on the bed, you will soon be warm, all of the other, non self made, energy, ceases to be required in bed. No tv, no putting the kettle on and no cooking of snacks and less if any lighting. The double whammy of this is that those who rise early (a benefit of early nights), have more natural energy and are apt to get things done.
The need in my view is not to find ways of creating energy until we have learned to maximise our own ability in using what we have ourselves.
Of course I realise the need of energy in the bigger picture but we’ve all become rather needy and reliant upon others to provide what we think we need.
Some years ago I visited the town of Puerto Vallarta on the Mexican coast. The town sits in a valley facing the ocean. One day, as I was out boating I noticed that on a clear day you could see nothing, just a brown layer and a few hilltops, the little town was gone. Asking my friendly guide, who had lived in Los Angeles for a while, if this pollution was the result of the stinking diesel fueled trucks and busses. His answer was perhaps germane to this conversation. He said in part but the pollution is at it’s worst when it gets cool and everyone heats their homes burning up all the woods. In addition, the very same farmers were constantly looking for a solution to the new erosion problem that seems to have come about due to: Climate Change of course.
The moral of the story is that everyone did what they could to stop using fossil fuels and change nature but forgot the real pollution and erosion. Sounds just like the rest of the world.
The good news; the pollution goes on but the Cartels who run the place are looking for a solution in population control.
Actually this author’s solution won’t work because we can’t successfully grow broad leaf trees – as I found out to my amazement in the last episode of Countryfile, in which a forestry expert in broad leaf trees stated, unequivocally, that it’s a waste of money planting broad leaf trees as grey squirrels strip the bark and kill them all.
I never knew this. It’s a fundamental argument for eradicating grey squirrels, but bleeding hearts won’t allow it – so this country will gradually run out of broad leaf trees.
Imagine, no oaks, beech etc in England.
Who needs heating? One only has to look at ” the pipl” in Britain’s streets to see that hoodies, T shirts and tracksuits are worn by 90 something percent of the populus 365 days a year? To me, turning on a radiator is a serious technical challenge, but putting on flannel shirts, tweed coats, Goretex, woollen jerseys polo necks, fleeces, hats and caps plus boots or shoes and appropriate socks is not?
Clearly none of the heat moaners have ever stayed in Norfolk for a couple of days shooting, or in Leicestershire for a couple of days Hunting and attempted to run a warm bath, or find heat?
can one burn dried out eco zealot sandaloids? .. politicians draylon, terylene, bri nylon, polyester acetate clothing would be great kindling to try them too?
Idiotic. We should be planting trees, not burning them. Any reduction in global warming from biomass is most probably trivial or even negative. We might well need reduced carbon emissions, but we don’t need “renewables” – there’s no shortage of energy requiring that unsustainable sources be cut off early.
Four steres purchased here in France ready for the winter time. Just make sure you buy a chain saw!
Great article which makes total sense apart from the final sentence
Neither does it make any sense to transport shale gas halfway round the world.
Sounds like a plan! But what about the emission of CO² and loss of CO² sequestration (replacement saplings can only absorb a tiny fractionof the felled mature tree surely?)
Surely that must put the kibosh on all this: or am I missing something?
I can actually come up with some figures. Not massively relevant to Drax, but at least something to start with. I use about 5 m2 for heating a house for a single day. Obviously heating only, and only for ‘heating required’ days. Non-native coppicing, and all the points about non-native insects etc. are accepted.
5 square meters of wood to heat 1 house for 1 day ?
What does that even mean ?
All I can add is that a stere is 1 cubic meter, which is a French measurement and 4 steres should last just heating the house all winter. Our water is still heated by oil.
4cubes for us per winter -but that is NZ, and our house is small – 100m2 i would think that for a bigger house in a UK winter you are looking at 8m2 minimum-which is a big pile of wood. Our heat pump costs the same to run and can be adjusted more easily for max economy…we often use both to complement each other.
Am also from NZ and use a wood burner. We have heat pumps, which my wife uses in short bursts, but I prefer the welcoming flicker and crackle from the wood burner, and its radiant heat. Nice to sit or stand near it and feel the radiant energy on your body. However, there is a lot of work with wood. Although I have essentially endless amounts of wood within 50m of the house, there is the cutting, gathering, stacking, lugging in to the house, cleaning out the ashes etc, to consider. Wood is only a realistic option For the fortunate few.
I don’t understand your figures. Are you saying you use 5m squared of woodland a day? That’s a hell of a lot. Do you mean cubed? That’s a hell of a lot of wood too. I have a wood burning stove and don’t use anything like that amount. ♂️
You make it sound like British wildlife is on the edge of a precipice… It isn’t.. In fact most is doing quite well… Once you have cut and burnt all the softwood…probably lasting 20 years…. What is going to fuel the nation for the next 100 years… Whilst the native hardwoods mature… At this point the Americans will have found another market for their pellets…. So our lights will go out… And you will have to trade your electric car in for a horse…. We will be going back to something like the middle ages….
In that 20 years how many dams, nuclear plants and fracking sites could be built, largely disappearing the UKs need for wood pellets?
In the next 20 years probably no dams… And only the nuclear power stations that are already due to come on line… Nobody wants their valley flooding… The cost of decommissioning the old nuclear power plants is just as big as building new ones…
I said could be built, with the right political foresight then the UK could put itself in a situation where it wasn’t reliant on foreign pellets by the time the conifers had been burned.
But you’re right I have no faith that it would actually happen
As many as could be built in the last 20 years, but of course none were built. Greens hate dams more than they hate gas.
A very germane point,it’s increasingly looking as if Green Party ideology is based around hating anything & everything that has benefitted mankind in the past two centuries.There is a vacancy for a Pol Pot in Green Party HQ !
When we moved into our 12 acre smallholding 25 years ago we planted a half acre coppice of biomass willow. It’s kept our winter heating going on it’s own during that time. We use gas for hot water and cooking. It’s divided into sections and we cut sections in sequence every few years which then regrows. It’s also good for wildlife. The small birds love it especially Willow Warblers and its an early source of nectar and pollen for pollinating insects. We let the undergrowth do what it wants which is a pain when you come to cut it but the benefit is that there’s masses of brambles, Rosebay Willowherb and other stuff which is great for birds and insects.
We realise that we are lucky and privileged to be able to do it but it shows that there is an alternative to slow growing hardwoods and fast growing conifers.
“Most doing quite well”? David Attenborough says 50% have gone extinct. Now I don’t know who to nelieve! Lol..