Harvesting woodfuel from your farm

Posted on 5th June 2015

by organicresearchcentre

Harvesting woodfuel from your farm workshop at Wakelyns Agroforestry 16 April 2015

This one day workshop held at Wakelyns Agroforestry aimed to explore and discuss the feasibility of harvesting woodfuel from existing linear landscape features such as hedgerows and from new agroforestry systems.

The day featured contributions from Rob Wolton (Devon Hedge Group) who set out the rationale and motives for managing hedges for woodfuel along with economic case studies from Devon and France; Sid Cooper (Forestry Commission) who spoke on the legalities around coppicing hedgerows in the UK; and Kathleen Bervoets (Agrobeheercentrum eco2, Belgium) who gave a Belgian perspective on how hedges can be managed for woodfuel. Lastly, the preliminary results from the hedge harvesting machinery trials conducted by The Organic Research Centre were presented by Meg Chambers (ORC) and Mary Crossland (ORC), followed by a farm walk of the Agroforestry systems at Wakelyns led by Prof. Martin Wolfe.

The days presentations and hand-outs can be downloaded below:

• The ways, practicalities and costs of managing hedges for wood fuel – experience and research from the south-west by Rob Wolton
• Hedgerow harvesting in Flanders by Kathleen Bervoets.
• Experiences from ORC’s Machinery Trials by Mary Crossland and Meg Chambers.
• The legalities of hedgerow coppicing by Sid Cooper.
• Farm walk handout (Mary Crossland, Meg Chambers).
• See photos of the day here

This workshop was organised as part of the EU funded project TWECOM ‘Towards Eco-Energetic Communities’. The aim of this project is to demonstrate that local short chain systems using biomass from landscape elements for local energy or heat production is economically feasible whilst taking into account any ecological, social and cultural constraints.