Happiness

When Charles M. Schultz popularised the idea that happiness is a warm puppy, and John Lennon supplanted it with the parodic notion that Happiness is a Warm Gun, they were both wide of the mark. What the Peanuts cartoon strip and The Beatles' White Album shied away from is the universal truth that, in autumn, happiness is a full log store.

I have been filling my own wood store throughout the summer, just in case that dubious coldest-winter-ever story one mid-market tabloid newspaper has been running annually for the past four years, finally comes true. I have mostly stocked up with sweet chestnut, which spits a bit but that doesn't matter in a wood burning stove, and beech from a local sustainably managed woodland. Like ash and hawthorn, beech is one of the best firewoods: slow-burning with a steady flame and gives out a good amount of heat.

I had hoped to get some apple but the wood that has been seasoning for a year at the fruit farm where I rent my allotment has still not been cut up for sale; with the apple picking now in full flow, I am not sure the farmer will get around to it just yet. Although he mixes his loads with some alder - a poor wood that burns too quickly - it is a small price to pay for the fragrance of smouldering applewood throughout the house.

As our wood burner has a back boiler that heats our water and radiators, we burn a lot of wood during the winter. I did at one time try to reduce our wood consumption by buying a contraption that makes briquettes from old newspapers; but the process was such a faff it made more sense to simply recycle the newspapers. And, of course, burning wood does not release any more carbon dioxide than if it were to biodegrade naturally on a forest floor; this makes it a carbon-neutral fuel, provided it is obtained from a sustainable source.

Hedge Fund

When you live on a hill – and a hill that has a windmill, to boot – common sense tells you it is going to be windy; and it is. Every October, when the change of season starts to make the air currents even stronger, stuff starts getting blown about: allotment sheds, greenhouse windows, television aerials - anything that sticks its head above the parapet. But instead of any forward-planning to make these features windproof, we instead have a retrospective emergency fund to cover whatever disasters winter can throw at us and, after the St. Jude’s day storm, we had to raid the shoebox under the bed yet again.

When an unstoppable force - such as the wind - meets an immovable object - such as a solid fence - one thing happens: the immovable object becomes movable. With a whole line of fencing down, we would usually have got the panels replaced but, realising that we have been repairing this ugly edifice every year for eight years, this time we opted for a more sustainable solution. The penny finally dropped, and the emergency fund became a hedge fund.

We could have taken the easy option and planted the dense and rapid growing cupressus x leylandii, but with 60 million of these conifers - one for every person in Britain - there are already too many dense, lifeless shrubs blighting the lives of people up and down the country. I once walked along the Tanat Valley to Lake Vyrnwy in mid-Wales, and the route took me past a Forestry Commission plantation of leylandii. It was eerily still and quiet, something I mistook for a calm serenity until I realised that it actually repelled wildlife - I could not hear the cry of a single bird.

Instead, we went for a mixed native hedge. Taking advice from English Woodlands, at the Burrow Nursery in Cross in Hand, we planted a mix of traditional deciduous trees such as hawthorn, hazel, hornbeam and beech, and included some laurel for year-round greenery. Planting was hard work but, with reasonably mature plants rather than bareroot stock, there should be a hedge that is established – and immovable - within two years; and it will be attractive to humans, birds, insects and small mammals alike.