- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Here’s a little something for you to ponder. I mentioned last week that I’ve been harvesting an abundant crop of bullace from hedges on a bit of ground I own off the hill –from which I’ve been making dried fruit sweeties. And here’s the thing, I’ve started looking, and so far only found these trees – like a blackthorn, only without the nasty finger poisoning thorns- either side of a couple of gateways along a hedgerow that’s been left to grow away. It looks very much like some long ago wise fella put them there, so as to know exactly where to find them, and be able to leave them uncut when he was steeping his hedges. I recall my brother-in-law was fencing for a retired couple backalong, and the old girl -long gone now- was very careful to tell him where the bullace was so he wouldn’t cut it back. Curiouser and curiouser said Alice.
The boy and I are hoping we can germinate a load of the saved stones from the crop, and spread a little of the bounty further afield. This reminds me of news that the gov – well, if the current lot are returned, which is an unknown- are going to bung a few million into some new tree planting scheme, and it’s going to save the world. In fact, everywhere I turn, I hear people saying how we’re going to plant lots of trees, and avert climate disaster.
This hacks me off just a little. Firstly, the scheme being talked about doesn’t seem to reward those of us with young plantations, which are already discriminated against in current policy. I’d have been better off not planting them. Anyway, I’ve twice failed to get money promised by the Forestry Commission,-in one instance, quite large sums were involved. So I’m disinclined to want to do business with them now. I should add that, although I’ve been running a specialist homegrown sawmill for decades, never cutting imported oak, and repeatedly asked, they never ever sell me round timber. Without fail, if I inquire I’m directed to a poorly advertised national auction, of inconveniently lotted parcels, held 130 miles away. Locally, they’re mostly concerned with providing mountain bike trails and the like, which is hardly what they were established to do.
Then, there’s the premise itself. The rationale is that trees will absorb carbon, so negating our fossil fuel burning sins. This is the biggest lot of nonsense you ever heard. It is true that they’ll absorb carbon as they grow, but then, just a few short decades down the line, they’ll be rotting away, releasing the carbon again. For sure, some will be converted into other forms of carbon by various little wiggly things, and some of them will be converted into bird poop by woodpeckers and the like. It’ll go round a few times……but long established forest land manifestly does not continually accrue infinite amounts of carbon. It’s a myth. Go and look for yourself…you won’t need a degree in biology or chemistry.
Meanwhile, every time we burn some petrol in the car, or natural gas at the powerstation. Every time we use a machine that is made of iron smelted in a coal fired blast furnace….we’re releasing more carbon dioxide– quite astonishingly large amounts of it- from carbon formerly stored safe underground for hundreds of millions of years. This is a figure I can’t help repeating, slowly for emphasis. Hundreds of millions of years. And now it’ll float about in the atmosphere, warming the climate, for a very long while.
It may also have escaped your notice that land, especially in the little old UK, is a finite resource. We already use it for a variety of primary uses, mostly for growing food. Since we’re not about to stop eating, you can extrapolate that by planting trees here, we’ll simply be exporting our food production to countries still busily engaged in cutting down their own forests.
It is not a ‘win win’…. And it makes me fizz that building a bigger railway, or concreting another county is OK, but I should plant yet more trees or I’m a bad man. No, the villain of the piece is that we all keep burning more oil. Everything else is chaff in the breeze.
Anyway, Christmas must be approaching. Our website is fielding a steady stream of seasonal enquiries for hide rugs, ribs of beef, and for copies of my last book. And the sawmill is busy with enterprising fellas seeking planks to make chopping boards and the like for gifts. In about a fortnight, I’ll have to try and remember where I’ve got to dig for some berried holly!
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Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine
The boy and I are hoping we can germinate a load of the saved stones from the crop, and spread a little of the bounty further afield. This reminds me of news that the gov – well, if the current lot are returned, which is an unknown- are going to bung a few million into some new tree planting scheme, and it’s going to save the world. In fact, everywhere I turn, I hear people saying how we’re going to plant lots of trees, and avert climate disaster.
This hacks me off just a little. Firstly, the scheme being talked about doesn’t seem to reward those of us with young plantations, which are already discriminated against in current policy. I’d have been better off not planting them. Anyway, I’ve twice failed to get money promised by the Forestry Commission,-in one instance, quite large sums were involved. So I’m disinclined to want to do business with them now. I should add that, although I’ve been running a specialist homegrown sawmill for decades, never cutting imported oak, and repeatedly asked, they never ever sell me round timber. Without fail, if I inquire I’m directed to a poorly advertised national auction, of inconveniently lotted parcels, held 130 miles away. Locally, they’re mostly concerned with providing mountain bike trails and the like, which is hardly what they were established to do.
Then, there’s the premise itself. The rationale is that trees will absorb carbon, so negating our fossil fuel burning sins. This is the biggest lot of nonsense you ever heard. It is true that they’ll absorb carbon as they grow, but then, just a few short decades down the line, they’ll be rotting away, releasing the carbon again. For sure, some will be converted into other forms of carbon by various little wiggly things, and some of them will be converted into bird poop by woodpeckers and the like. It’ll go round a few times……but long established forest land manifestly does not continually accrue infinite amounts of carbon. It’s a myth. Go and look for yourself…you won’t need a degree in biology or chemistry.
Meanwhile, every time we burn some petrol in the car, or natural gas at the powerstation. Every time we use a machine that is made of iron smelted in a coal fired blast furnace….we’re releasing more carbon dioxide– quite astonishingly large amounts of it- from carbon formerly stored safe underground for hundreds of millions of years. This is a figure I can’t help repeating, slowly for emphasis. Hundreds of millions of years. And now it’ll float about in the atmosphere, warming the climate, for a very long while.
It may also have escaped your notice that land, especially in the little old UK, is a finite resource. We already use it for a variety of primary uses, mostly for growing food. Since we’re not about to stop eating, you can extrapolate that by planting trees here, we’ll simply be exporting our food production to countries still busily engaged in cutting down their own forests.
It is not a ‘win win’…. And it makes me fizz that building a bigger railway, or concreting another county is OK, but I should plant yet more trees or I’m a bad man. No, the villain of the piece is that we all keep burning more oil. Everything else is chaff in the breeze.
Anyway, Christmas must be approaching. Our website is fielding a steady stream of seasonal enquiries for hide rugs, ribs of beef, and for copies of my last book. And the sawmill is busy with enterprising fellas seeking planks to make chopping boards and the like for gifts. In about a fortnight, I’ll have to try and remember where I’ve got to dig for some berried holly!
-------------------------
Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine
