Wood burning stoves, agas and free wood.

Living in the countryside is a move that I made around three years ago and have never looked back. I love, love, love it! I love looking out at my back garden in the morning and there being pheasants and rabbits eating their breakfast. I love that we have a wood shed at the bottom of the garden for all the wood that we collect and I love that we can step out of our front door and go for long country walks.

We had our wood burning stove fitted shortly after we moved in to this house as a reaction to a £300 gas bill that we received the first month we were here. We knew that coming from a three bedroom new build to a four bedroom stone built cottage where our front room is as big as the whole of the downstairs of the last house, was going to be a tad different but nothing had prepared us for this.

So, we did everything we could to make our house energy efficient. We ordered cavity wall insulation, we had the boiler serviced and decided that a wood burning stove would not only look nice but would also add to our efficiency drive. When I say we I mean this in the loosest sense. Darling boyf (aka chief light switcher off- er) did all the research, the telephone calls, the measuring etc. I went along, chose the stove and now I'm an expert at laying out on the settee in front of said stove with a large glass of wine in hand.
I'm also very good at telling darling boyf where there are any trees that have fallen that are prime for chopping up and putting on our fire. Carbon neutral and free! I drive him to said tree he gets his chain saw out of the boot and chops as much as he can fit in the car. We're not actually sure whether or not this is legal. The other week there was some wood on the roadside that had fallen from a farmer's field. Darling boyf picked up a couple of logs and chucked them in the boot and as he went for last log some hippy looking bloke with long hair and green wellies shouted "oi!". Darling boyf panicked and threw the last log back on to the grass verge, dived into the car and drove off at quick speed. It was all very exciting. I felt like Bonnie & Clyde. If Clyde had a receding hairline, had driven a VW Bora and was an expert at moaning and grumbling about the price of bread, fuel and of course girlfriends.

Had we thought about it properly we could have acted like human beings and approached the hippy welly wearer and asked him where we stood on the whole wood acquiring. But that would have been far less exciting! Guilt ridden darling boyf was thinking about returning to the scene at the dead of night and putting the wood back. I said an emphatic No!