Sunday 31 December 2017

Review: Thirty Years in Wilderness Wood

Thirty Years in Wilderness Wood Thirty Years in Wilderness Wood by Chris Yarrow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Lots of people have dreams about where they want to live, their perfect career but very rarely do these get realised or combined. Chris and Anne Yarrow are one of the few that have been able to do this when they purchased Wilderness Wood in Sussex. This 63-acre plot of woodland was to become a home, a source of income and a way of life.

This unassuming wood was to become their home after they managed to secure planning permission to build there, and the scrappy chestnut coppice that was there evolved to become an award-winning example of how to manage a small woodland. They built a barn which became a multiuse facility for schools and craft days, a tea room was constructed for that needed necessary refreshment after walking their dogs an in time became an integral part of the village.

There are some amusing anecdotes in the book, but Yarrow has written a practical and pragmatic guide to running a woodland in modern day Britain, on the trees to grow for the best income, where to use outside resource and where you need to add value to the end product to maximise income. There are chapters on the best way to grow Christmas trees, the 1987 storm, managing a woodland for income and wildlife and seeking the best way to get a work-life balance. If you have ever contemplated the possibilities that owning a woodland could offer this is a book full of advice on what to do, and more importantly what not to do.

View all my reviews

No comments:

Post a Comment