this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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This is more European thing. At least it’s same or similar in Poland and Scandinavia. In Poland you can own a forest but you’re not allowed to fence it nor deny entry and mushroom picking. Also in Poland it’s not even that easy to cut a tree. Even in your own backyard. Unless it’s a fruit tree.
Yea, exactly the same in Estonia, including that it's hard to cut down a tree. Found that out after yoinking a Yule tree from my own forest every year until a forestry inspector came knocking. Thankfully they didn't know I had been doing that for like 30 years and let me off with a warning.
So... you'd have to fill out some paperwork beforehand or whats the procedure? I mean, people need to get firewood and, as you said, christmas trees somehow, right?
Just some paperwork I can just submit online for small trees yea. You need to be a licenced woodcutter for large trees though.
Pretty much everyone gets their firewood from companies that sell it though. Like you buy a year or two's worth during summer and stack it somewhere accessible. Never heard anyone making their own if firewood is their main source of heat.
That's interesting. Around here, people who own a bit (or a lot) of forest often have central heating not powered by gas but by a large wood stove that will take half a metre pieces, gets filled up, burns that and fills water buffers with the heat worth half a week up to a week. My neighbour e.g. owns a harvester, a tractor and all the other right tools for forest work because he has a few hectares and he'll of course use his own wood for his house as a by-product. I have a little wood stove that I light for fun, cozy evenings and emergencies and I make my firewood myself as well, on a much smaller scale than him. When the weather is nice I'll put my log splitter, my large saw, chainsaw and everything else you need on my trailer and head into my bit of forest and split up some storm damaged trees or some trees I've felled before bird protection time. I need a few certifications so the insurance pays if I saw my foot off, but everybody around here has those, so yeah, it's just a pasttime. How are you allowed to make you of your forest then, or, say, thin out the growth or something like that that's just good maintenance?
If you want to do maintenance that's allowed but if you are cutting down a tree for other purposes you need permission (And be a certified logger for large trees). Our main forestry service is government owned so firewood is pretty cheap, cheaper than owning the equipment to make your own definitely. If you wanna use your forest you can rent it out for example to some logging firm if your goal is to make money. I'm just happy to chill in my forest though.
In scandinavia its even more open than in Germany, as you are allowed to camp anywhere in nature as long as you keep 200m or so distance from any house (or something like that, if you go there, check it beforehand)