Germany

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?