Over the last few months it’s not the house renovation, or the size of the garden that as had me waking me up in cold sweats, it’s been the ever growing wood pile.

At the beginning of our journey to a happier life, we boldly said to our builders, ‘make sure you keep every piece of wood you pull out from the house or don’t use’. As the wood pile grew lists formed in our heads of what we might use it for; kitchen cabinets, shelves, raised beds, rebuilding the sheds, log store, a tree house and even an outdoor hot tub. Much to our surprise within two weeks the whole of the upper garden had turned into a beastly mountain of old, knackered, gnarly, nail infested wood.

Panicked by the wood pile, two months in and still growing, we realised we urgently needed some help to kick start us into managing this beast. Our plan was to sort the wood into piles for building, logging and for burning and and with the trusted help of one of our builders, Josh, we embarked on our first day of tackling the wood beast.

The only way to really make any progress was by using a chain saw, but even that proved tough, the nasty gnarly old wood, within a few hours blunted the first chain and despite the three of us working hard the wood beast still looked the same size.

Like an ompa lumpa Paul scurried wheel barrow after wheel barrow down to the wood shed as I pulled out plank after plank for keeping whilst Josh continued to chainsaw planks into logs. By lunchtime the pile did start to look like a small dent had been put into it but alarmingly we realised, like everything else at The Secret Acre, this was going to take a lot longer to clear than expected.

Feeling a little disillusioned I ambled down to the wood shed expecting to find it already full but was shocked by the beautifully constructed wood store lovingly created by Paul. I thought we would just shove it in and pull out bits as and when needed, but instead every piece had been categorised and positioned with care, as if each item had been numbered with its own special slot just for that piece of wood. Would I have been that organised, sadly no but thanks to Paul’s methodical nature rather than taking up three sheds, our wood beast will hopefully fit into one shed and will keep the woodburner, along with the kindling from the restorative pruning, stocked for at least three years.