The wood we mostly use is ash, a wood which is really quite underestimated these days, where in the past it was known for his qualities. I guess as Ikea took over making our furniture and we got our tool handles made out of Chinese or American woods, we forgot that ash used to do all of these. The long grain, coupled with its hardness and straightness makes ash the best of the local woods especially for steaming........think long bows!

It grows abundantly in places and the funny thing is almost no one seems to want it. "People want Oak" that is what the saw mill will tell you, "but the ash just sits there".

Where possible we like to work with the phases and signs of the moon as trees are living organisms but also because we see that all activities really are governed by the moon.There are better times to cut wood, better times for coppicing, good times for steaming etc etc.

Also where we can we would like to choose the trees ourselves because it allows us to feel them out but the nature of those things is that the best logs are at the saw mill yard. We are working on acquiring the equipment to get the logs out of the forest ourselves.

 The other option is of course to coppice,. In some places Ash will grow so tightly together, especially where it was cut already as mature trees, that every tree will send out 3-4 shoots, making the ideal coppice ground, as really even if they were wanted (remember that all trees have just been cut) only one of these 3-4 can make it, and often they are to close to the next lot so ....

The coppiced ash yurts have a much more relaxed traditional look, it has to be done right, there is a tendency we have found not to go as far, not to peel the poles and sand them, not to bend them as much, and of course to settle down for crooked lengths and widths, if this is the case it is better in my opinion to go for sawn.

Sawn ash is shaped and so gives a wider range of possibilities, where you can shape a coppiced pole to anything, you would not put it through a router or spindle moulder, so the amount of work involved means that they are mostly left their natural shape, where the sawn Ash gets moulded every which way, It is routed or spindle moulded as you can not put a draw knife to it, because the grain is not always as straight, meaning that one ends up making a mess, and asking for the whole thing to be done at high speed by a machine.

So these are the two main approaches, we use them both, we love being outside peeling poles or in the forest coppicing, and we also love being in the workshop, milling, sawing wood.