“Winter, 1978. I am seven and I’m standing in a wood. Before me is a man with a beard and a blackened face. Dust has settled around his eyes like eyeliner, giving him the look of a silent film villain. This man isn’t of our time – he is a throwback, a relic, a man versed in a strange alchemy. This is the charcoal burner.”
Charcoal
My charcoal is sold in 3kg bags, enough for three average-sized family barbecues. Inside each bag you will find charcoal made from a mixture of species, most typically: oak, ash, hazel, beech, maple and thorn. This blend heats fast and is ready to cook on almost immediately. It also lights freely – a match and a few twists of newspaper are all you need.
About Ben
My name is Ben Short. I am a charcoal burner and woodsman, working in the Dorset countryside. This was not always the case. Eight years ago I was an advertising writer plying my trade in London. But the work left me unsatisfied and I no longer wanted to continue in that business.
With that chapter closing, my only wish was to get back to the country. This desire was accompanied by a lurking sense of inadequacy – that while I’d made good in my chosen career, back in the real world, where practical ability mattered, I was useless.
Hedges
There is a joy to hedge laying and anyone who does it, or watches it being done, is rarely immune – it’s not difficult to see why. A laid hedge, whether it be the impressive staked and bound ‘bullock hedge’ of the Midlands, or the more modest banked and ditched variety of the West Country, is a rural sculpture, a piece of land art.
Firewood
Unlike other firewood merchants I do not buy my wood in: all of it is garnered from local jobs I’ve done. Some material may come from thinning programmes, other material from trees felled or pollarded during hedge work.
I only deal in seasoned, hardwood logs. This wood I store in cords at my yard, until the time comes when the blanks are split and barn-stored for several months to complete the drying process. This winter (2018-19) I will have three year old beech available, as well as ash, oak and some alder. I deliver free of charge (within 10 miles of Powerstock) using a hi-capacity pick up. It has a load bed of 1.6 cubic metres. This equates to approx 450 logs when full.
Copse Work
The original meaning of ‘copse work’ was the making of coppice products within the wood – stuff like sheep hurdles, cleft ash gates, clogs and chair legs. I’ve appropriated the term for use in a wider sense – to describe the practice of woodland husbandry, the nurturing and harvesting of a particular wood.
Writing
The following extracts are samples of my writing.
They are taken from several sources – published editorial, notebook jottings and from a manuscript for a book I’m writing.
I’ve previously contributed to The Countryman and have also been published online by nature writing specialist, Little Toller Books.
I am available for editorial commissions – when not dodging smoke.
Wicken Fen
Despite a childhood that had conditioned me in all seasons to the outdoors, I had in the last eighteen years become an urban animal. The freewheeling of my childhood - wandering rutted drove roads or climbing straw bale towers on stubble fields - was ancient history....
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Wagon Living
The idea of living in a wagon appealed strongly to me. And if I'm honest, it was the romantic instinct which was the prime driver. For people of a certain sensibility, it is easy to be drawn to such a life: the tug of leaving the mainstream, the apparent simplicity,...
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Among Trees
To live in a wood is to shack up against truth. It is stark in its reality; life and death parade before you at every turn. Stand quietly and cast your eyes across the woodland floor. See the young ash seedlings trembling with vulnerability? They have no parent to...
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