Mukhrino still relies on traditional source of energy, which is stored for us for decades by plants in wood, for heating the houses and sauna and fire-cooking in summer. Only old dead or dying trees in the station vicinity are logged, mostly aspen and birch with minor part of conifers. The firewood preparation is quite laborious work, starting from falling and chainsawing the trees in autumn to transporting the stumps and chopping them near the house in winter. It is commonly managed by our watchman and logistics manager with help of other workers and volunteers. I am not sure about the numbers but about 50 cubic meters of firewood is prepared every year for the station’s needs.

That is the numbers. There is the spirit and the poetry too, if you like, that remind to us about traditional living and closeness to nature. That is what we usually offer to volunteers inviting them to firewood works in Mukhrino 🙂.

For us, there is also some resource management practice and need, as we want to spend our resources of wood sustainably in years to come. Although presently we rely mostly on our intuition rather then land-planning and partitioning of forest functions around the stations. Below some pictures of our routine firewood preparation venues.