Reclaiming Forgotten Elm Trees in the United Kingdom

Three years ago, I was reading “Barn Club – A Tale of Forgotten Elm Trees, Traditional Craft and Community Spirit” by Robert Somerville, as some sort of preparation for a new chapter in my career where I would focus on circular economy in the timber construction in Norway and beyond.

Looking back it is one of the better books I read about the topic. Some paragraphs could be in a pamphlet for local social circular economy:

“Through the transaction of buying a finished product that was made far away, we have very real impacts on wildlife and habitats, all of which we are unable to see. (…) But now I think we are each compelled to think more deeply about what we do and how we obtain material resources. This is a practical necessity, but also an opportunity to reach deeper and to redefine our relationship with materials and the natural world. In this respect, using local resources is good, because you can immediately see whether your actions are unsustainably destructive.”

“A craft that is rooted in its materials inevitably places you within the natural world rather than being simply an observer of nature.”

About the complex value chains which make it invisible for us from where materials are coming from:
“As recently as ten years ago, it was possible to buy locally grown timber, sawn in the local mill. So, something fundamental has changed in as little as one generation. We have transitioned from local mills knowing where to source, for example, bean oak from the surrounding landscape, to a system that cannot necessarily identify country of origin”

Local sourcing

I know some people do not like timber construction, because trees are harvested. The chapter about selecting trees (from their region, not letting it come over from Siberia or so) for the barn demonstrated how much they care for the trees and for the local community. They really spent a whole day with the (dead) trees which were going to be filled, using their senses (it felt like a description of DIY forest bathing), connecting with the trees and the forest, reflecting on the need to have the construction, to be resourceful and not waste any material of these trees.

To be continued with a blog about my own experiences in Norway, with reclaimed barn timber (spruce) and local virgin pine trees and a reflection how this contributes to a more social circular economy.