29th March 2025
8am to 4pm (breakfast available from 7am)
Our second year of the Wood Chop Challenge and our 10th year as a charitable trust!
The countdown is on to our Wood Chop Challenge! This is the first event in our Trust’s 10th Anniversary programme of events. Help us bring humans and wildlife together in this magical space for another ten years and beyond.
A team of volunteers and staff will undertake a sponsored 8-hour Wood Chop Challenge to produce firewood and raise money for the charity Hazel Hill Trust. No gym needed, as we chop, stack and move as much firewood as we can in one day.
Want to get involved on the day? Schedule a chat with us
Why a Wood Chop Challenge?
As a small charity, we have to think hard about every penny we spend. Sometimes, like everybody, we make do with old equipment, and of course, we recycle as much as possible.
We want to welcome many diverse groups to the wood, and we need plenty of firewood to keep those people warm in our off-grid buildings.
However, to be a regenerative, self-supporting woodland site, we need tools! Working with our valued volunteers to look after the woodland is incredibly important to us, and we want to be able to do it for many years to come.
That’s where you and all our amazing supporters come in
- A £5 donation will buy gloves for our volunteers, the most basic PPE we need to keep our staff and volunteers safe and dry
- £15 will buy us a traditional splitting wedge to process dry wood
- £60 will buy a log-splitting axe
- A £400 donation will buy us a new chainsaw
- A £500 donation will buy us a ‘brash cart’ to minimise heavy lifting and make it so much easier to move firewood around the wood.
Last year, a kind volunteer donation of some heavy-duty log tongs was an absolute game changer; we are so, so grateful.
Sustainable, regenerative, collaborative
Being off-grid and having lots of trees means our best and most sustainable way of keeping guests warm and comfortable is using wood-burning stoves and biomass boilers. Actually, it’s beyond sustainable – it’s regenerative.
Following a cycle of tree thinning and rotational clearing creates a range of habitats that supports maximum species diversity and helps the remaining trees to grow healthily with more light and space. We’ll soon be thinning part of the non-native conifer to make way for wildflowers – we hope you’ll follow our progress and come and visit!
Funding nature (re)connection and the bigger picture
Our volunteer community works to support the woodland and wildlife of Hazel Hill whenever they are here and can speak to the many benefits. This is our tenth year of holding the woodland in Trust, and while a portion of our income comes from all the amazing groups and individuals that book events here, we aim to reach audiences that may not be able to pay and those most in need of recharging in our magical woodland space. To do that, we need to raise funds.
Our aim at Hazel Hill is to work with the woodland and be good custodians while making it a welcoming space for all humans and other creatures; our hope is to do that for many years to come!