over-aged
That much of the protective forest area stands in the terminal or decay phase.
Farming & sustainability
Wood from our own forest – more than fireplace romance
The log you put on in the evening is two years old, usually comes from a tree that had to go anyway, and is only a good thing if three things are right.
01 · The scale
Austria is half forest – and hardly anyone owns it big
4.02 million hectares, around 48 percent of the national territory. What matters for this section: 82 percent of it is private forest, and small forests under 200 hectares account for over 98 percent of all forest owners and around half of the forest area. The average forest parcel is about nine hectares; around 59,000 owners have less than five.
That means: the forest behind the hut usually belongs to the farm the hut hangs on. For mountain farms it is often the only part of the business from which money or warmth can be drawn at short notice when things get tight.
And here is a figure that has changed. For years it was written everywhere that only about two thirds of the annual growth in Austria is used. That is outdated. According to the forest inventory 2018 to 2023, around 97 percent of the growth is harvested – and the growth itself is falling due to climate, from 29.2 to 28.2 million solid cubic metres of standing stock. So the buffer is thinner than the old line suggests. Anyone still arguing with the two thirds today gets corrected by every forester.
02 · The protective forest
Doing nothing is no mercy in the mountain forest
Around 1.6 million hectares of Austrian forest have a protective function – against avalanches, rockfall, mudslides, erosion. The Forest Act distinguishes site-protection forest, which holds its own soil, from object-protection forest, which protects people, houses and roads.
The point you don't see from below: a protective forest doesn't protect because it stands there, but because it has the right structure – mixed, multi-layered, with a regenerating tree generation underneath. That is exactly what is lacking. According to the forest inventory, a third of the protective forest areas are in the terminal or decay phase; around 300,000 hectares are considered urgently in need of care and regeneration. An over-aged, single-layered stand collapses across whole areas after a storm or a beetle year – and is then no protection for decades.
browsed
That many of the regenerating trees in the protective forest are affected by game.
damaged timber
That was the share of the total harvest in 2024 – storm and bark beetle.
Regeneration is the real bottleneck. Where browsing is that high, the fir hardly gets established in some mountain regions – of all trees the species that roots deep and would cope better with the warmer climate. That is why care in the protective forest is not a use wrested from the forest. It is the precondition for it still being there in thirty years.
The honest addition: For many owners this doesn't pay off economically. Poor access, slow growth at high altitudes, stagnating timber prices. That is why there is public funding – and why every additional source of income at the farm, including letting, is indirectly protective forest financing.
03 · The drying
What is prescribed is not the storage time, but the residual moisture
“One to two years” is a usable rule of thumb, but it is not what the law says. The state regulations require, for split logs, natural, untreated and air-dry wood with a water content of at most 20 percent. How long it lies until then doesn’t matter – as long as it gets there.
And that happens faster than the rule of thumb suggests. A study presented at the Chamber of Agriculture reaches under 20 percent within 28 weeks, i.e. a good half year, instead of the traditional one and a half to two years. The conditions for it are simple and still often not met: split by the end of February, store sunny and well ventilated, and outside the forest, fifteen to thirty centimetres off the ground, around twenty centimetres of air between the stacks. Bundle or big bag makes no difference.
Spruce dries faster than beech because of its looser fibre structure. And a subtlety that separates practitioners from laypeople: what is meant is the water content, relative to the total mass – not the wood moisture, which refers to the dry mass. 20 percent water content corresponds to around 25 percent wood moisture.
04 · Lighting the fire
Operation matters almost as much as the technology
Here it gets uncomfortable, which is why it is written here. Small biomass furnaces cause around 4,766 tonnes of particulate matter a year in Austria – about 19 percent of total particulate emissions. The lion's share comes from old, hand-fed systems: multi-fuel burners and natural-draught boilers account for most of it, modern automatically fed boilers for around 2.6 percent.
The second lever is operation, and it is free. Lighting and refuelling correctly cuts emissions by more than half. Wrong air supply, conversely, drives them up to six and a half times normal operation.
The single most important move is lighting from the top. The firelighter doesn't go under the wood, but on top. Then the stack burns from top to bottom, and the gases escaping from the wood beneath have to pass through the hot flame – they burn instead of drifting up the chimney as smoke and soot.
Wood that is too damp is doubly bad: lower combustion chamber temperature, incomplete combustion, more dust. That is why drying and particulate matter are directly linked.
If instructions hang next to the stove at your hut, that is not mistrust. It is the difference between an evening by the fire and an evening in your own smoke.
05 · The climate question
The cycle no other fuel has
A tree builds itself from carbon it has taken from the air. If you burn it, exactly this carbon goes back – and the new growth standing on the same area brings it down again. That is a closed cycle, and it is the decisive difference from oil and gas: their carbon has lain underground for millions of years. What of it is once up, doesn't come back.
At a mountain farm, everything that keeps this cycle clean comes together. What is burned is small, fire and damaged timber from ongoing care – material that accrues anyway during thinning and after storm and beetle, and is no good for the sawmill. Nothing extra is felled, and the transport distance is often shorter than a kilometre. Of the good 20 million harvested cubic metres of 2024, 55 percent was damaged timber and almost 28 percent energy wood.
That makes the regional log the best fuel there is up here – provided the two things from the sections before are right: under 20 percent water content and a stove lit from the top. More is decided by that than by the origin.
And you get the best out of wood by building with it first: a beam binds the carbon for decades, replaces concrete and steel – and at the end of its life still becomes firewood. Build first, heat second. That is exactly how the farms here have done it for generations.
06 · For you
What stands behind the stack by the door
The woodpile on the hut wall is not a decorative element, even if it looks good. It is the heating for the next season; it was felled, split and stacked one to two years ago, and if it is neatly layered, that was half a day's work. At the houses we broker, that is exactly what we look at – whether heating is done with what the farm itself has, and whether the supply lasts.
If an accommodation heats differently, that is stated too. Not every house has a forest behind it, and a pellet boiler is nothing to apologise for.
Once more, briefly
Frequently asked questions about wood
How long does firewood have to dry?
Until the water content is below 20 percent – that is the legal requirement, not a particular storage time. Under good conditions that takes around 28 weeks, under bad ones two years. What matters is splitting early and storing sunny and airy, outside the forest.
Is heating with wood environmentally friendly?
Yes – wood from the farm's own care felling is a closed carbon cycle and thus the best heating route in the mountains. What matters is how you heat: dry wood under 20 percent water content, lit from the top. Damp wood in an old multi-fuel burner, by contrast, makes unnecessary particulate matter.
Why is there felling in the mountain forest at all?
Because a protective forest needs structure to protect. A third of the protective forest areas are over-aged with too little new growth underneath. Without intervention, such a stand collapses across whole areas after storm or beetle infestation – and then protects nothing at all for decades.
How do I light a wood stove properly?
From the top. Big logs at the bottom, small kindling above, the firelighter right on top. Air fully open at the start. That way the stack burns from top to bottom, the escaping gases pass through the flame and burn – saving more than half of the emissions.
Read on
Water at the hut
Spring water from the mountain: short path, cool, tastes of the rock.
The annual cycle of a mountain farm
Four very different years in one – depending on when you come.
Forest gold
Mushrooms, berries, wild plants – what you may gather and what not.
You heat your hut with your own wood?
That is a selling point, not a side note. We write it up so your guests understand what is behind it – and don't fill your hut with smoke.