Category: Ransfords

Bloomin’ marvellous

It was great to hear from Jane Allard today. Every year she grows plants to sell as a way of raising funds for the #SpArC here in Bishop’s Castle and in recent years we’ve helped start the process by giving her some bags of #sylvagrow. SylvaGrow® is an award-winning, RHS endorsed peat-free compost which is…

When the sun shines….

Friday was a glorious day here in Bishop’s Castle so our solar panels were generating electricity at a cracking rate. This grab of one of the control panel screens shows us producing over 500kw. Double it up and you can see we’re at 1mw. We’re producing more than we use on days like this so…

Real progress at St. George’s School in Clun

You might recall that we helped St. George’s Church of England School in Clun by donating some timber recently to create a timber framed shelter so that pupils can observe the pond and work outdoors whenever possible. As you can see from the picture the dream is steadily becoming reality and it really won’t be…

A welcome visitor to the mill

It was great to see this SylvaGrow® liveried trailer picking up materials in the yard today: it’s a very large and physical representation of our determination not to waste any part of the logs we mill. SylvaGrow® is an award-winning, RHS endorsed peat-free compost which is used by gardeners throughout the UK and is manufactured…

There’s a new defibrillator in Bishop’s Castle

Thanks to a 50% grant from government and the balance from us there’s now a new public defibrillator on Station Street. It’s near the Public Hall and opposite the car park. Public defibrillators save lives: more than 25,000 people die from cardiac arrests outside of hospital annually. If a defibrillator is used within one minute,…

There’s a new defibrillator in Bishop’s Castle

Thanks to a 50% grant from government and the balance from us there’s now a new public defibrillator on Station Street. It’s near the Public Hall and opposite the car park. Public defibrillators save lives: more than 25,000 people die from cardiac arrests outside of hospital annually. If a defibrillator is used within one minute,…

Further investment in solar energy

These drone images taken by a friend of ours yesterday show the scale of our investment in solar energy. Harnessing the power of the sun in this way not only reduces the overall carbon footprint of the business as a whole but also makes it less vulnerable to energy price shocks. This in turn makes…

It’s the early bird that catches the worm

You can see daylight arriving in these shots from our very early delivery to a site near Hull. It’s one of two loads of Highways treated post and rail fencing going in today. We and our customers have had a really busy start to the year…an…

Local forest, local logs, local timber – all cut and treated by local people

Remember that timber from Bury Ditches harvested and hauled to the mill by local firms? It’s now been transformed in our mill from round bits to square bits and here it is going in for treatment to prolong its serviceable life. It’s all thanks to some very impressive machinery, equally impressive systems, and a team…

An owl’s eye view of our mill

We’re grateful as ever to AW Jenkinson driver Ray Powell for these stunning drone images of our mill at night just before we switch off all but the security lights. That’s Ray’s rig towards the bottom of the top image with a load of logs coming into the mill. The pictures here and others we’ve…

More on the harvesting at Bury Ditches

Here are some more images from the harvesting going on at Bury Ditches. The GIF show the location and the logs being loaded to go to the mill. The last frame is a justifiably happy Simon Flack of SJF Timber as another load goes on its way The video shows Simon bringing logs up to…

Local heroes

We’re back at work today and what better way to start the year than with the delivery of a load of logs from Bury Ditches which is within sight of the Mill. The logs are from a Forestry Commission holding near the ancient fort. They were harvested by SJF Forestry of Minsterley near here and…

Local heroes

We’re back at work today and what better way to start the year than with the delivery of a load of logs from Bury Ditches which is within sight of the Mill. The logs are from a Forestry Commission holding near the ancient fort. They were harvested by SJF Forestry of Minsterley near here and… Read more »

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Back to work on Monday – and ready to go

The mill re-opens on Monday 8th January after a break for the holidays and the chance to catch up on some much-needed maintenance. We’re more than ready for action with vast stockpiles of logs waiting to go through the mill. The logs in the picture will keep us going for a day. All of the…

Great feedback from a firewood customer

It was heartening to receive this message in an email to Alice on the weighbridge here “Good morning Alice, Just a quick line to acknowledge safe receipt of our logs yesterday and to give acknowledgement to Ron’s excellent service. Offloading the first four bags outside my garage on the ‘short’ drive was simple enough, but…

Great feedback from a firewood customer

It was heartening to receive this message in an email to Alice on the weighbridge here “Good morning Alice, Just a quick line to acknowledge safe receipt of our logs yesterday and to give acknowledgement to Ron’s excellent service. Offloading the first four bags outside my garage on the ‘short’ drive was simple enough, but… Read more »

The post Great feedback from a firewood customer first appeared on Charles Ransford & Son.

Let’s hear it for Great British Timber

Watch out for our new pack signs which bang the drum for our home grown timber as loads make their way from our mill in Bishop’s Castle to various parts of the UK. Forestry and sawmilling is worth £2 billion each year to the UK economy and creates around 80,000 jobs – mostly in rural…