There is a modern myth that every farmhouse has an Aga in the kitchen; and whilst this might be true of the period farmhouses that have long since been divorced from their land and are now home to the rural affluent - walk into the kitchen of a real farmhouse and you will find a Rayburn.

The Aga was designed by a Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist Dr. Gustaf Dalén and is revered amongst serious cooks for maintaining a constant roasting temperature.

The Rayburn was launched in 1946 and is loved for its ability to warm hypothermic lambs, dry socks on the foot, and run on a fuel of damp twigs and baler twine.

Interestingly, they are now both produced by the same factory in Telford.

When we first moved to the farm in the seventies there was already an old Rayburn in situ which ran on solid fuel (wood and coal). It was a full time job to feed it and empty the ashes, and our roast dinners were either well-done or rare depending on the vagaries of the weather. During the 1980’s a lot of these machines were converted to the cleaner and easier fuel of oil - however my Dad was having none of that. Whether it was some hangover from the war or just the memories of the oil embargo of the early seventies, he refused to “give any more money to those bloody Arabs”, and we carried on with a sooty kitchen and lukewarm baths.

When he passed away in 1997, Mum was only too pleased to cash in his secret collection of illicit wartime weaponry (Lugers and the like) and had enough to purchase a brand new oil fired Rayburn. Next door, we had already had our old Rayburn converted to oil and so for the next decade or so we were both happily filling up our oil tanks (at about 18p per litre) and had hot water and central heating on demand.

Last week we paid a chap £240 to have ours converted back to wood. I don’t need to tell you why, and the old man who came to do the work was supposed to be semi-retired, but has found himself run off his feet, ripping out the oil burners from Rayburns that he and his father had spent years carefully converting to oil.

I have bought myself a new chainsaw and a rather natty pair of safety trousers and am planning to spent the winter months stockpiling the forest of gorse and willow that have taken over areas of the farm and moor which are now conserved for wildlife. In previous years we would have paid contactors to clear this scrub which would have burnt it on site as a waste product. With oil now at 60p a litre it is now a criminal waste of a perfectly good fuel and so Cathy now spends a good deal of her day stoking the fire like some latter day Casey Jones while I’m a lumberjack (and I’m OK) – my old man must be laughing in his grave!