With a history dating back more than 500 years, Novar Estate, located just north of Inverness, is a fine place to spend a morning; especially if productive forestry and sawmilling are high on your agenda.
THERE are some places on earth that are just so perfect that finding the right words to describe them is an impossible task. The Novar Estate is one such place.
Standing at its very peak, underneath the imposing stone structure of a replica Indian gate, and looking beyond its treescapes and across the water, towards Invergordon and the Cromarty Firth, Forestry Journal feels a little daunted by the task at hand, for this is a story – and a landscape – more than 500 years in the making.
Perhaps that’s why the estate’s current custodian – Ronald Munro Ferguson – never misses the chance to bring guests to just where we find ourselves one April morning. After weaving his trusty Land Rover through acres of continuous-cover-managed coniferous woodlands, he deposits FJ and his son, William, high on top of Fyrish Hill.
There stands the Fyrish Monument, which looks like it has been plucked from its natural home and placed into its Highland surroundings, juxtaposed with everything else. A replica of the Gate of Negapatam in Madras, it was erected on the instruction of Ronald’s ancestor, Sir Hector Munro, and its “otherworldly appearance” makes it a popular end goal for many of the estate’s recreational users.
Its views also rather nicely provide a fuller picture of just how varied the Novar Estate is. Today, forestry accounts for about 10,000 acres of the site – about half of its total land, which also includes space for windfarms, rural sports, and farmland – and this is nicely split into thirds.
One third is timber producing, with Sitka spruce easily littering the landscape that FJ finds itself presented with. The other two thirds are designated for CCF (with species such as larch, Douglas fir, and Scots pine) and amenity use, like the Fyrish Hill. Throw in remnants of old Caledonian pinewoods that cling onto the hillside and the fact that much of its woodlands have been designated a Special Protection Area (SPA) for capercaillie, and Novar really is a striking place to be.
That probably won’t surprise you when you learn about its history. Located just north of Dingwall and dating back to the Munros of the 16th century, Novar’s most famous custodian is probably the aforementioned Hector (1726–1805). A general for the East Indian Company, his exploits – some of which would likely be described as unsavoury today – led to gains that saw him take over the estate during a time of agricultural depression. Buying up much of his neighbours’ land, he was the first to fully invest in commercial tree planting at the site.
In the centuries since, it has been overseen by several influential Munros/Munro Fergusons, including forester Ronald Munro Ferguson, probably better known as secretary of state for Scotland and governor of Australia during World War One. Today, Ronald and William head up its affairs.
“He instigated a forestry programme, feeling it was a really important thing,” says 2024’s Ronald Munro Ferguson as he outlines the estate’s forestry background. “My father studied forestry at Edinburgh and Aberdeen. He planted around two-fifths of what we have now.
“There has been a forestry tradition on the estate for centuries.”
‘Douglas fir is underappreciated’
That long history means that some of Novar’s productive woodlands are already onto their fifth and even sixth rotations. Most of today’s crop was planted in the 1960s and ’70s, with Ronald expecting an annual output of around 35,000 tonnes (up from its current 25,000 tonnes) over the next decade, 4,000 of which will be used by the estate itself and its growing sawmilling wing (more on this later).
“Most of the timber here gets sold to one of the big sawmillers [including the nearby James Jones and Sons],” Ronald explained earlier in the day over tea and coffee. “We will use the larger logs.
Half of that will be chipped; we make biofuel. The other half will go to our own sawmill.”
Overseeing that process for the last 30 years has been Crosscut Forestry’s Cameron Ross, who, unsurprisingly, can point to a very different Novar today than the one of the 20th century.
“The biggest change is in labour and mechanisation,” he says. “When I first came here, there was a squad of contractors, based here. Half a dozen guys with chainsaws, and you never quite knew how many would turn up for the week.
“The processing sector – the bigger sawmills – have become more focused on what they want. Back in the day we could mark it as Doug fir, larch, even Western hemlock as run-of-the-mill sawlogs.
“Nowadays, if they were given nothing but Sitka, they’d be quite happy.”
“All timber is sold standing but we have an agreement that we can siphon off some of it if we need it for the mill or biofuel,” he adds. “From our point of view, demand has been pretty poor for commercial sawlogs for over a year now. But the roundwood market has been pretty buoyant, probably because energy has been in such demand.”
While softwood species are very much the order of the day, pockets of hardwood can be found throughout the estate, with Cameron particularly optimistic about the potential of some of its younger sycamores as a productive crop.
“We do have a small plantation of German beech, which is a registered C stand,” Ronald adds.
“We haven’t taken any.” Cameron interjects: “We think about it a lot. It has been thinned once in my time here.”
During Cameron’s three decades at Novar it isn’t just how the forestry is done that has changed, but so too have the threats to its trees. Dutch elm disease has already wreaked its usual havoc, and concern remains about just what could happen if Ips typographus were to establish itself north of the border. However, this is also where the forester sees opportunity.
“Touch wood, we haven’t had any problems with larch disease [Phytophthora ramorum]. We will be proactive in the next phase of the plan. It’s not huge – the larch population – but what we do have is quite prominent in where it is placed in the woodlands.
“Where the larch is growing I’d look to plant Douglas fir. I am a big fan of it; I think it is underappreciated by the industry. The bigger side of our industry is missing a trick with Doug fir.
“We have our eggs very much in the Sitka basket, but Douglas fir is a good alternative.
“Some of our ground is absolutely the right ground for Sitka, but it is good to try something different.”
However, pathogens aren’t the only threat to Novar’s trees. There is also the problem of deer.
Namely sika deer, who, with their distinctive yellow spots, have become increasingly problematic for foresters in that part of the UK. Even when FJ first arrived at Novar – taking a wrong turn towards the 18th-century house and not the sawmill – it was greeted by dozens of sika, roaming fairly freely through the grounds.
“Most of the woodlands are protected by a fence and we have an effective deer culling programme,” Cameron says. “That’s changed a lot in my time. Up here, a lot of people are having a lot of problems with sika, and I think a lot of people aren’t even aware of the problems.
“It is a very resilient animal. It changes its behaviour; its reproductive rates increase.
“We have done three deer population surveys over the last decade or so. I had an indication numbers had increased, but we were really quite staggered.”
To combat the growing number of sika, Novar regularly culls hundreds of the deer every single year, which, Ronald says, has generally protected its young plantations.
“People think you can cull a certain amount and then relax,” he adds. “But that’s not the case. Something like 80 per cent of the deer we cull are sika.”
‘I get a real buzz’
Stunning views, Sitka spruce, and a fascinating history are all good reasons to visit Novar. But the real reason for FJ’s trip lies at its very first stop. Sitting inside its own-grown, timber-clad office, Ronald and William are effusive about its sawmilling operation, which has increased exponentially in recent years, coming to a head in 2023 with the purchase of a Wood-Mizer sawline.
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Installed to replace Novar’s previous LT70 Wide, the WB2000 industrial sawmill is now a permanent fixture in the mill’s yard, capable of cutting logs up to 7.5 metres in length. Located inside one of its two purpose-built outbuildings (the other housing another relatively new purchase, a Hundegger Turbo Drive), it would go on to impress during the second day of FJ’s visit to Novar when it took centre stage during a Wood-Mizer open day.
“There has been a sawmill at Novar for as long as the history goes back, in one form or another, but it has always been a basic operation,” Ronald explains. “Today the sawmill has changed. We use modern machinery, and might even change the name to be more construction focused rather than sawmill focused. But we do mill the woods. We take the timber from the forest to its final form.
“Our main sawmill is the Wood-Mizer and we make a lot of products, including the sheds in the yard. I’d say our product is a little bit better quality than you would normally buy somewhere else.
“Getting the WB2000 was the start of becoming something slightly more serious. The good thing is that everything we make is virtually all from our own timber. That tends to be Douglas fir.”
The funny thing is that it was only through chance that Ronald even became aware of Wood-Mizer as an option.
“We have a family home in South Africa and used to farm out there,” he says. “We sold the farm and one of them was a sawmiller. About 10 years later, he came to visit and said that he couldn’t understand why we weren’t milling our own timber. We were doing a bit but it was an old, tiny saw. He suggested Wood-Mizer, and that’s how I met Keith [Threadgall, Wood-Mizer’s Scotland and Northern England representative].”
Spurred on in part by William, Novar’s sawmilling operation is evolving to provide more bespoke, construction-led projects.
“We could make fence posts but they are generally cheaper to buy in,” Ronald says. “The focus is on producing something with a little more value added. The buildings are much more what we would like to do. We completed a two-part extension onto the visitor centre at Eilean Donan Castle [that was 100 per cent Douglas].”
William adds: “We have other clients coming and specifically asking for projects. A lot of the time people don’t really know what they are looking for, and we will guide them.
“The value potential on this business is quite exciting. What I really love doing is working with an architect, taking their plans, and trying to make it a reality.”
For this, Novar relies upon SEMA, a software specifically designed for timber in construction. This, William says, is “absolutely essential”.
Even Cameron can see the excitement in it all, saying: “Speaking as a forester, I get a real buzz when I see some of the timber from the estate going into a bespoke building project.”
‘The sky is the limit’
What is tangibly obvious to FJ throughout its visit and many stops at Novar is that, despite being a centuries-old estate, it is never standing still. The sawmill operation is the most visible evolution of the site and its day-to-day productivity, but pockets of ingenuity can be found everywhere. Take William’s passion project, for example.
It is Novar where Novar Cider is grown – in a lovely little orchard just across from the House – and FJ can attest to the fact that its rising popularity is very much merited. It has taken years for it to get to this point, but even Ronald is impressed. “I am very critical (as we all are) of our children, but it is very good.”
William adds: “It has taken years to get there, but you learn, understand, and it gets better.
“Edinburgh and Glasgow are such good clients and we are getting into some really cool places.
“We had a conversation years ago about there being so many beers and microbreweries, so why don’t we just try and get into the market? We could sell Scottish cider, grown in Scotland.”
On this, his dad chips in: “I feel this is potentially a really good business for the estate. The sky is the limit.”
That really takes us back to the beginning. With its plentiful, well-managed forest resources, and Ronald and William’s eye for maximising profit, the sky really feels like it is the limit for Novar, even when standing among the gods at its highest peak.
Its history has been written. As for the future?
“At my age, the plan is to make the sawmilling business a viable, sustainable business,” Ronald says. “William understands how it works and I am very confident he will take that on and develop it.”
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