“When a storm brings an oak down round here, it goes through the chipper. I’d rather it ended up on your table.” — Ewart Dodd (69) makes a three-board set that keeps raw chicken, onion and plastic off the food you eat raw.

His wife Elspeth was the school cook at the village primary school for 28 years, and in her kitchen every chopping board had one job: one for raw meat, one for fruit and veg, one for bread. When she retired, she wanted the same rule at home. Ewart built it for her by hand, from Weardale trees that were already down. What started as a present for his wife is now on worktops from Cornwall to the Scottish Borders.

Ewart Dodd (69) in the old stone byre behind his cottage in Weardale, County Durham.

Stanhope, Weardale. November. The byre behind the Dodd cottage has sandstone walls half a metre thick, one small window and a door that sticks in the wet. It smells of sawdust, damp stone and the oil tin on the bench. Oak planks are stacked along one wall with sticks between them to let the air through. A radio plays the local station on the windowsill. This is where every set is made.

Ewart spent 41 years in the forests of the North Pennines. He has turned out with his chainsaw after every big storm since the Burns’ Day storm of 1990, and retiring didn’t change that. Five Novembers ago, Storm Arwen came through in a single night and flattened whole hillsides. Most of what came down went straight through the chipper or onto a bonfire.

“I’ve never felled a tree for a board,” Ewart says. “The wind does that. I just couldn’t stand watching good oak go through a chipper.” So after Arwen he started bringing the best trunks home on a borrowed trailer instead. These days, when a big tree comes down on a farm up the valley, the phone in the Dodd kitchen rings first.

Every board starts as a tree that was already down. Not one is felled for a board.

Back at the byre, the trunks are sawn into planks and left to dry under cover for months. Only then does Ewart start on a board. The two dark boards are brown oak, the deep-coloured heart of old oaks that often only shows once the tree is down. The pale one is ash, from roadside trees already being felled because of ash dieback. Rush the drying, and a board looks perfect on the day it arrives and shows a hairline crack six weeks later.

The idea for the set came from Elspeth. In a school kitchen, chopping boards aren’t a matter of taste. Raw chicken never goes near the board the lettuce is cut on. “You stop thinking about it after the first week,” she says. “It’s just how a kitchen works.”

When she retired in the summer of 2022, the year after Arwen, she wanted her school-kitchen rule at home, just not the coloured plastic boards she’d looked at for 28 years. “I wanted wood,” she says. “Proper wood. And I wanted everyone in the house to know which board was which without having to ask me.” Ewart went out to the byre that same afternoon. The first planks from the Arwen oaks had been drying under the roof since that winter.

Made by hand in a Weardale byre

Ewart finishes every board by hand with a steel scraper before it is oiled.

Ewart cuts, scrapes and oils each board himself. Every one is 33 by 25 centimetres of solid hardwood, big enough for a whole chicken or a full loaf, and heavy enough that it stays put while you chop. The edges are eased by hand so they feel smooth in your hands, and the surface is scraped, not just sanded, until it is perfectly flat. It is slow work. His back won’t let him stand at the bench for more than a morning these days, so he makes a few sets a week and not one more. “I’d rather they were right than quick,” he says.

“Everybody buys the cheap set once,” he says. “A year later the middle’s gone grey, there’s a crack filled with putty, and it rocks when you chop.” Most weeks somebody brings one round to the byre and asks him to save it. There is a crate in the corner full of the ones he had to hand back: a bamboo board coming apart in layers like a wet book, a supermarket set that still smells of chemicals, a plastic board scored so deep it has turned grey. “There’s nothing to fix,” he says. “You can only start again.”

Ewart’s boards get no stain and no varnish, just food-safe mineral oil, and every one is checked by hand before it goes out. Elspeth had one more request: “If they’re going to sit on my worktop, they should look like books.” So each board has its job burned into the edge like the title on a hardback spine, never printed on.

What one board does to your food

Raw chicken and salad tomatoes a hand’s width apart on the same board. It happens in almost every kitchen.

Most of us use one board for everything. Chicken on Sunday. The same board, washed, for a salad on Monday. Strawberries on Tuesday that taste faintly of onion.

First, what comes off the raw meat. Juice from raw chicken, pork or fish runs into every knife mark on a board. The Food Standards Agency’s advice for home kitchens is clear: use separate chopping boards for raw meat and for food that won’t be cooked, like salad, fruit and bread.

Second, what the board remembers. Garlic, onion and fish work their way into a chopping surface. That’s how a sliced apple ends up tasting of last night’s curry, and how the good Cheddar picks up a hint of garlic. “People blame the fruit,” Elspeth says. “It’s the board.” That is why professional kitchens don’t rely on washing alone. They give each kind of food its own board.

No plastic under your knife

Up close: every cut into a plastic board scrapes off tiny bits of plastic.

Plenty of kitchens that already use separate boards use plastic ones. In 2023, engineers at North Dakota State University measured what comes off a plastic board every time a knife comes down on it. Their equipment only counted the larger particles, so the real number is likely higher. The study made headlines around the world, and it is one of the main reasons so many families are putting their plastic boards away.

Those knife grooves cause a second problem. In lab tests at the University of California, food-safety researcher Dean Cliver found that scarred plastic boards were very hard to get clean by hand, while well-used wooden boards behaved almost like new. Every board gives up a little of itself under a blade. The difference is what it gives up. “Plastic gives up plastic,” Ewart says. “Wood gives up wood. I can live with that.”

Elspeth’s three rules

One board, one job. The name on the edge tells everyone in the house which is which.

MEAT & FISH: Raw meat, poultry and fish go on this board and nowhere else, just as the Food Standards Agency advises.

FRUITS & VEGETABLES: Two sides, one simple rule. When the words on the edge read the right way up, you’re on the fruit side. Turn it over, and that side is for onions and garlic. Your strawberries never meet an onion.

CHEESE & BREAD: The pale ash board never sees onion, garlic or fish, so it goes straight from the worktop to the table as a serving board.

“You don’t have to remember anything,” Elspeth says. “You just look at the edge.” Even the grandchildren get it right first time, and nobody has to ask which board the chicken goes on. It is the same system school and restaurant kitchens use, just in warm wood instead of coloured plastic. And because the names are burned in, they are still there after years of washing up.

Fresh wood, fresh start

Left: one board for everything, after years of daily use. Right: three boards, one job each.

Every family has that one board, the one that has done everything for fifteen years. Ewart’s set gives each job its own board, so every board stays smooth and fresh for a lot longer. Stood upright in the stand, each board dries evenly after every wash instead of lying flat in a puddle on the draining board.

Plenty of handmade boards turn up raw and dusty. Each of Ewart’s sets arrives already oiled and packed in its stand, ready to go straight onto the worktop, where it takes up about as much room as a row of cookery books. It also makes a Christmas present people actually use every day: for whoever cooks the big dinner, a couple in their first home, or the cook in the family who already has everything. More than a few customers have come back to order a second set for a daughter or a best friend.

At home in kitchens across Britain

Weeknight teas, Sunday roasts, a cheese board for company. Three boards, one job each.

The online shop was his granddaughter Freya’s idea. After Elspeth’s friends from the WI kept asking for sets of their own, she set it up over a weekend. Today the sets go out to families from Cornwall to the Scottish Borders, straight from Ewart’s byre.

Where to get Ewart’s set

The set is sold only through County Craft, an online shop that works with small, independent makers. Freya looks after her grandfather’s corner of it. Not on Amazon, not in a shop on the high street. Cut the chicken on one board, the salad on another, and put the third on the table with the cheese. If it isn’t right for you, for any reason or none, send it back within 90 days for a full refund. No restocking fee, and nobody will ask you to explain yourself.