There's something super satisfying about creating a woodpile, ready for the cold weather that looms on a wintery horizon. It's hard work, so we often delay it, but being in lockdown for the fourth or fifth time this year, our go to coping strategy is to make good use of our time doing something productive, as if in defiance of laws that attempt to shut down all movement and motion.
Folk round here have envious piles of wood, and we wonder where they get it. At 150 dollars a metre, it's not cheap, so you either need to know someone in forestry, or work in the industry yourself. Some people have relatives with farms that they must go and get wood from - my son's girlfriend, for example, has an uncle that they travel hours to see with a trailer and an ax. Unwilling to part with cash, we go a-wooding in the reserve - 'wooding' for us is a verb for fire wood collecting.
The 'reserve' next to our five acres is a strip of council land with a walking park that takes you to the river and in to town, full of redgums, wattles and other gum trees. The wattles have a ten year life span, and aren't a popular wood, though we aren't sure why - it burns well, although the redgum burns longer. Pine too is an option, and although people don't like it's resin clogging up the flue, we find it's nothing a good tap tap can't handle. Today's wooding involves chopping up last year's seasoned wattle, plus some redgum we'd got from a neighbour's property. They don't burn wood anymore, being old - one day, we too will replace the woodburner with something easier. But for now, the fire and all that goes with it has a charm that holds us.
We've been wanting to build a decent wood storage area for a while, since we rebuilt the old chook shed into a big storage barn for car parts, camping equipment, wood and the like. We ended up building a cover to protect the wood on the east side, as the rain only very, very rarely comes from that direction. Please don't scoff at our woodpile - remember, it doesn't snow here, and we have no need for more than this. This should last us a month or more until we have to deal with the next lot of logs.
In the afternoon, we head down to the end of the property to see how much wood we can gather from last year's willy willy that whirled through the bottom corner. A willy willy is like a small tornado - very small, don't worry! It tore branches from some of the gums on the train track side of the property, and a huge branch from the giant red gum that loves to drop it's huge branches. We also found a bonus fallen wattle. Although we didn't have time to bring it up on the trailer, it's stacked til we have time to do so, and is at least another two months of wood. We feel so grateful for this land that gifts us such necessities.
I may be gone for a while
I think I'll go for a while.
I must away for a while,
Collecting fire wood.
When I return my arms will be full.
When I return my arms will be full.
When I return my arms will be full
Of fire wood,
Of fire wood.
- Martha Tilston
We check the smaller trees we planted last lockdown, last July, and vow to plant some more, especially wattle, as it grows so fast and gifts so early. They're already poking up from the plastic surrounds that keep the rabbits from eating them, and glow in the winter light.
A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.
Joanne Harris
I gather all the sawdust and sprinkle it on the bottom of the chook pen and under their roost, making it smell of eucalypts as well as wormwood from the bunches I'd tossed in their nesting boxes, and the lavender too. Lucky chickens. I love the closed loop of this process - sawdust breaking down with manure and herbs to be added to the compost when it's ready. As it gets dark, Jamie will light the fire after cleaning it out, and I'll add the ash to the compost.
What is it that dies? A log of wood dies to become a few planks. The planks die to become a chair. The chair dies to become a piece of firewood, and the firewood dies to become ash. You give different names to the different shapes the wood takes, but the basic substance is there always. If we could always remember this, we would never worry about the loss of anything. We never lose anything; we never gain anything. By such discrimination we put an end to unhappiness. (118-119)
Swami Satchidananda
The best bit, though, is just sitting against a tree in the sunshine, listening to the birds singing. I'm sad a little, because one day I'll be too old to go wooding, and only sit and remember what it was like to feel my muscles burn from tugging branches from piles and hauling logs to be met with the hot buzz of a chainsaw, to be covered in sawdust and petrol fumes, and to kiss my man at the end of a day in an an acknowledgement of a day's work done. One day too we will be ash, and feed trees, that will one day be wooded, and made into a fire for someone's hearth.
I like that idea alot.
With Love,
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