Things rarely change on the farm, well when I talk about things I am actually referring to the chores we must do in order for the farm to run smoothly.
Collection, cutting and stacking of wood is one such chore, one thankfully Joscha (from Germany) was happy to help us with.
Being staunch believers in 'waste not, want not' we were not about to let old pallets just sit there and rot, this meant we had to go through the pile we had to see which could be salvaged and which ones couldn't. Unfortunately several turned out to be too far gone either courtesy of woodworm or simple old age and damage, so we asked if Joscha wouldn't mind in helping us take the unsalvageable ones apart so we could cut them up for burning in our wood burning fire. Of course we took great care to collect up all the nails so as not to pose a danger to the animals or the tyres of our vehicles in the process, boy do they use a lot of them, some pieces had six in each end.
Those pallets and / or pieces of wood that could be saved were all put to oneside and painted with spoilt diesel fuel, (it got mixed with petrol so it couldn't be used in any of our vehicles etc) so as to protect them from pesky woodworm and beetles as well as the weather.
It might not look much, but there are some very useful pieces stacked up against our fencing in this picture and what with wood being at a premium regards price and precious (why cut down new trees if you can recycle) I am very pleased with our haul.
But back to our woodpile, this little lot won't last that long, but considering all of it is what we either trimmed from the trees on our land or a neighbours land as well as pallet wood I think you will agree we did pretty good as far as 'waste not, want not'.
I guess to some salvaging, cutting and stacking wood must seem so mundane and not that interesting, but never-the-less it is a very important part of what happens on this farm. Without wood to burn in our fireplace we would be very cold indeed on an evening. Something I don't relish and I don't think anyone else does either. And if I simply shrugged and said, 'what the heck, lets just buy in the wood' fact is we would both end out of pocket to the tune four hundred euros plus (for this we get roughly 4 tonnes) as well as be guilty of wasting what we had available for free. Yes I may have to buy wood in, but instead of having to buy two lots of wood (which is what happened last year) I might only have to buy in one and that my dear friends is something I do relish. I just love to save money, :)
And here is something Joscha relished, the idea and reality of cutting a tree down the old fashioned way. (Strange how most of the guys that come here want to try their hand at this, must be a male thing, lol)
Of course we don't just go around cutting down any old tree, usually we choose one that is either growing in the wrong place or one that won't thrive where it is (too overcrowded) or one that is diseased.
In the case of this tree it was growing in the wrong place, by that we mean it was too close to a groupl of olive trees I am in the process of trimming back so that they will produce once more. Pine trees are the scourge of olive farmers in these parts. For one thing they tend to steal the nutrients from the soil making it so sour that nothing, not even weeds will grow with any vigour. Okay I don't want weeds to grow, but they seriously affect the things I do want to grow and those things are my olive trees.
So down it had to come.
With the giant clippers that we have Joscha took off the lower branches so that when he swung the axe he made contact with the trunk of the tree and not its branches.
He then got down to swinging that axe and like a pro he soon had that tree felled.
But fear not, this tree didn't die in vain, its trunk will be used for a fence post whilst its branches were put to oneside to burn and make ash which we spread on the land to replace the nutrients it took from its neighbours as it grew.
Joscha also tried his hand at axe chopping firewood into manageable sized pieces.
But winter time is not just about chopping firewood, it is also the time we start to trim back the trees.
Yep, that's me, the author of this blog, working hard trimming back the branches of the olive trees whilst Christopher collected them up and burnt them. And again the ashes will be spread under the trees to help replace any nutrients that are lacking in the soil.
By the way, under those flames, amidst the hot ashes there lurked several jacket potatoes, which we ate for lunch, nothing tastes as yummy (in our opinion) as a jacket potato cooked out in the open in the hot embers of a bonfire.
Oh, one more thing, Russell our Terrier just loves to toast himself by an open fire even when it isn't that chilly.
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