My friend Phil, a freelance writer working from home, firmly believes that happiness is a full fridge, But this far South, my friends, happiness is definitely….a full woodshed.
On a recent trip up to Christchurch I was struck by (and envious of) the huge mountainous woodpiles visible from State Highway 1. I peered longingly at them as we drove past envious of everything and anything as long as it was big - be it golden logs of pinus radiata neatly stacked against macrocarpa hedges, blue gum piled up against the side of houses or woodsheds, or seemingly neglected randomly placed mounds of who knows what type, cut, dumped and left to season and silver up in all weathers.
Back in my neighbourhood most of my fellow knowing , neighbours ordered (and stacked) their wood months ago but it takes the end of daylight saving for me to come out of denial that winter really is upon us now and so it’s a frantic last minute fight for me to get my hands on a few dry cubic metres.
My first winter here I was taken in by an ad in the local paper that promised ‘clean bone dry firewood’ at a good price. That turned out to be sawn-up stacker pellets. Yes, the wood was dry but burnt too fast and a left a sea of mangled nails in the grate like some sort of arty memorial sculpture from The Blitz that then had to be painstakingly sifted from the ashes...
Somehow, I then stumbled across ‘Chunky’ (aka Paul) a bona fide wood supplier who looked upon the other wood in my garage with a mixture of pity, scorn and pique.
In fact the draft of the subsequent poem I wrote about his (unspoken) reaction begins:
‘My regular supplier sniffed
when he saw another’s man
wood
in my shed
slammed the ute door
and squealed away..’
When I contacted him again this year Chunky had mellowed somewhat although his side-line wood business has been so successful – distracting him from his day job and more worryingly beginning to attract the attention of the tax man - he’d all but hung up his chainsaw. Sighing to my pleas, he fessed up that still had just one lone 6 cubic metre load of dry pine left over from last year or so if I was interested? Interested? I'd be the envy of the neighbourhood!
It took me two full hours to stack (read fling 'willy nilly') into my dry concrete-floored garage, but I was warm and satisfied when I'd finished.
But that’s just stage one of the squirrelling process, next comes kindling.
In her book ‘The Writing Life’ Annie Dillard went to great lengths to finish a book (literally) by holing up in a cabin on an island in the Puget Sound, Washington State right across from the Canadian border. It was January, it was freezing and learning to split wood was not so much a pleasure (and welcome distraction from her writing) as a survival art. In a particularly funny passage she recounts her early attempts: … “ What I did was less like splitting wood than chipping flints,” she writes.” After a few whacks my alder chunk still stood serene and unmoved, its base untouched, its tip a thorn. And then I actually tired to turn the sorry thing over and balance it on its wee head while I tried to chip its feet off before it fell over. God save us.”
There were many days the first winter here where I knew exactly how she felt but two years on I have learnt to cheat with woolsack’s full of offcuts from a local joinery factory. These offcuts are small, clean and dry and brilliant for building a fast base on which to throw the logs if I’m home all day or hot and fast just on their own if I just need heat for a couple of hours.
The only downside is the guilt I experience when I pull out small beautiful pieces of dressed native and exotic timbers that we do not sustainability grow here in New Zealand. At that stage I tell myself these tiddlers are of no use to anyone so its kind of okay to throw them into the flames almost in the same way that a sprat on the line gets thrown back into the water. It isn’t of course. Small can also be beautiful.
On a recent trip up to Christchurch I was struck by (and envious of) the huge mountainous woodpiles visible from State Highway 1. I peered longingly at them as we drove past envious of everything and anything as long as it was big - be it golden logs of pinus radiata neatly stacked against macrocarpa hedges, blue gum piled up against the side of houses or woodsheds, or seemingly neglected randomly placed mounds of who knows what type, cut, dumped and left to season and silver up in all weathers.
Back in my neighbourhood most of my fellow knowing , neighbours ordered (and stacked) their wood months ago but it takes the end of daylight saving for me to come out of denial that winter really is upon us now and so it’s a frantic last minute fight for me to get my hands on a few dry cubic metres.
My first winter here I was taken in by an ad in the local paper that promised ‘clean bone dry firewood’ at a good price. That turned out to be sawn-up stacker pellets. Yes, the wood was dry but burnt too fast and a left a sea of mangled nails in the grate like some sort of arty memorial sculpture from The Blitz that then had to be painstakingly sifted from the ashes...
Somehow, I then stumbled across ‘Chunky’ (aka Paul) a bona fide wood supplier who looked upon the other wood in my garage with a mixture of pity, scorn and pique.
In fact the draft of the subsequent poem I wrote about his (unspoken) reaction begins:
‘My regular supplier sniffed
when he saw another’s man
wood
in my shed
slammed the ute door
and squealed away..’
When I contacted him again this year Chunky had mellowed somewhat although his side-line wood business has been so successful – distracting him from his day job and more worryingly beginning to attract the attention of the tax man - he’d all but hung up his chainsaw. Sighing to my pleas, he fessed up that still had just one lone 6 cubic metre load of dry pine left over from last year or so if I was interested? Interested? I'd be the envy of the neighbourhood!
It took me two full hours to stack (read fling 'willy nilly') into my dry concrete-floored garage, but I was warm and satisfied when I'd finished.
But that’s just stage one of the squirrelling process, next comes kindling.
In her book ‘The Writing Life’ Annie Dillard went to great lengths to finish a book (literally) by holing up in a cabin on an island in the Puget Sound, Washington State right across from the Canadian border. It was January, it was freezing and learning to split wood was not so much a pleasure (and welcome distraction from her writing) as a survival art. In a particularly funny passage she recounts her early attempts: … “ What I did was less like splitting wood than chipping flints,” she writes.” After a few whacks my alder chunk still stood serene and unmoved, its base untouched, its tip a thorn. And then I actually tired to turn the sorry thing over and balance it on its wee head while I tried to chip its feet off before it fell over. God save us.”
There were many days the first winter here where I knew exactly how she felt but two years on I have learnt to cheat with woolsack’s full of offcuts from a local joinery factory. These offcuts are small, clean and dry and brilliant for building a fast base on which to throw the logs if I’m home all day or hot and fast just on their own if I just need heat for a couple of hours.
The only downside is the guilt I experience when I pull out small beautiful pieces of dressed native and exotic timbers that we do not sustainability grow here in New Zealand. At that stage I tell myself these tiddlers are of no use to anyone so its kind of okay to throw them into the flames almost in the same way that a sprat on the line gets thrown back into the water. It isn’t of course. Small can also be beautiful.
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