I don’t know if you have ever taken delivery of wood; firewood, or lenha, as it’s known here. We get ours from a chap called Nono, who lives in the next village. He and his wife, Carla, have all sorts of nifty machinery for dealing with all things woody. My favourite is a clever device which grabs the tree trunk, cuts it close to the ground and then trims off all of the little side branches and then cuts it up into handy lengths, ready for storage.
We have just had six cubic metres of mixed wood delivered and although it doesn’t sound much, trust me, it is. We have a mixture of eucalyptus, pine, oak, olive and mimosa. They each have slightly different burning characteristics and it is important to have some of each.
It was dumped in a massive pile outside the woodshed and we have spent time today stacking it neatly inside, ready for use during the winter. Actually, ‘she who must be obeyed’ has done much of the stacking, as I don’t seem to meet the ludicrously high criteria for neat stacking and end up being relegated to simply passing log after log to more capable hands. There doesn’t seem to be much to it, but whenever I do the stacking, it looks all higgledy-piggledy and I grudgingly allow myself to be relieved of this task. We have also been cutting down some of our trees, which were burned in last year’s fire and so we have some of our own lenha to supplement Nono’s.
Winter is, meteorologically speaking, just around the corner, and it is the time for preparation. It isn’t just lenha. We have managed to accumulate, through much collecting whilst walking Eric, the dog, great sacks full of pine cones, or pinhas. Just in case lighting a fire is not part of your skill set, allow me to enlighten you. A pine cone is, perhaps, the best fire starter available naturally. It is free from the awful aroma which is commonly found in chemical-based starters and is so good at burning really hot. I am afraid, however, that it has become something of an obsession, particularly with ‘she who must be obeyed’. Even though we clearly have enough, she cannot pass a pine cone without picking it up and forming a little pile, ready for collection at some future time. We even have ‘special’ pine cones, which will never be burned, but are either so huge that they are kept as some sort of freak show, or particularly pretty and they are used as decoration.
So, we are in preparation mode. This also includes sweeping our chimneys. We have a nice chap, Paolo, who does this and managed to somehow do it without a single speck of soot appearing. It really is impressive. After all, there is a lot of soot in your average chimney.
The summer has been hot, with balmy evenings and long days. Now, however, autumn is creeping in, with its shorter days and there is a coolness in the morning which warns that winter is on the way. At least we are prepared.