Not a Quick Fix

We live in a culture where the immediate is if not all, then nearly so. Bands are world famous for two records, then join Lord Lucan. Politicians promise instant cures to complex problems clearly beyond them. Football managers cannot afford three losses in a row. It's good to take a step back and think about a year and more hence.

Yes, it's about wood chopping again. We had some major tree surgery done, and the wood chopped into manageable bits for me to split and stack (actually for my wife to stack in the main, she is far more careful than I). It took maybe six hours of work spread over several days, but we now have a store under cover, drying quietly for use in two years' time.There is enough for a whole winter, which is a pleasing thought, though the winter of 2015/16.

We can afford to wait that long as we dried a stock for use now two years back. There is more coming through for next year.

At 54 I rather like the idea of looking forward a couple of years. I'm at that age when it is far from a given that I will be here then - a good friend of similar age died this summer, no signs then a massive fatal heart attack. Maybe beneath the surface such actions anchoring one to the future are signs of confidence, or maybe of hope.

The care of the trees is an eco thing too. Two were lifted, the crowns now higher so more light can come through. Two had boughs removed to leave one healthy main trunk, again more light. And the big fir-tree that was shadowing our house and next door's (the tree oddly owned by both as it is in the hedge) has been lopped to bring daytime brightness to my study, which is both cheering and economic (no electric light on now as it would have been a month back). We hope the extra rays will help perk up our kitchen garden crops next year, especially the smaller fruit trees we have planted. And I hope that I will one day, preferably before my late seventies, see the walnut tree produce a sackful.

What Are You Smoking?

I just bought a ready-made home smoker, wimping out of making the design I had in my head for a garden incinerator topped with a dustbin (both new of course) fitted with rods and racks. One motive is simply wanting to give it a go, another something of a V-sign to the food fascists, eating more than a single slice of bacon every six months apparently risking Death's instant scythe.

The third is my fascination, or is it obsession, with the wood for free from our garden and allotment. I have a stack of pear logs in the allotment shed, and in the front-garden wood-store a similar stash of apple wood. They were cut with the intention of burning them in our stove, but from all accounts they smell divine when alight and we would miss that if the wood-burner's door is closed as it should be.

Sadly the weather has turned damp and drizzly, not it seems the ideal for smoking food. But watch this space (if anyone is reading this at all) for reports on progress once it brightens again, and I have laid in a stock of salt and salmon.

FYI the smoker is a telescopic thing, supposedly good for cold- as well as hot-smoking, 29cm wide and when extended 92cm tall (if memory serves), complete with a rack, hooks and drip tray, not cheap at just shy of £100 but it is well-made. They provided a starter-pack of sawdust, which will be added to with our own hardwood stuff as and when, plus I intend splitting pear and apple logs down to the thinnest possible slivers and cutting those into chips, ideally not covered in blood from my fingers. A man can dream.

A Dead Summer and Dying Trees

Is it coincidence or causality? Over the last couple of horribly wet months we have lost a tree, an old fruitless fruit tree that one day we noticed was gradually tipping over; and last week our next door neighbours lost two thirds of a huge ash - both thirds making our garden, the first taking out a bit of fence and scaring the chickens, the second utterly destroying the roof and severely damaging one wall of a year-old shed. Amicable discussions ensued, a new shed will replace it and we trust a piece of fencing. A month back a silver birch two doors down had to be removed before it toppled.

I wonder if the sodden ground accelerated these losses? And if the run of four or five wet summers here caused the rot to set in? This is a lovely leafy area, but becoming less so as such trees are lost. We have planted a quince, Victoria plum and greengage, but they will take a while to become established, and many years before they have anything like the architectural impact of the ash and the birch.  Maybe they never will, as the fear must be that this weather-pattern has set in and the ground will be this way off and on for the foreseeable.

It's an ill wind, however. Ash may not be the hottest-burning wood, but you can just about use it green, and we have room to dry it out - our neighbour is very happy to leave us the use of the wood that fell into our garden. So more bloody wood chopping, but later more wonderful warmth and warm smells from the stove in the dining room.

Word Gets Round, Like My Stomach

Though our garden is thoroughly secluded our next door neighbours must have noticed me cutting lopped branches into wood for the burner, as they offered me the stuff left by a tree surgeon who sorted out a few of their unloved apple trees. It's a pity that the burner is sealed as applewood smells lovely on an open fire.

Cutting wood is about the only exercise I do these days, but it makes me want to do more as the lift you get afterwards - all those endorphins doubtless - is great. Sunday was spent cutting out-of-place branches from the fruit trees on our allotment, sawing worthwhile bits down into more firewood. Trouble is for all it is a great heart-pumping-muscle-straining-aerobic-workout it gives me a healthier appetite than normal. Add to that it was Mothers' Day so a special meal was called for, any calories burned replaced and then some. Eaten outside though, which in mid-March is pretty wonderful. My patent kale-and-everything bruschetta, lentil salad with the remains of Friday's daube cut into it, a ripe tomato salad, roast chicken with potatoes done beneath it plus PSB fresh-picked, green salad to mop up the juices and bought in cheesecake to finish. Plus two half bots from Adnams. Would have needed to fell a whole tree and turn it into firewood to nullify that lot.

Ready to Grow

Weekends in theory are meant to be for chilling out, but given Ruth is rarely happen unless we are actually doing something we just spent Sunday getting ready for the coming growing season. Part of that was more wood-chopping in the garden - a few dead boughs and the odd one that had got too big and shady being cut down, sawn to length for the burner and split so it will dry well. The greenhouse that was full of drying wood has been emptied ready for the plants it was bought to house, and partly cleaned up, and our propagator and a zillion seed trays disinfected ready for the seeds that will in turn fill the greenhouse.

Strange that so much activity - interspersed with buying seed potatoes for the allotment - should have in fact been relaxing.

Wood Warms Three Times

There is an old saying which has it that wood warms you twice: the first time when you saw and chop it; the second when it's burnt. I count a third, the warm feeling you get from thinking about that free fuel and the value of the exercise. As regards that last point, I find the gym boring beyond words, hate jogging as a pointless (and in terms of joints damaging) torture, but can spend hours chopping wood in the fresh air. Not an all-over fitness regime, but it ups the heart rate and my arms are in fine fettle.

We had built up a huge pile of old branches dried under a tarp beneath the now sadly unused (and rotting) tree-house. Over January I have reduced that pile by half, filling bags now kept in the greenhouse (until it is needed for growing stuff) and the shed. The driest, and ash that you can use pretty much off the tree is included in that, has been burned. Carbon neutral as it would rot and give off gases otherwise, it is not a fossil fuel. I'm leaving the twiggier stuff so that any hedge-hogs hibernating at the bottom will not be disturbed, but come spring will sort that too and use the space for stacking the cut-to-size split logs and bags of kindling. As eco here means economy as well as ecology, I reckon the 11 bags of big stuff and five of kindling would have cost about £75 from the local dealer. A gym membership would have set me back about £25 for the month, so we are £100 ahead of the game.