Market Forces
Thursday 22rd October:
A thick coating of ice on the windscreen of Reggie the Renault this morning ( I know, I know, but my wife insists on naming all our cars. I too give them names, but only when they will not start on a frosty morning), so a wake-up call to action. I need to spend more time in the woods with my chain saw and chopper, and we need to find a wood- burning stove pretty pronto.
One of the most significant changes to come over most Brits when they move to or buy an old property in rural France is how obsessive they can become about heating -and firewood. Where to get it, how much to pay for it... and how to burn it to best effect. When we first came to live in France, I wondered at the sheer size of all our neighbours’ ostentatiously displayed log piles, and why they spent the best part of the long summer days growing and tending them like British gardeners fussing over their entries into the giant vegetable competition at the village fete. When we had our first winter in a stone walled and floored farmhouse with no insulation or double-glazed windows, we realised why good quality firewood can have a price above rubies in the mind of the rural homesteader.
In the UK, most people simply turn up the heating thermostat when winter approaches. In rural France, any form of central heating can be as rare as a French vegan/ animal rights protestor. Paradoxically, using wood as a main or supplementary form of heating is usually both a delight and a drawback for the average Brit. There is all the romance of being ensconced in front of a blazing fire as the rain lashes down outside. The exquisitely fragrant smoke curling above the rooftop as one trudges back to home and hearth still makes my heart sing, but there is always a price to pay for living the good life. For a start, you have to clear up and lay your fire or wood burning stove every morning, and you obviously have to keep it supplied with fuel. And we are not talking here about a purely cosmetic and very twee fireplace or stove that Brit townies often like to have on show in their otherwise completely heated and insulated home.
Without getting technical, when it is the main or only form of heating, a single stove or fire can consume several cords of wood through a long and hard winter, and we have very hard and long winters up here in the Monts d’Aree area of Finistere. In Little Paradise, with its hundred square metre lofty sitting room, our single open fire can get through three cords of split logs over the seven months winter hangs around in this neck of the woods. And that is after rationing the fire to evenings only.
As to how much wood that is, it is a bit of a ball of string situation. A cord can contain any number of logs, as it is a measurement rather than a quota. Suffice it to say that a cord is the amount of logs/faggots which would fit into an invisible box eight feet long by four feet high and four feet wide. That is if you have an honest wood seller, of course. As with most things in life, you pay for what you get, and it is a general rule that the harder the wood the better and sweeter it will burn..and the more it will cost. There is a delightful and very accurate poem which describes the virtues and drawbacks of wood for burning, and I particular love the line which claims that elm wood burns like churchyard mould, and even the very flames are cold. A bit imaginative perhaps, but it does have resonance. For those of you interested, I will reproduce the poem below.
In the meantime, we are off to find a cheap, second-hand wood-burning stove. As I write those words, I realise they are self-contradictory. ‘Cheap’ and ‘wood-burning stove’ is a classic oxymoron. At this time of year, any second-hand stoves on sale will be even rarer than that rural French vegan animal rights activist. In fact, ‘cheap’ and ‘second-hand’ are words that do not naturally go together here, but more of that later. The reason for our reluctant decision to invest in a wood-burning stove is primarily that we rent and not own here, and also that we are admitting defeat by buying one.
The arguments as to the vying attractions of an open fire and a stove are several, but basically it comes down for us to an open fire looking much more attractive but sending most of the heat straight up our cavernous chimney, while a capacious stove will blast the heat directly into the room and save on wood consumed, but cost several hundred Euro to buy, let alone fit with al the pipes and metal sheeting required for the chimney. That is why we are off to scour the local depot ventes, though as the winter winds come scurrying across the mountains, the cost factor is becoming less and less a factor...
Friday 24thOctober:
As usual when visiting a depot-vente, we went shopping for one very specific item and came back with something completely different.
The thing one needs to understand is how uniquely the French approach disposing of their unwanted or out-of-date goods. Unlike in Britain, second-hand shops in provincial and (especially) rural France are abut as rare as the aforementioned vegan activist. I don’t know why this is, but it is. You do see the odd bric-a-brac or quasi-antique furniture shop, but they are generally run by Brits (the clue is always in the clever or punny title). In the main, the French dispose of their goods at a braderie, marche au puce, brocante or vide grenier event, or for larger items at a depot-vent or troc establishment.
Very broadly, the first four are either open-air boot sales without the cars or boots, or indoor events at the local hall. A brocanterie may also be a junk or bric-a-brac shop posing as a fine antiques outlet. At a typical braderie, an area of the town will be taken over by those with a piece of old furniture,broken seed drill, wooden leg or WWII German trooper’s helmet ( if not his hand grenade) to sell. As well as a treasure trove of household and agricultural artefacts across several centuries, there will be professional traders playing their wares, the ubiquitous frite vans, and even entertainment acts like a group of locals dressed up as South American pan pipe players, miming to a suitable track from Music of the Mountains part IV (and I kid you not about that). When the French go in search of a bargain or to dispose of the late Uncle Eugene’s dentures, they like to party down as well.
For more serious and specific shoppers, the depot- vente or troc is the place to go. And for all Brit home owners in search of furniture and furnishings.
Depot Vente speaks for itself as to function, while troc is a noun for swap or barter. In both cases, the system is that people bring their unwanted household and garden goods to a warehouse and demand what they see as a suitable price for them. The manager of the depot will then slap on a commission and display the item in a suitable section. There, it will either sell quickly or hang about until the owner sees sense and adjusts the price. What is so fascinating about a visit to one of these depots is not only the range and condition of items on sale, but the insight it gives the foreign visitor as to Gallic ideas of taste, style and sense of value.
I could and often do spend hours wandering and wondering around the average depot –vente, and when you are after something as rare as a wood-burning stove at the onset of winter, you have a perfect excuse for haunting all the local outlets.
We have two prime examples in our area. One is quite posh, while the other is a real people’s palace of bygone treasures and once-loved goods, where you can see anything from an almost complete crica 1980s bathroom suite in avocado to a magnificent 19th century buffet or wardrobe. In general, the bathroom suite will be gloriously overpriced, and the hand-carved solid oaken furniture will be a quarter the price you would be asked to pay in a trendy antique shop in Britain.
This morning, we scoured both premises, fell over at the 500 Euro price tag on a battered old wood-burner without even a flue pipe, and stood spellbound before a bedroom suite made entirely of silver painted bamboo, complete with drapes around the bed depicting scenes from Jungle Book. Wow.
We also literally stumbled across and could not resist a period double-handed tree saw. It is nearly six foot long and must be at least fifty years old, and is one of those impressive rural tools you see being hefted by heavily moustachioed workers in early black and white photographs. The handles are shiny with age and riddled with worm, but can easily be replaced( my wife is a dab hand at whittling), and the savage teeth looked as good as the day they were forged, given a bit of attention with a file and some oil.
Best of all, the asking price was just fifteen Euros. I could see by the look on the face of the man in the cash box that he thought us another pair of Brits who for some strange reason would be painting the blade of the piece of junk black, then displaying it artfully on the whitewashed wall of the former byre we had doubtless paid a king’s ransom to make habitable for humans instead of cows.
Little did he know that the magnificent old saw was for using, not looking at. It will enable my wife and I to keep warm in several ways. The first will be in the cutting down of a goodly few dead pine trees in our landlady’s grounds. We have permission, and though pine burns too furiously and spits like an enraged cat, its big attraction is that it comes free.
The other ways we shall keep warm will be wheeling barrow loads of the hard-won fuel up the slope and to our open fire. A wood- burning stove would be much more efficient and labour saving, but it would cost a great deal more than fifteen Euros...
Beechwood fires burn bright and clear,
if the logs are kept a year.
Store your beech for Xmastide,
With new cut holly laid beside.
Chestnut’s only good they say,
If for years it’s stored away.
Birch and firwood burn too fast,
Blaze too bright and do not last.
Flames from larch will shoot up high,
Dangerously the sparks will fly.
But ashwood green and ashwood brown,
Are fit for a queen with golden crown.
Oaken logs if dry and old
Keep away the winter’s cold.
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.
Elmwood burns like churchyard mould
E’en the very flames are cold.
Applewood will scent the room,
Pearwood smells like flowers in bloom.
But ashwood wet and ashwood dry,
A king may warm his slippers by.
(anon)