George East's Blog

Burning Ambitions

November 9th:

It is a truth universally acknowledged by all owners of log - burning stoves that there is no such thing as free wood.

Like lunches and love affairs, there is almost always a hidden cost to pay.

In theory, all our winter firewood comes gratis, as we are lucky enough to have our lovely landlady’s permission to cull the dead pine trees in the three acres of woodland surrounding Little Paradise.

Finistere has pine trees like other counties have grass, and the foresting of every available hectare in the department coincided not unsurprisingly with the arrival of a EU tree- planting subsidy. Farmers and land owners competed to squeeze the most pines on to any otherwise useless bit of land, then generally left them to rot. The sort of pine trees most common here grow very tall very quickly, then die from the ground up. In our patch of woodland there are many dozens of pines reaching up to fifty feet, and a good percentage of them are technically dead. A strong wind could cause them to topple, which is why the owner is happy for us to cut them down and chop them up.

So far so good, then. We clear the dead wood, and our reward is free heat.

 It takes around 7,000 split logs to see us through a long winter here in the Brittany mountains. That would cost us around five hundred quid’s worth of euros, and the thought of saving that sort of cash for the outlay of a few gallons of sweat and perhaps the odd lost finger was most attractive. Until we started counting the true cost of all that free wood.  

Our first chain saw imploded after a month. The English expat dealer who sold it to me said it was because I was using it incorrectly, but I think it was just not man enough for the job. In truth I think it was a hedge trimmer in disguise rather than a full-on ferocious tree destroyer. So we took a deep breath and bought a proper job in the shape of a second-hand but top-of-the range model, as seen in those TV documentaries about butch blokes clearing whole forests in Montanna in the space of a single afternoon.

But with the fearsome tool came other expenses for which I had not allowed. The machine gets through more petrol than the average 4/4 gas-guzzler, and needs constant attention in the shape of regular and expert repair and maintenance, such as chain sharpening, declogging and the replacement of broken bits. During the summer and autumn I sometimes saw more of the owner of our local chain sawery shop than my wife, and Patrick and I have become close friends.

But, at a rough tally, the cost of our friendship and his goods and services, the write-off of the old machine and the purchase of the new one comes out at about twice what I could have bought the same amount of wood for, and without getting out of my armchair.

But then as my wife says, a year’s subscription to a gym would have cost at least that sort of money - if there were a gym in this neck of the woods. And how many couples can say they have brought down and sliced up the corpse of a fifty foot fir tree while a lot of people their age would be pleased with managing to cut the grass at regular intervals?