A yearly redemption...
Every year, I tell myself to order firewood early, like before the Commie Holiday of May 1. And, before I know it, I find myself in September or, even in October, staring at a large tractor with a strapping Italian lumberjack at the controls… think Robert Mitchum in a sweat-stained green athletic T-shirt… carefully backing a lumbering four-wheel beast down the back ramp… occasionally slipping on the muggy cement to the gasps of any and all spectators, ie me… to dump the load, unceremoniously, at il Poggiolo’s back door. This year, I have managed to have the deliveries arranged for this week. Took a month and a half. Ahhh, the adversities one encounters on the organisation plain. Nevertheless, A Victory for My Side. No time to rest on my laurels, however. There’s work to be done. Two loads. 20 quintale each. Ugh? A bit of Math… 1 quintale = 100 kilos. 20 quintali, then, = 2,000 kilos. THAT’S A LOAD TO STACK… TWICE!!! One was delivered last Monday. I laboured for two days…. ALL BY MYSELF!!!… to get the firewood off the street behind il Poggiolo and into the dilapidated legnaia… a lean-to shack for storing wood protected from the rains but, open to the air to dry out green wood into burning wood. A kindly neighbour came to help me towards the last gasp of my solo act. And I thought he was a tired old prune of a man. He’s since been elevated on High in my esteem.
I am awaiting for the second consignment, as I write. Normally, I order one load and seek to make it last the Winter for the two fireplaces at il Poggiolo… one in La Casetta and the other in L’Appartamento Azzurro, at the opposite end of our Tuscan farm-house complex. We are sprouting new fireplaces and the need for firewood is urgent. I hope to cut by half or, more, the exorbitant gas bills despite the modest use of the radiators down in our Winter HQ, La Casetta. The bi-monthly bollette are sporadically delivered to my letter box at Number 62 by the dog-fearing La Posta Mistress in a White FIAT Panda driven at not less than a million-zillion kilometers per hour. She leaves any mail at a distant neighbour’s letter box OR, at the Scuzzy Bar, for fear of our Puppy. C’e’ un cancello, signora! Il cane non puo uscire. Non c’e’ pericolo. My words lost to the winds of her quick get-a-way. Then, no one tells me that they are holding my bollette, etc.. I am always late paying. However, it may not be entirely her fault. I have my street address as via Comunale, 62. Surfing Google Maps the other day… I wanted a screens shot of Il Poggiolo from outer-space for a previous blog post… and when I zoomed in close, up popped the name via Alfredo Ricciotti. Who he? Absolutely no idea. No one tells me these things. I suppose I should be grateful to Google Maps for updating their info… from outer-space? I will have to make changes to my amazon.com account. But, the couriers leave my packages at the Scuzzy Bar. So much for deliveries.
Stacking wood is an art. I lack the expertise. I know you are supposed to alternate the pieces to wedge them to lock in place. What with the current July Heat & Humidity and my age, I feel fortunate I can get the firewood up to its resting place, much less add my engineering contribution to the art. It would be helpful, however, for visual purposes, if all the firewood were a similar shape & dimension. Mighty hard to wedge when you need triangular pieces over tiny rods of wood. The later do fill in holes though.
So much for art. The key is to NOT DO IT ALONE!!! The work goes double quick if partnered. I could not find the Local Guy, who is more than willing to do odd jobs. I was inured to be a solo act when, lo’ and behold, Branco, the octogenarian who gives the Horroscope on Radio RDS, said I would have a Tuesday when I would meet the right person at the right time. On my way out in the car with The Dog for him to de-populate a forest near my preferred bar, I ran into the Local Guy. He had already been informed of his usefulness, when the strapping lumberjack stopped to chat with him on the way back to cutting more firewood. The rest of Tuesday deteriorated. Never mind. Booked for the second consignment, the Local Guy and I knocked off the 20 quintale in about three hours, unfortunately under a searing sun and grotesquely tropical humidity. We drank tons of H2O.
My… and our efforts are demonstrated below. I do think I have a je ne sais quoi ability for alternated chaos. and wobbly rows. Hope they stay how they are laid. One careless touch and… I have provided frontal and side views. The picture in the middle is an example of my preferred method with firewood… toss it in and be done. Quite a pile, ne?
Living in a small Italian village in an 800 year old farm-house, for instance and, kilometers from the sprawl of our modern civilisation, is not for the weak of heart or, of body. Heavy lifting is involved. Tugging & pulling too. Toil & sweat soon to quickly follow. Stacking wood is just one in the long series of annual chores on The-house-and-garden-in-the-country calendar. Most of them fall in the months from February to April, if you can get them all in. I lag here. Mostly alone, I must slog into the months of May & June too, when it’s either rainy or, B***DY F**K**G HOT & MUGGY!!! Then, I rebel. The Dog follows my lead. We remain inside La Casa Grande where it is COOL BLUE and dare not entertain a minimum thought of poking our noses outside from Noon to 6PM. It’s an oven outside then. When I must labour about, The Dog is my assistant. He lays in the shadows of a mulberry tree to watch me expire into an Anglo-Saxon pool of perspiration in a dirty white T and cargo pants besmirched with sweat.. And that before 10AM in the morning. Yes, I am not a lover of Heat OR, Humidity. Give me Winter, give me Fall. Give me a blazing fireplace and the Cold outside is not a worry.
Stacking wood is one of the major tasks. It requires your personal attention and participation. Many try to delegate but we… The Strong & Bold… scoff at those ninnies. Many are Americans or, Italians from Milano. Need I say more? My English Friends in Codiponte…. he’s 88 and his lovely lady is 77, do their firewood stacking… by themselves. Like clockwork too. Exemplary wood-stackers. They’re English. And, many of my Italian & German Friends scattered throughout the Lunigiana do their firewood by themselves too. Less like clockwork but, accomplished with their own hands. Well, one dear German Friend does indenture guests to help out, but are rewarded with a fine dinner. All, mighty in vim & vigour. They know stacking strengthens body & soul. It is an accounting. A reparation. A redemption… from the COLD!!! No desire to mention Sin. More a proclamation of ownership, of being il padrone. Delegating just means you can point. Big deal. Nothing more. Pointing AND doing is an expression of authority, dominion, possession. Enough said.
Now, if you will excuse me, I must go up and get started with delivery Numero Due, just dumped.
Firewood, a done deed...
Archive post November 16, 2018…
The beauty of stacked firewood.
The outsized tractor and its outsized driver, the 6’-5” Log Man, drive cannot pass through il Poggiolo’s back gate. Meant an artful backwards descent to dump the firewood at our gate on what passes for a public street in Codiponte. Deed done, there was one anxious glitch: the tractor almost couldn’t make it back up and away, so slick was the street. The Lesson Learned: no deliveries after the end of September, when the sun shines no more on the street to our back gate.
Firewood...
Archive post November 15, 2018…
I just can not get it done right. It’s firewood, for cryin’ out loud. How hard should it be to have a pile of it cut & delivered at an anointed moment? June. Before Summer’s heat. The Summer temps can dry the logs out. The log’s Destiny is to be burned from October to March. Yeah! Last year, however, I had a fire going until late May. Unpleasantly cold until the 20th. Then BAM!!! Instant Extreme Heat Wave. Good to have enough lumber available for any games the weather decides to play. Not its fault. Year in and year out, I seem to manage a log delivery six months past that May due date.
Wonder why? Well, I feel I have cause here to blame out-of-control situations beyond nominating my own dramas. I will anyway…
I was slammed… this word it the latest import from America to say… I’m really busy. Its use has sidelined… Thanks to The All Mighty God… the 2nd most obnoxious American expression to be kicked across the Atlantic… awesome. To be truthful, I did have a lot of work following the re-construction of a client & friend’s hillside fortress. The slammed part came from all the stress of a lot of work following the re-construction of a client & friend’s hillside fortress. There’s a lesson somewhere in there. No time to find it. I digress.
Due to the very unpleasant circumstances circling My Puppy’s recent attack upon a neighbor’s cat involving unscheduled night-time meetings and telephone calls to the day-time visits by the local vigili… basically, traffic cops with extra duties towards the maintenance of the public order. Stuff like… Why aren’t your dogs on a leash? Well, because we are on woodland walk, Sir. I volunteered to have a protective fence installed around the perimeter of il Poggiolo’s ample and maturing quite nicely garden.
Simple infrastructure project collided with all sorts of delays: extreme heat, the gardener’s prior commitments slowed by the extreme heat, I hadn’t had time to cut the hedges to facilitate the installation of the fence, even more extreme heat. It became evident that the fence’s uncertain construction might impede the critical and important log delivery, tentatively schedule before construction. The inopportune delivery of logs would have put quite a crimp in blocking il Poggiolo’s back-entrance for the two guys come to build Safety-for-the-neighborhood. I was apparently the only participant carrying the gauntlet of Hope. As time moved forward, both ambitions seemed to evaporate into a non-happening.
How quickly the months of July and August slid by with each tear of a calendar’s monthly page. No fence, no wood. Others hindrances rose on the horizon: the vendemia in September… a hit & run for a couple of days… joined mid-stream in the month of October by the insanely labor-intensive olive harvest.
My Lord & Master, Dr. You, who was ecstatic about the log delivery delays. Not keen to lug, load, and stack logs, when he could happily lay out by a friend’s mock-infinity pool instead. Could he really be blamed? You was insistent on giving the fence priority but that was relegated to the Italian penchant for patience in the face of adversity or, delay.
Here we are in the middle of November. The fence has been rescheduled for January 2019. The weather is sunny. Afternoon temps are warm. Might we have a Go! for wood? Yes! The 6’-5” Log Man called last Tuesday to say he could deliver the firewood on Wednesday afternoon. Great! Helpers booked. Legnaia prepped. Tarps and wheelbarrow at the ready. At 3PM yesterday, with the Helpers leaning on things waiting while the time-clock clicked, I called the 6’-5” Log Man. Where are you? It’ll be dark soon! He bellowed back that his tractor had broken down and he could not reach me by phone to tell me. Can we do it tomorrow? Ma certo! Everyone sent home. For tomorrow is another day!