Friday 14 December 2012

Square logs - frugal friday fuel foraging

So, having the new house has one lovely advantage (aside NOT hearing the current gales) - it has a woodburner and for that I need wood. As Ian pointed out, an odd choice on an island with no commercial forests, however us islands are very frugal and forage for as much free wood as we can. So our logs tend to be square or rectangular rather than round and aren't they gorgeous, only I can truly get so excited by the sight of chopped up waste wood. Mainly firewood in this house comes from recycled pallets, fencing stobs (posts) and drift wood. These are hauled home by some means or others, often legal, and then zapped up in the garage into handy firewood. Its seriously my favourite job ever. Seriously big tubs of fire wood!! I'm very excited.
 And, being the 'island' girl that I am nothing, and I mean nothing gets me as excited as a well stocked wood pile. All the better if its free and foraged. Now I can go and buy 'posh' logs at the garage or the local hardware store but at a hugely inflated price, as there are no wood mills or forests here - all firewood is imported which means we pay a much higher price for it. So truly it makes more financial sense (and its more fun) to go a 'foraging' for it locally. And its comes in pretty colours too, you don't see blue posh logs now do you?
 After the saw has been buzzing for an hour or so I've filled a couple of massive tubs full of wood for the coming weeks. I love chopping up wood - and after the main logs (all square or oblong) I get the axe out and make our own kindling. Again you can buy kindling but why buy what you can spend a bit of time and effort on.
So that's my efforts towards saving some pennies and getting excited by waste wood helping us heat the cottage. A pallet nets over 15kg of wood - which is alot of logs, time well spent. And, I get the fun of chopping both the logs and the kindling too, whilst getting covered in sawdust.  Whilst I use to be scared of the noise of the electric wood saw, now its one of my favourite jobs! Perfect, so that means a hot shower and a cosy fire to sit at, feeling very noble at my efforts. Those are my logs those are, I tell everyone who comes. I'm quite the firewood bore.
 
Yes serioulsy there not much I don't enjoy more than seeing a huge stack of rather weird looking shapes and sizes of 'logs' and knowing I've got them for free!
 
Pop over and see Robyn for her frugal friday spot for more inspired ideas and if you've some of your won why not join in. I'm sure it will be more excting than my 'free foraged fuel'!

15 comments:

  1. SOOOOOO Jealous of your woodburner - it had best be chilly enough to need it lit when we're up! xx

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    1. I'm sure there will be enough of a wind chill factor to allow us to burn some free wood! Fear not.

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  2. we live on a small island on the eastern side of vancouver island in western canada and, too, have a lovely woodburning stove for our winter heat .. more fortunately for us, besides logs on the beach, we have forested land, mostly lots, which are sometimes de-forested to build homes .. often newbies to the island don't have woodburning stoves as their main source of heat, and so aren't necessarily interested in the trees they take down to make space for building .. that's when the rest of us gather what we can .. and are sometimes given .. and so, as i sit here in the warmth of our woodstove, reading your blog, i admire your tenacity in gathering wood .. oh, and i, too, love chopping kindling .. great to come across your blog ..

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    1. Jane how lovely of you to pop by! And how lucky to have such large trees given from folks who build houses. On an 'almost' treeless Island we have to be a bit inventive here, beaches are well walked in search of wood of any description. and, if folks come up from south, the cries of what can we bring you are often returned with WOOD! Please!

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  3. Free firewood is great :)

    Have given Anglesey Allsorts a link to your blog as she as looking for somewhere that supplied seeds in small packs - I know you have done this in the past- are you still supplying?

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    1. Free is always good isn't it Dreamer - gives me more money to spend on seeds and plants!

      I do still supply seeds in smaller quanitities I'll see if she gets n touch. Otherwise I might just introduce myself :) thanks

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  4. Hiya Fay,
    I read your post after a day splitting and stacking firewood. It's my favourite job of the year, but I really only do it because I'm paranoid about being snowed in with no electricity, and I know that having an ample supply for the woodburner is the only way I'll keep warm and get a hot shower....
    Now my question is, why don't you burn peat, since you have no trees and more than enough peat? It does fine in my woodburner - though you need to fiddle with the settings -and the aroma is unbeatable! (well, we differ on this, I know)

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    1. Ah Kininvie - we're wood chums - that's quite nice to know. Its truly my favourite job - well that and perhaps weeding. We're mainly electric here - so if the power goes we have no heating or cooking, so a stove is a must! Although aside a kettles worth of water, we'll probably not be showering if the powers off. Folks get too reliant on electricity.

      I do often burn peat too - we have to buy it, but the smell as you say is divine so we don't disagree there at all. I don't have rights to a peat bank here, whilst the midges arrive late, making peat cutting a bit more realistic I don't think I've the stamina these days to cut peats. Although I did in the past.

      These days the peat is bought in, as fuel and of course as Malts.........another fine way to warm yourself on a winters day.

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  5. Ah, good to see you share my love of the electric saw, though I have to say that TNG has been doing most of the log chopping here. Do you worry about burning wood with paint/varnish on? I get paranoid that it will release noxious chemicals... Am now seriously torn between chopping up my pallet for wood or keeping it to build things with. Dilemmas, dilemmas...

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    1. I had a paranoid fear of the wood saw as the noise was so scary. But actually I'm proud I've conquered my fears! I don't worry too much about burning wood with paint or varnish on, I know I should but I don't. On the one hand aside the bright blue pallet I try where I can to forage for untreated pallets. However, needs must a closed fire and hearty blustery winds dissapate the smoke quickly. I try to think about the 'miles' normal firewood will have travelled to get here and salve my mind by reclaiming what's here for fuel.

      And the chopping up dilema or building - hmm if pallets are decent enough I'd always build - they have so much potential - however - ours are generally 'end of life' soggy, war torn, wind and salty rain destroyed beasts who are glad of a last warmth before they head to the great pallet heaven in the sky.

      I like therefore to send them off with suitable gusto!

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  6. In Sweden, we had a big circular, 3-phase saw thingy that simply ripped through the logs we got. There was, of course, forest surrounding us and loads of fallen trees each year which can be had for the taking, though it can be tricky dragging them out of the forest to roadside/trackside to haul home. Still, loads of free fuel can't be bad. The blue logs look most festive!

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    1. The haul home is often a killer isn't it be it beach found, skip salvaged or forest fallen.

      My saw is not so butch as your one sounds! The blue logs are quite surreal - quite Scandanavian in their festiveness I feel. I just don't think about the 'e' numbers in the wood!

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  7. I confess this is all a foreign language to me, living in Southern California; I've never seen a woodburning stove in these parts. But family up in Washington state do enjoy those on a cold winter's day, week, months... I worry there are chemicals in those blue logs of yours that might not be healthy to breath when they burn? But free is always good...and the fun of the hunt is something too...enjoy your lovely fires!

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    1. Sara thanks - the wood is safely burnt at a high temp in a closed stove so I'm hopeful we won't be exposed to fumes mostly we try and find untreated wood. The blue pallet was rare in its nature. The colour so strange I felt it needed noted! I'm sure in Southern California the idea of a fire would be strange. Here the winds are great and the climate quite damp and it chills your bones. Free hunting for wood is one of the passtimes here. I guess possibly a bit like spotting rain clouds where you live? Probably just as infrequent, but perhaps not!

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    2. Yes, I think spotting rain clouds might be a good comparison! Though not lately as we've had an unusually generous amount of rain lately....though I think our idea of "rain" would be laughable in your part of the world.

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