The elephant's leg

The onset of winter equals a glowing woodburner. Ours is a Godin which was Godawful when we first had it because we had a duffer to install it. First the 'ceiling' of the firebox kept crashing down until I took it all out and reinstalled it. The we discovered he'd put the flue in upside down so we had a chimney fire in the middle of one winter's night. The firemen came, sent the smallest one, nicknamed Olive, over the roof so as not to break too many tiles. The fire chief and I had a jolly conversation culminating in him offering me a load of goldfish. Don't ask. We replaced the burnt out flue and now the Godin works a treat.

In this picture we're burning micocoulier from the prunings of our own tree last year. I have no idea what that is in English but it's a beautiful solid tree with a trunk like an elephant's leg. We kickstart the fire with pine cones from trees in the vineyard - they're the best free firelighters in the world.

Earlier this year I bought ten cubic metres of five-year-seasoned chestnut and oak. It burns beautifully and uses very little to give a ferocious heat, but cutting the metre length iron-hard logs in half makes my chainsaw as blunt as a plank after just a few cuts. No wonder the woodman offered me such a good price for oversized logs.