Winter sooner than you think

Won't be long before winter 2020/21.

Angie has been bumping into our chief forester almost daily while out riding. She happened to ask if he had any piles of firewood for sale & sure enough he was able to show her one. She had no idea how much & roughly guessed - the forester marked it with everything to the right of the blue vertical line on the top photo but said we could take as much as we wanted from - €25/m³ but needed to be cleared fairly quickly as he had to work out how much work he had for the chipper contractor.

The pile was relatively good in that there were quite a few good 4-metre lengths of decent looking quality. Some may ask why it was deemed to be firewood rather than commercially sold - to some extent it is simply because the lengths & diameters didn't fit the standard measures used in the business. A standard 4-metre log actually needs to be 440cm long, but as I was to find out later, I think much has to do with the "inner" quality and I have no idea how this is established. Simple things like seeing the inner part is rotten or the rings are not circular is easy but the pile seemed to be mostly OK. Only later when splitting the 1-meter logs did I find out how incredibly twisted the trees were. I also wonder if there is a connection between this twisting & the fact that almost all the harvest this year has been storm & snow damaged trees.

Set to work & managed three trailer loads of 1-meter logs, each about 0.8m³ before the back started to feel the strain. Luckily I have never suffered from regular back pain, only when kidney stones are playing up & like today when working for a long period with heavy things & using unusual movements. It's work I actually quite like & although I didn't need it today, the wood gave off the first dose of "warmth" - the next will be the splitting, sawing & stacking and finally the burning.

Have to include a shot of the Alps which are yet again covered in snow. Weather is due to turn bad tomorrow with lots of rain & cool! Third highest depth of snow at this time of year on Germany's highest mountain since records began 120 years ago.