GOOD TREES – BAD TREES 4

I learned to iron clothes with flatirons heated on the top of a wood burning stove.  These stoves had metal plates  over the fire which could be lifted off to provide instant flames to boil a kettle quickly, although usually kettles, frying pans and cooking pots received sufficient heat through the heavy metal. Every day the top of the stove was shined with a combination of mutton fat and black shoe polish. Cakes and biscuits were baked in an oven heated by the wood burning in the firebox at the side. Every cook quickly learned to regulate the heat by the size of the wood selected to use that day and the type of wood available. Every baker learned to gauge the temperature of an oven by placing their hand in the oven to feel the heat prior to putting the tin or dish on a higher or lower shelf.

Ironbark, a form of hard Eucalyptus, was the favoured wood of most cooks. It burned slowly, giving off a steady heat. Importantly it burned away, leaving very little ash or coals to be cleaned from the firebox. There were times when my mother only had Brigalow wood, but this was also considered a good wood, although it burned more quickly and hotly. The cooks of those days adapted their cooking styles to the type of wood available. It was often a matter for scolding when the cook discovered her wood box empty and no man available to split more wood for the stove. As a joke men would say they were giving “The Missus” a new axe as a Christmas present.

Nowadays, I only use wood for heating purposes. Here on the Granite Belt we have cold winters with most nights in June, July and August dropping well below zero Celsius. The weekend clientele of guests visiting the district during the winter months demand cottages with a wood fire.  It is a novelty they enjoy. We have two big combustion stoves in our main house and individual stoves in the four self-contained apartments. In years gone by we purchased Ironbark wood, already split, from one of the many suppliers in this district. There are several old trees, many of them already fallen, throughout the open pastoral country. Wood cutters pay the land owner to go on to his property, cut these trees into sizable portions with chainsaws and then deliver it to the purchaser. It is a seasonal industry.

When we decided to remove so many trees from our garden in August 2008, I wondered if we could utilize the wood, rather than create a bonfire.

Storm damage

These trees along our entrance road are an ornamental Ironbark from Western Australia, mostly grown for their beautiful silver foliage and pink blossom.

Ironbark blossoms

The decision was made and the trees were lopped. A word that describes this process is pollard. I was familiar with the term poll as in poll cattle who have had their horns removed, or like Poll Herefords have been bred without horns. It was only this week when corresponding with Julie Spicer at the St. Merryn Community Gardens in Cornwall that I read lopped trees are called pollard trees in England.

At my request the McNicholl Brothers reduced the logs from all our removed trees into short portions.

Radiata pine wood

My wwoofers stacked them in several heaps to mature into dry firewood.

Stacked firewood

By this winter the wood was dry and I decided that we would burn it in all our fireplaces.

Aged wood

Now the question – how would it burn?

Good wood – bad wood.

As I expected wood from different trees burned in different ways. Wood from the Radiata pines and the willow trees burned quickly, giving off good heat and creating little charcoal. These are the woods most appropriate for starting a blazing fire, but this wood didn’t burn slowly enough to maintain an even heat in a warmed room, or continue a fire throughout the night without the need for stoking, the beauty of aged Ironbark timber.

We had a large quantity of wood from the various forms of Eucalyptus trees removed from our garden, so I hit on the solution of starting off our fires each morning with pine or willow wood, then adding chunks of the various Eucalyptus woods, sometimes burning both types of wood at the same time.

The Eucalyptus woods burned more slowly, but they made too much ash and often smothered their coals. This has meant that I have to clean a bucket of ash and coals from my wood fires at least twice a week. I was reminded then of the way in pioneering days whole forests of Eucalyptus trees were felled and burned to create charcoal which could readily be transported to the cities for domestic use. Also in many third world countries land has become eroded because the forests on the land were destroyed to create charcoal, a salable product easily transported.

Not being one to waste a resource I discovered the solution was to remove the ash from the charcoal and return this cleaned coal to my combustion stoves.

Charcoal

As a way of shaking the ash from the charcoal I used a former insect screen door. In an earlier post I showed how I used this door as a shade cover over summer vegetables and also to prevent my cat and dog digging holes amongst the vegetables.  I find many ways to recycle waste household items in my garden. The ash can be worked into my compost bins and the charcoal returned to a clean firebox. Once lit it burns away to ash.

Meanwhile, what became of the pollard Ironbark trees? They have bushed out nicely and will soon be flowering again.

Ironbark trees

Wildflowers, wilderness and wine

Fay’s book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine is available on http://www.australia-book.com.au

This book is an account of a year in her life with Eberhard managing a busy Bed and Breakfast home in a wine tourism district in southern Queensland, Australia.

Fay is also publishing her book The Forgotten Ones free to her readers on http://fayhelwigauthor.com If you have ever wondered what it was like to live as a child in Germany during the 1930’s and then be drafted as a teenager into the Germany Infantry to fight a war, you can share Eberhard’s memories of his experiences by reading The Forgotten Ones.