Wood

I read an short article in the Hallingdølen a while ago. The last two exceptionally cold winters have changed the firewood buying patterns in Hallingdal. People are buying firewood earlier and in larger quantities that they used to.

Once again we seem to be fitting in well with cultural traditions. We bought most of our wood a month ago. Rather than having someone deliver it we hitched up the trailer behind Damae's Syncro and drove halfway to Ål to pick the wood up ourselves. We bought a one thousand litre pallet, and some sixty litre sacks. The sacks filled up Damae's Syncro quite well.

The firewood merchant placed the thousand litre pallet on the trailer and we strapped it down before driving off. "That was easy" we thought until we went over the first bump. The plastic netting holding the wood onto the pallet was just too weak to hold the stacked firewood together. We had to spend ten minutes re-arranging the wood in the trailer and covering it with a tarp before we could drive home. We'll do it differently next time.

We got home and then spent a half hour stacking our wood ready for winter. Another autumn task out of the way.

We had one other learning experience: wood appears to be significantly cheaper per litre if you buy it on a pallet instead of in sixty litre sacks. We thought we were getting a bargain. However, the sacks are hand filled whilst the pallets are filled by a machine. Hand filled sacks actually contain more wood per litre than machine filled ones, hence the price difference. Well now we know!