Gathering firewood

For many years past, wood burnt on the stove that has kept us comfortably warm through the depths of winter has been olive wood we recover from a couple of the many olive groves on the hills behind our home.

The wood has to be earned.  Oil-olive harvesting practice here is one of simultaneously gathering olives and pruning trees.  The olives are carted off to be processed into oil; the prunings, mixture of leaves, twigs and branches, are left in the grove for subsequent clearing.  From the two groves in which we enjoy rights of common of estovers, in return for our clearing and burning the smaller material we gain all the pruned larger branches and logs.

There is some irony in that, this year during which we hope to leave here to relocate to Ireland, we may well bring home the largest haul of firewood we have ever known.