Spanish views from a small town

Yesterday, the wood chopper was all ours, as we tackled the mountain of logs in front of our house. The mountain has now gone down on one side, to rise on the other, this last being the chopped wood that will dry out before we stack it away for next winter.  My husband and brother-in-law were the ones doing the heavy work of pushing the cut-up logs through the chopper. My daughter controlled the chopper, though I took over for a while before doing the shopping. It becomes hypnotic: push, pull back, adjust for length, push, pull back, adjust for length, etc. From time to time, when the engine threatens to quit because the log is too dense, it's a question of pulling back a fraction to push forward another fraction. That continues until the chopper is through. We haven't finished, though, and at some further point we will have to rent the chopper again. This week, divers harvesting sea urchins found three cannons underwater off the coast of Corrubedo, straight west of here. A res...

Long gone are the days when, with a twist of a thermostat, we could warm the house. Or when, with a phone call, we could order more fuel. Those times remain back in Boston. Here, we have a wood stove. And that's it. While it doesn't warm the house to Boston winter standards, it's still more pleasant inside than outside in the winter. But to achieve that pleasant tepidness, we need firewood. The time to make firewood is in summer. During the winter and spring, my husband scouts woods and dales, checking different plots where trees can be cut. Either that, or calling up a provider, who can bring a tractor load of felled trees to be turned into blocks of wood that will later be chopped. When the logs have accumulated, my husband cuts them into rounds.  Then, in high summer, these past years we've rented a wood chopper. It takes three of us most of the day, during two or three days to chop up all the wood, and leave it to lie in the sun to fully dry. This year, howeve...

To burn or not to burn, that is the question. Or, to be warm or to not be warm. No, I'm not talking about summer temperatures, but of winter comfort. When one's acquisitive possibilities are limited, and no way are you about to install a heating system where you have to spend two months' worth of salary just to keep the house minimally warm during nine months, then you have to do some physical work.  Generally, that physical work falls to my husband. He's the one who takes the tractor and the chainsaw, and brings home the logs. We almost celebrate a windstorm here, because that means work has been simplified by nature downing the dry and diseased trees. This not being the pioneer west, however, and my husband not being the Ingalls' Pa, not every tree is an available tree, downed or not. Generally, my mother-in-law tells us to go cut on her land, since I just have one small lot for firewood. Or, we have to buy some logs.  The logs then have to be cut into smaller...

Many people here carry on the tradition of warming their houses with the cocina económica , or wood stove. Some, like us, can only warm the kitchen really well. Others have adapted it to carry heat to other rooms in the house, much like a boiler does. However it is used, it needs wood for fuel.  Cut up logs can be bought and delivered to your door. You simply have to chop them further if they're too big, and stack them in your place of choice. But some people think that at over a hundred euros for a badly filled tractor, it's expensive. So they, like we, go roaming the woods for firewood. We're lucky. My mother-in-law has a few large patches of woods where firewood can be harvested and then the patch replanted. Sometimes the trees just grow on their own. We also tend to go out after storms, to see if any dying tree has been blown over. We do not go into private property uninvited because there are eyes in the woods. There are also large swathes of common woods, owned by...