Summer sweat, winter warmth

A few years ago some colleagues and I were entertaining a job candidate at dinner when the topic of spousal employment arose, as it so often does. I don't blame job candidates for wanting to know what sorts of jobs might be available in our little corner of Appalachia, but I always struggle for a good response when the candidate asks, "So what does your spouse do for a living?"

"Way too many things"would be an honest answer since there's no one-word label for a man who pastors a small church, serves as a substitute teacher, raises vegetables, and bakes more than 100 loaves of bread each week to sell at the Farmers' Market. This time I went with the whimsical: "He's a woodsman."

My colleagues laughed but they agreed that the label fits Garry like a glove. For the past month he's been donning his woodsman's gloves more often than usual to undertake an unusual endeavor involving a construction project, an auto mechanic, and a huge pile of wood.

This guy we don't even know (or didn't know until very recently) wants to build a building on a piece of hilltop property he owns, but there was a big swath of woods in the way. So he hired a company to come and cut down the trees and take away all the valuable timber, which left behind a huge pile of downed trees too twisted or hollow or otherwise unsuitable to be made into kitchen cabinets or veneers. This pile will have to be moved before construction begins later this summer.

Now the easiest thing to do would be to push that big pile of timber over the edge of the hill and leave it rot at the bottom, but the property-owner balked at wasting that much wood. On the other hand, he doesn't want to pay someone to haul it away. One day he mentioned the dilemma to his neighbor, who happens to be our auto mechanic. "I know someone who heats his house with wood," he said. "Let me see if he wants it."

He wants it.

And so began a complicated process: once or twice a week, our wonderful mechanic leaves his pickup truck and a long trailer parked near the immense pile of timber. Garry drives over there with his chainsaw and spends a few hours cutting the downed trees into moveable chunks and loading them into the truck and trailer, and then when our mechanic gets a break from work, he drives the heavy load of logs down 12 or 15 miles of winding country roads to our house, where he helps Garry toss the wood off the trailer. Garry then spends the rest of the week chopping the wood and stacking it so he'll have room for the next load.

So far they've brought over enough wood to get us through a good part of the winter at no cost to us--except for time, sweat, and lots of iced tea. (The men provide the time and sweat; I'm in charge of the iced tea.) I'm not sure what our mechanic gets out of the deal except a lot of wear and tear on his truck, trailer, and back--plus the satisfaction of knowing he's helping both us and his neighbor. But I know what my husband is getting out of the deal: a good excuse to play with his chainsaw and toss around big chunks of tree that will heat our house this winter.

They say wood warms you once when you chop it and a second time when you burn it, but right now we're enjoying the warmth that comes from cooperation and companionship under the hot summer sun. Three times the warmth from one pile of wood--that's a deal that can't be beat, and it wouldn't be possible without a working woodsman in the family.