Island views

When you live on an island, shopping can be a problem. But when you have braodband and a credit card, it all becomes too easy.
I particularly love buying tools, and my latest online shopping spree was on the Dieter Schmidt fine toools site, a German site recommended to me by our friend Anna Gunter. After months of drooling over them, I eventually forked out a couple of hundred euros and got myself a 2 man cross cut saw and a proper felling axe, both of which arrived yesterday.
Amusingly enough, my chain saw has been off the island for 3 months now, due to combination of dealer who couldn’t get a part, and, when the machine was eventually fixed, bad weather preventing it coming in.
So armed with my new purchases, six year old Theo, Maude (just turned three) and I made the best of a sunny afternoon and headed into the woodland.
There, Theo and I selected two alders and discussed how we would fell them, deciding on a fall path. I explained to him how to put a notch at the base, and tried my hand at doing this with the felling axe, something I had never done before, as I normally use a chainsaw. My first attempt didn’t look very clean, but I was sure it would do the job of bringing the tree down where we wanted it to fall, so both of us sat down on either side of the tree and started sawing, alternatively pulling and pushing, the old fashioned way.
It was surprisingly easy (well, for an extra 30 euros, the saw comes hand sharpened by an expert and is indeed, very sharp) and within a couple of minutes, the tree was lying exactly where we wanted it. In all, it hadn’t taken us more than 5 minutes and while I could have done it in two with the chainsaw, I wouldn’t have been able to have my two children around while I was doing it, and wouldn’t have been listening to the birds either.
But more to the point, there was a great sense of satisfaction in having cut firewood without burning any fossil fuel. Although I will most likely use the chainsaw (when I eventually get it back), to cut the logs to length, considering that a lot of the time is spent removing small branches (which is done faster with a billhook or a small forest axe than with a chainsaw), and carrying the logs away from the felling site, cutting by hand wasn’t that much slower. Theo had learnt to fell a tree properly making sure it falls where you want it too. We both had great fun. It was well worth the extra time.

Christophe

The Taoiseach has stated that Ireland is at a critical point in the development of its economy. (Irish Times, Thursday, January 29, 2009)
Well, for once, I have to agree with Mr Cowen.
Ireland’s economy has started its free fall. That must surely be the most critical point of its, well yes, you can call that development, although I would use the word evolution.
Everywhere the official line, repeated ever so solemnly like a mantra, is “things are bad, but they will get better soon”. “The economy will recover, eventually”. I had it solemnly proclaimed to me by my pension adviser a couple of weeks ago. When I took the time to explain to him that the reason why the economy WON’T recover is that there’s not enough fossil fuel left in the ground to fuel further growth, (this is the reason why I am cancelling my pension plan) he reacted like I was a complete idiot. May be I am, time will tell.
But I am not optimistic. In the long run, with no source of cheap energy to fuel the growth, I really can’t see how the world will escape economic collapse, and my guess is, it’s coming soon.

Christophe