Now We Too Have Firewood

Home Life

As of today we too now have firewood on our balcony, ready to dry over the summer and burn in the winter.
The plan was to meet our landlord at 9:30 am to go wood shopping together. We had collected a list of criteria and tips to get the best deal at the wood market:

1) get a combination of soft and hard woods (beech and oak)
2) measure to make sure it's actually a cubic meter
3) expect to pay in the mid €30's/cub. meter of wood
4) expect to pay €3/cub. meter to get it chopped and stacked at your house

Our good plans will have to stay in the file for another year though, because our landlord showed up at 8:30 am with both the wood and the mobile sawmill unit.

I (Landon) dashed to the ATM for cash to pay the guys and picked up some nylon sacks for hauling wood upstairs. When I came back, Lacey had just returned from her run and the wood had been chopped into foot-long sections. Another friend came shortly after that (9:30 am) and the four of us spent the next several hours bringing the wood up to our 4th floor balcony.

In the end we were all sweaty tired, but in good spirits. We had some good conversations with our landlord about the war and reconciliation with one's enemies. Halfway through the work he asked if we could make some coffee and take a break and we served him US style drip coffee, which choked down wishing it was turkish coffee.

The cost was quite a bit lower than we anticipated, and the opportunity to share a project with the landlord was great for our friendship.

Preparing for Winter Before Summer Even Starts

Home Life

What kind of person would buy several cubic yards of firewood a week before summer begins? Just about every homeowner in Peja, Kosovo.

Huge piles of firewood deposited in front of people's homes were one of the first things that caught our eye when we came here. If you're the type of person who doesn't like winter, it's a scary sight. Winters so hard that people are preoccupied with it in late June? On the other hand, the piles of wood are also a thrilling sight, because they represent foresight, discipline, and planning, which are lacking elsewhere in society. It is common, for example, for people to think that they can skirt the consequences of other decisions such as ignoring utility bills, paying bribes, littering, and waiting for foreign investment to help their economy.

Nobody here suffers under the illusion that firewood can be bought at the last minute or with left-over money. Buying firewood after the family vacation could mean getting stuck with green (wet), expensive wood, and having too little money to afford it! The "principles of firewood" are going to be helpful in upcoming lectures and conversations on leadership!

On the advice of some wise friends, we're also filling our freezer with some produce that is in season right now. So far we've prepared several 4.5 pounds of spinach, 4.5 pounds of peaches, and 6.5 pounds of strawberries.

The firewood will be another blog entry sometime after next Tuesday... that's when we plan to take our landlord to the edge of town where the villagers bring their wagons full of wood. We'll bring the deal home with us where the villager will chop the wood and stack it on our balcony.