This reminds me of a time Roger, our 75-year-old Breton neighbor, volunteered to help me cut up the fallen tree limbs in our park area.  I was to cut them up with a chain saw while he hauled away the branches and stack the logs.

Chainsaws make me nervous.  I have heard the horror stories of cutting the wrong branch that would release another branch and knock the chainsaw right into the person.  So I was cutting the wood very timidly standing as far away from the branches as I could.  I looked more like I was performing a jackknife dive off the high board than cutting wood.

Roger quickly became impatient with this and finally took the saw away from me.  He was instantly transformed into Yoda with the lightsaber.  I could not keep up with him and was totally out of breath by the time he finished.  I was half expecting him to blow away the smoke like a gunfighter in a western movie.  All he said was “et voilà voilà”.  These country farmers put me to shame they are in such good shape.

Park Area Where Roger Helped Me Cut Up Wood

Cultural note on Central Brittany:  Coppicing

Before electricity and fuel for furnaces finally made it to Central Brittany, cooking and heating was all done with wood from one’s own property.  Thanks to coppicing they had an endless supply of firewood.  Here is how it works.  You cut down a portion of your trees (in our case, chestnut and hazel).  The trees that are cut will regrow from the stumps and will be harvested again in nine years.  With a nine-year rotation, you never run out of wood.  “It seems that trees that are coppiced can live almost indefinitely.  There are regularly coppiced trees in existence which are believed to be several thousand years old”1.  We recently had to thin our forest out because a huge windstorm in 1988 knocked the entire forest down and each stump produced anywhere from four to eight new trees.  Like I said we should never run out of firewood.

All is quiet here at the Bed and Breakfast.  This gives us a chance to catch up on work that is left undone when we are busy entertaining guests.  We are now cleaning up the gardens.  Valerie has trimmed back all the hydrangeas.  Next month Roger will return to show us the proper way to prune our apple tree.  That should be interesting – especially if he is transformed into Yoda again.

This year's Winter Project

You can check us out on our website:  www.bretagnebb.com.  A la prochaine!

1.    Central Brittany Journal January 2012, page 20.