Windfall

A neighbor now in her 80s told me that when she was a child in Co Kerry, every child in the parish would be up bright and early the morning after a storm. The storm would bring down tree branches and children would race to find them and get them home before someone else did.

I decided to follow this tradition this week and took my handcart out of storage to go forage for windfall timber in the aftermath of hurricane Katia which brought high winds to Ireland on Monday September 12th. Unlike when my neighbor was a child I had lots of time to find and collect windfall timber as no one else bothers.

Picture is a load of ash collected about 400 meters from home. Not a huge amount of firewood but it only took about 10 minutes and a little effort to collect it. On top of the load is my bow saw which I used for the job. For a small job like this the bow saw is far quicker than the chainsaw, it does not have to be fueled and started like a chainsaw.