{"id":74,"date":"2009-01-12T07:40:59","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T11:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/?p=74"},"modified":"2009-01-12T07:40:59","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T11:40:59","slug":"timber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/timber\/","title":{"rendered":"Timber!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warming oneself\u00a0by the\u00a0stufa<\/strong> a legna <\/strong>(wood burning stove) on these chilly winters\u00a0evenings\u00a0I have\u00a0plenty of time to contemplate the importance of\u00a0wood in our everyday lives, especially here in the heavily forested regions of Lunigiana in the north of Tuscany.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Italian we have both a feminine and a masculine form of the word for\u00a0wood<\/em>: legna<\/strong> (fem.) refers to firewood, hence stufa a legna<\/strong> (woodstove) or caminetto a legna <\/strong>(wood fire).\u00a0Legno<\/strong> (masc.) on the other hand\u00a0is wood used for carpentry or joinery.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0If you use\u00a0legna<\/strong> to heat your house or for cooking it is important to get the\u00a0right type for the job. There is a science to the use of legna<\/strong>\u00a0as a fuel because different types of legna<\/strong>\u00a0produce different amounts of heat for varying amount of time, and the contadini<\/strong> (peasants), who have a lifetimes experience of wood, select their fuel appropriately.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For\u00a0heating the house one of the best types of legna\u00a0<\/strong>to use is cerro<\/strong> (Turkey oak) which gives a lot of heat and burns for a long time but is, however, difficult to get going.\u00a0It\u2019s good to combine cerro<\/strong>, <\/strong>therefore, with\u00a0faggio<\/strong> (beech) which burns much more easily. Carpine<\/strong> (hornbeam) is another excellent fuel for the stufa<\/strong> or caminetto<\/strong> as is olivo<\/strong> (olive).\u00a0We have been told by some of the older inhabitants of our village that for cooking with legna<\/strong> you can\u2019t beat castagno<\/strong> (sweet chestnut) which burns for a long time but without giving too fierce a heat, hence not burning the food! In order to get the fire started it\u2019s really useful to have a good supply of bastoncini<\/strong> (sticks) and we usually make bundles of them in the summer when\u00a0we prune\u00a0our trees. We often manage to convince friends who have come to visit us\u00a0that gathering dried sticks in the forest is great fun, especially if they have young children who are natural gatherers, although not so keen on carrying the fruits of their labor home afterwards!<\/span><\/p>\n

Last but not least\u00a0the\u00a0legna<\/strong> must be stagionata<\/strong> (seasoned) and asciutta <\/strong>(dry), and you need\u00a0somewhere dry to store it, which can be a major problem. We burn around 60 quintali\u00a0<\/strong>of legna<\/strong> (1 quintale<\/strong> is 100 kilograms or 15.7 stones) during the winter months,\u00a0which\u00a0 takes up a surprisingly large amount of space. <\/span><\/p>\n

The byproducts of all this legna<\/strong> apart from heat is la cenere<\/strong> (the ashes) which need to be disposed of nearly every day. Fortunately la cenere<\/strong> make a very good fertilizer for the orto <\/strong>(vegetable garden), especially for fruit and root vegetables.<\/span><\/p>\n

So much for legna<\/strong> now a bit about legno<\/strong>: From the words fare<\/strong> (to make), and\u00a0legname<\/strong> (timber) comes falegname<\/strong> (joiner, or literally someone who makes things with wood). We also use the word carpentiere<\/strong> (carpenter, from the latin\u00a0 carpentarius, <\/em>the person who built the carpentum, <\/em>a type of wooden cart or wagon). A falegname<\/strong>, therefore, makes furniture, doors windows etc. whilst the carpentiere<\/strong> does larger scale work such as shipbuilding, wooden roofing and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

For general carpentry work abete<\/strong> (pine or fir wood) is one of the most commonly used materials. The material of choice for the falegname<\/strong> in our region\u00a0is\u00a0castagno<\/strong> (chestnut), a beautiful rich golden brown legname<\/strong> with a distinctive venatura<\/strong> (grain) which, if treated well, will last for generations.\u00a0Noce<\/strong> (walnut) is another excellent attractive hardwood used in falegnameria<\/strong> (joinery).\u00a0When we renovated our house here in Lunigiana we used castagno<\/strong> for all the doors and windows, the roof being made with abete<\/strong> supported by three huge tronchi<\/strong> (trunks) of castagno<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of these materials with the exception of abete <\/strong>are readily found in the local\u00a0boschi<\/strong> (woods), and are cut by the tagliaboschi<\/strong> or boscaioli<\/strong> (lumberjacks). The majority of the contadini<\/strong> have their own boschi<\/strong> and therefore are able to heat their houses during the winter very cheaply, however there\u2019s a catch: cutting\u00a0several tons of\u00a0timber, hauling it up a 45 degree slope with steel cables and pulleys, loading it onto the tractor, driving it home and unloading it, and finally, stacking it up and covering it, is very hard work! Whenever we are out collecting or stacking firewood you can guarantee that one of the contadini<\/strong> will come along and utter the well worn adage:\u00a0\u201cla legna scalda due volte, una a farla e una a bruciarla\u201d.<\/strong> (\u201cWood heats you up twice, once when you make it and once when you burn it\u201d). Gia\u2019, e\u2019 vero!<\/strong> (yes it\u2019s true)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warming oneself\u00a0by the\u00a0stufa a legna (wood burning stove) on these chilly winters\u00a0evenings\u00a0I have\u00a0plenty of time to contemplate the importance of\u00a0wood in our everyday lives, especially here in the heavily forested regions of Lunigiana in the north of Tuscany. In Italian we have both a feminine and a masculine form of the word for\u00a0wood: legna (fem.)…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[655,688,778,779,869],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","tag-carpentiere","tag-falegname","tag-legna","tag-legno","tag-stufa-a-legna"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}