Hora est. It’s time to go. With these words, the owner says goodbye to the 25-year-old apple tree, a Stark Earliest. The tree gets one last hug and a kiss. “You have to say goodbye in a dignified manner when you take down a tree,” he says.
Working with fresh wood makes you look at trees differently
My most recent supply of fresh spoon wood came from an orchard, from a small apple tree that languished there in too dark a place and eventually had to give way. It is now cut up into neat pieces of one meter long. The wood is hard and has a super fine structure. The pieces are nice and straight and without too many knots. Slightly yellowish in color. Nice wood to carve.
Look at trees differently
Working with fresh wood makes you look at trees differently and you see much more than just a supplier of wood. You also see the conditions that shaped the tree and thus the wood. Weather, wind and the proximity of other trees. The role the tree played. Food production for humans or animals, the tree at the village square, the row of trees along the old canal. The walnut tree in the barnyard.
Tribute
I don’t like to see a tree cut down, and certainly not just for some wood for me to carve. But if the tree does have to give way, I always try to get some wood to turn it into something beautiful. As a kind of tribute to the tree.
The wood of the tree gets a new life as spoons, butter knives, jewelry, hairpins, coasters or clothes pegs. Beautiful utensils that find a new home with someone where they are used and cherished.
5 ways to find wood
It is not often that I am offered a complete tree. Usually I find smaller pieces, pruned from trees that can remain. Do you want to cut spoons yourself, but you don’t know how to get suitable wood? In the next blog I will tell you 5 ways to get fresh wood.