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A Living for One

THERE ARE A FEW RHYTHMS to the Pittsboro-Moncure community, and those of us who have been around long enough plug into all of them.

One of the rhythms is set by BLAST, in which everything is electronic all the time. Another is set by a series of cell phone providers, the coverage of which tends to end on the Pittsboro-Moncure road. Whenever my signal is lost, I know I am getting close to home. The oldest rhythm is none of the above, and does not even include the telephone network.

Nobody telephones Wilbur the Woodman when they need firewood. The way we order a load from Wilbur is to visit him at one of his usual haunts. He might be selling pumpkins off the back of the truck at the dog wash on Hwy 87. Or he might see you at the Jordan Dam Mini-Mart and hand you more collards than your family could eat in several generations.

“Wilbur, I’m glad to see you.”

“Good, good, how are you? Good, glad to hear it, good.”

“We are cold Wilbur. We need a load of wood.”

“I have some. I can get it to you. You know you are blessed to have a roof over your wood. Not everyone has that.”

“Can I get two loads?”

After which you wait. He might come the next day. He might come the next week. There is no tracking number, no “Thank You For Ordering” auto-reply, and no invoice. You pay Wilbur when he comes, and if you arrive home at night and find two glorious loads of wood stacked in your shed, you pay him later, when you see him.

I probably should note that I am a big fan of wood as an energy source, and have visited the subject many times in Energy Blog:

Revisiting Wood

These days we are anticipating cold nights ahead, and among other things, our thoughts turn to heating the greenhouse.

Last year we tried to fire a waste oil burner on vegetable oil and biodiesel, but we never got it working properly and lost a greenhouse full of bedding plants. It was heartbreak, and a big setback for the farm.

This year we have decided to install a woodstove. Firewood is something we have in abundance, and there are a bunch of us around who have plenty of experience heating with wood.

The other day I found myself in conversation about North Carolina’s electrical mix, and I mentioned the 4 megawatt wood fired generator over in Craven County.

I always include them in my thinking because they are the state’s largest renewable energy installation.

And I was cautioned not to think of wood as renewable.

Whoa. If wood is not renewable, we are in deeper trouble than I thought. I know it is fashionable to think of trees as “the lungs of the planet,” but as someone who heats with wood, I prefer to think of them as batteries. They sequester the carbon, which I release with fire, to keep my family warm.

I spent one summer in the timber business. After Hurricane Fran decimated our place, I built a swimming hole with a couple of friends. My role was on the chainsaws.

I would liberate twelve foot rounds, and skid them up into piles, which we would then ship to market.

I would fetch one price for a load of southern yellow pine which would go to the construction markets, and another price for a load of gum which would go off to pulp and paper. My highest dollar load was hickory, which went off to be made into pallets.

Most of America’s hardwood goes into making pallets. We need pallets to ship “stuff” around on.

And as anyone who has ever run low on firewood knows, pallets make for great heating.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m going to leave wood on the renewable side of the energy ledger...

One of the people who operates on the same wavelength as Wilbur is Screech. He lives at the Bus Farm on the Lower Moncure Road, and the way to do business with Screech is when you bump into him.

Screech is an accomplished builder of greenhouses. He helped build the one down at the Land Lab at our local community college. And he has rescued more than his share of derelict greenhouses over time. He built our greenhouse at the biodiesel co-op, supervising some volunteer energy along the way. On the surface, with his grey beard, ponytail, and distinctive voice, he does not appear as an “expert.” But he is. He’s an experienced expert who is also a man of action. I have done a handful of transactions with Screech, and all of them have come to fruition.

One time I found myself at the Pittsboro Farmer’s Market without enough money to pay for my large bag of wares. I sheepishly turned to Screech, who was selling lettuce off the back of his truck, and he agreed to pay for my market run. He took the top off his coffee can and fished out twenty bucks.

“Thanks, Screech — you know I’m good for it — at least this early in the month…”

The day Julie threw in the towel on her and Leon’s hardware business, she called my cell phone. She was exiting the hardware business to open a florist shop a few blocks away, across from the County Jail.

“The fire sale is on, Lyle, you go down to the store and pick out what you want and come talk.”

I took the call on Hank’s Chapel Road, on a Sunday, while driving the Dodge pickup truck into town to do some work. I was glad to be in the truck, and glad for the diversion, so instead of swinging by Piedmont Biofuels Industrial, I headed for Julie’s abandoned hardware store.

When I arrived I found Screech working in his greenhouse, which had long stood in Julie’s side yard. I was delighted to bump into him since I needed a tractor moved. He has a big diesel pickup, and a big trailer, both of which exceed my trailer moving capacity, so I started the conversation by seeing if he could move a tractor for me.

He seemed demoralized. He was spraying bleach out of a spray bottle onto rough cut two by fours.

After we came to terms on the tractor move I said, “What are you doing anyway?”

At which point he launched into a long tale of woe. I knew he was an expert on greenhouses, and I knew he sold “rabbit food” at the farmer’s market, but I did not know his story.

Screech is a heating and air conditioning man by day. He read a book once that said there was money to be made by growing hydroponic lettuce. He wondered about that. It caught his imagination so hard that he resurrected Julie’s greenhouse and gave it a try.

The business went something like this: Check the plants in the morning on the way to work, check them again at night, and come in Saturday morning to move the plants around.

Screech played the game for awhile, started producing some beautiful lettuce, took out a stall at the Pittsboro Farmer’s Market, and was off to the races. He developed some loyal customers, produced a miraculous product, and was well on his way to testing the book’s assertions that a profit could be had through this activity.

It all looked like it was coming together, until the Town of Pittsboro passed by and sprayed herbicide in the ditch right next to his greenhouse. The intake fans on his greenhouse vacuumed up their poison and destroyed his crop. And his business.

When I bumped into him he was starting over. That meant replacing every poisoned pipe, and trough, and spraying things down with bleach. He was not in high spirits.

“Why don’t you move in with us, down at the biodiesel plant,” I said. “We have room for you, and we don’t spray.”

“I can’t. Julie owns part of the greenhouse,” he said, dejectedly.

At which point I drove down to the florist shop. Julie is a former model who used to appear in suntan oil ads. She is beautiful, and smart, and appears to have been in business all her life. When I showed up at her new florist shop I said, “I’ll take the greenhouse.”

She smiled, and indicated that she could not sell that because of Screech, who was a co-owner. I explained that I would buy her share, and jump in with Screech and all that was involved in that.

And I offered her a dollar.

“Lyle, you know I love you, but this isn’t about love, this is about business. I have money in that greenhouse, and I need it back.”

At which point I asked her how much she needed. To which she replied. To which I responded, to which she agreed.

I left her florist shop, ran down to the instant teller, came back with a stack of twenty dollar bills, and became the proud owner of Julie’s share of Screech Owl Greenhouse.

Screech wasted no time. He tore down his existing greenhouse and moved it over piece by piece to our biodiesel plant. He erected it — with some help from volunteers along the way — and he was back in business again, almost overnight.