How to Turn Wood into Bread

Zack Forray   
January 11th, 2010

Two winters ago, my wife and I finally decided that our old iron woodstove, as dependable and romantic as it may have been, needed to be officially retired from service.  The door wouldn’t latch shut, which meant that we couldn’t leave it burning when we weren’t home, and that we couldn’t completely overcome our paranoia about burning down the house when we were home.   After some hemming and hawing about our options—we’re skilled hemmers and hawers—we decided to follow the growing number of New Englanders who’ve replaced the smoky crackles and pops of cord wood for the cleaner and more mechanical churning of pellets.

Our new pellet stove has done the job ever since, but there was one thing we failed to consider when we first made the switch: the gigantic pile of split, dried wood that was left over.  All of a sudden, it had gone from being the vital fuel we depended on to keep us warm, to a large and lingering eyesore that took up half of our garage.  Even more frustrating was that our shortsightedness had become contagious.  My wife’s parents, jazzed by our idea to step into the 21^st century with an efficient heat source, took things a step further by installing their own bigger, flashier pellet stove where their fireplace used to be.  So now, there were two families in the same town that had turned their healthy wood stockpiles into something obsolete.  And so, our giant woodpile sat untouched in our garage for two years—a total waste.

Or was it?  We couldn’t just throw it away, but surely there had to be some other more useful way of getting rid of the wood.  After all, if one person’s trash is another’s treasure, imagine what our outmoded resource could mean to someone else.  After some investigating, my father-in-law discovered that a local bakery was always on the lookout for quality dried wood.  None of us knew the first thing about the price that could be fetched for such a thing, but it didn’t matter, because an even better idea arose: what if we traded our wood for bread?

At first, the idea seemed to carry the potential for someone to get scammed.  On one hand, I felt guilty about the idea of getting bread—something I happen to value greatly in my day-to-day life—in exchange for a pile of wood that I’d been more or less ignoring for the past two years.  On the other hand, I wondered if maybe the bakery was getting the best of us, taking a valuable commodity off our hands in exchange for, well, bread.

Nevertheless, we went ahead with the plan, and after several months, both sides are still reaping the rewards of our bartering.  Every week, my wife and I stop in for a complimentary fresh loaf of bread.  And every week, we’re greeted by the smile of the bakery owner, as if to reemphasize her gratitude for a quality supply of wood that is harder to come by than we might have expected.

Maybe I’m just easy to please—what could be more satisfying than a warm loaf of fresh bread?—but the experience has made me think about the other ways that I might benefit from bartering.  After all, every person has a skill, or a resource, or even a personal ambition within which another might find value.  In the end, who’s to say that a free guitar lesson isn’t worth a free oil change?  Maybe the barber who cuts my hair would appreciate a container of the latest stew I’ve cooked up, and consider a trade.  These are the sorts of things that may seem little in our lives, but we all know that cliché about the little things.  And why stop there?

It may seem a little far-fetched, but sometimes I imagine the day that I live next door to a physician.  On this imaginary day, I knock on my neighbor’s door and offer to mow his lawn with my tractor or, if it’s winter, clear his long driveway with my snow blower.  In exchange, maybe he’s so kind as to listen to my lungs to tell me if he thinks my asthma is under control, or even to just recommend a good set of stretches for a lingering hamstring injury.   We don’t worry about insurance or co-payments, and our exchange doesn’t take place because one of us thinks he’s getting the best of the other.  We’re just trading our services—not such an intangible idea.

And that’s what I love most about our arrangement with the bakery; it allows us to assign our own value to both what we have to offer and what we need.  There was never a moment when I went out to the garage to count the number of logs to make sure that I was getting a good deal, just as I’m sure that the bakers aren’t keeping track of the number of loaves my wife and I have received, itching for the moment when they can cut us off because we’ve used up our credit.

I suppose that one day our supply of free bread will come to a polite end, but I’m not too concerned.  I’m sure both sides would agree that it has already been well worth it.

Zack Forray is the Original Content and Editing Director at yobo.

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One Response to “How to Turn Wood into Bread”

• Robo says:

  January 16, 2010 at 4:21 pm

  I love this story Zack – as a baguette baker and as a founder of CitizensMatch, a commercial barter exchange for social change, I can say that you’ve captured the essence of local trading: trust, relationship, valuing, and local. Thanks for your story and bon appetit!

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