WoodisGood
A kilometre away from Fair Food on the South side of Bell St, Preston is Fair Wood, CERES’ timber social enterprise.
People come here with either a project in mind or looking for some special pieces of wood to inspire them.
Selling Fair Wood timber is a mix of matchmaking and storytelling – like our food there’s an inherent need inside us wanting to make things and also know where the ingredients come from.
On Saturday a couple planning to install a five metre long timber benchtop in their home walk-in – if possible they want to make it from one piece of timber.
Our option for something as long as this is Elm.
Looking through a stack of English Elm slabs salvaged from a dairy farm in Leongatha, the couple don’t know yet that they’re among the last people in the world to be using this once common timber.
In the past hundred years tens of millions of wild Elms have been killed across Europe, Canada and the US by fungal diseases spread by humans and bark beetles. English Elms in particular have been especially vulnerable.
Australia, and especially Melbourne with its six thousand mature Elm trees lining Royal Parade and the pathways of Fitzroy and Carlton Gardens, has, for now, one of the few remaining disease-free Elm populations in the world.
The perfect Elm slab is of course the one at the bottom of the pile. Elm timber’s interlocking grain will not only make a stunning benchtop but will resist splintering and cracking.
The still pristine Elm dining table in Fair Wood’s lunch room built and eaten off by our carpenters and trainees for the past two years testifies to these qualities (that’s it in the pic above).
Fair Wood is full of rare and special timbers saved from mulchers and bonfires by passionate local sawmillers or grown in tiny plantations by tree-curious farmers – as well as Elm there’s Chestnut, Japanese and Himalayan Cedars, American Red Wood, Western Red Cedar, Mexican Pine and Larch – all have unique characters and their own stories.
Later in the day Mehari wanders in looking for a mantlepiece for his home, he’s the second mantlepiece-seeker that morning. He falls for a chunky two metre piece of Blackwood salvage-milled by pioneer agroforester Jason Alexandra after the Ash Wednesday bushfires razed Mt Macedon more than forty years ago.
Rough-sawn and looking like a blackened railway sleeper, after a dozen passes through Fair Wood’s thicknesser, Mehari’s hunch is confirmed by a familiar dark shimmering, curling, rippled grain that shines through.
This transformation from dusty raw material to something that takes both of our breaths away never gets old.
Mehari pays and leaves, Blackwood carefully cradled in his arms. This piece of timber will sit above his fireplace holding family treasures, its story shared, its grain admired, perhaps for generations.
Like the warehouse WiFi password says, WoodisGood.
Have a great week
Chris
CERES Fair Wood is at 31-33 Raglan St, Preston, we’re open Mon-Fri 9-4 and Sat 9-2
