Sweet sawdust smelling stacks
Last week a delivery of freshly oiled Mountain Ash chopping boards arrived at the Fair Food warehouse.
Made at the CERES Fair Wood workshop from sensitively harvested plantation Mountain Ash, sanded silky smooth and finished with Livos countertop oil, three boards sold that afternoon.
Fair Wood is Fair Food’s sustainable timber selling cousin, the brainchild of award-winning architect and feijoa grower, Paul Haar.
Fair Wood’s mission is to source ethical and sustainable timber from agroforestry farms and from salvaged urban trees that have died, fallen in storms or been removed for road and rail projects.
Located just a few blocks away from Fair Food in Preston, Fair Wood has a growing fan base of green architects, builders and furniture-makers who are using fair wood in house builds, playgrounds, chairs, guitars and even the framework for the Temple of Boom Acropolis replica, currently on display at the NGV.
In just four short years its growth has been amazing – customer demand saw the launch of an in-house Carpentry Service – a busy team of sustainable builders working on everything from timber studios to handcrafted desks.
There’s also been the addition of ReBoxCo, a fabrication enterprise making planter boxes, outdoor furniture, decks, tables, seating pods and café parklets using recycled wood – so far the project has saved more than 80 tonnes of timber from landfill.
The warehouse has also become something of a hangout for furniture makers and DIYers seeking out unique timbers for every kind of project you can imagine – Himalayan Cedar anyone?
Walking around the sweet sawdust smelling stacks (a new fragrance line has been suggested) customers take up Fair Wood manager Hayden Cronin’s challenge to point out any plank, floorboard or slab, upon which he’ll tell you the place it grew, the sawmiller who milled it, where it was dried and finally how it could be put to use in your home or a piece of furniture.
Hayden, possibly the most approachable person in Preston, wants to make working with ethically sourced wood accessible to everyone with a project – he’s as happy talking timber with a first-time table maker as he is with a crusty master builder doing a major reno.
You can find Hayden (that’s him below) and Fair Wood at 31-33 Raglan St, Preston
Their lovely chopping boards are here
Fair Food also sell Fair Wood’s bagged sugar gum firewood – denser than redgum and sourced from Wood4Good’s plantation thinings near Bendigo, this is the most sustainable firewood you can get.
And if you’re into incredible furniture design Fair Wood are working in collaboration with local furniture makers and designers to produce pieces for Melbourne Design Week in May.
So much going on over there.
Have a great week
Chris
