Eventually, you do find yourself caring, when you can’t find a single decent bit of construction lumber in the country. Wood in Portugal is laughably bad - the

Eventually, you do find yourself caring, when you can’t find a single decent bit of construction lumber in the country. Wood in Portugal is laughably bad - they cut down all of their domestic stock of commercially viable construction lumber decades ago, and the domestic lumber industry feeds pulp and pellets exclusively, as there’s not much other use for eucalyptus and soft, twisted white pine. Where this then leaves one is with imports - and it appears lumber producing companies sell their waste to Portugal to be sold as the only product available - honestly, everything has huge bark inclusions, pith, rotted out chunks, knots that bisect the entire piece, you name it. Can’t dry it either - leave it loose and it twists through 180 degrees. Strap it and it splits into splinters. Do it slow and it grows mushrooms. I ended up importing everything from Estonia, where they know how to manage slow-growing forestry reserves. People literally came from the local villages to come admire the wood like it was an alien spacecraft - Baltic pine, but nice tight stuff that hasn’t flinched in 40 degree daily cycles.