And Now, After a Brief Hiatus..
I just can't face Facebook anymore. Fake news, idiot memes. It sucked all the energy from my Blog so I have decided to return to blogging. Hard to believe that it is old school now.
Deep November, the Mud has finally, mostly frozen over. That's a huge relief. The snow is now streaming heavily heavily Westward past the kitchen window and I am almost looking forward to it.
I still don't have the Winter's wood supply in. We need approximately 10 cords for the house and Green house and I only have about a cord and a half. And were starting to burn that in ernest. The bright side is I have all the wood I need on the property. Acres and acres of it. The downside, I suppose, is that I have to get it to the Wood shed.
Mostly it is bug killed Pine. We are 10 years, or so, into the scourge and we have been through the red phase, where the needles turn red, to the black phase: all the needles have fallen, the trees are dried to cracking and any wind is starting to knock them down. I have a couple of very large ones that are down and just need to be cut up and hauled to the wood sheds. Having a log grapple on the skidsteer makes the job quite a bit quicker as I can just bring ten foot logs to the sheds and cut them up there.
It saves one round of lifting firewood size blocks. All progress, I have been told is made by lazy men. Thanks to an old friend, Randy Andrew for that one.
The log home we live in is mostly heated by a wood stove that sits in the middle of the main living area. We also have a large wood burning furnace and electric backup. Using the electric, forced air side, is convenient to keep the place from freezing up if we go away, but it's like burning money. We use the wood furnace when it gets below -20C as we can load it up.
I cut our wood rather short, around 14 inches. That way it can fit in the upstairs ( second story) wood heater.
I have been looking into Rocket Mass Heaters, and will try one out in the green house. They offer astounding energy efficiency which translates to less wood required.
I have tried burning Poplar. It's abundant on the property, not know for it's BTU's, but we have plenty of it. The trick seems to be to keep it off the ground as it sucks up water like a sponge.
As our main wood burning occurs on the floor above the walk in basement it was quite a chore to lug the weeks wood up fourteen steps so I jury rigged an elevator from a handcart and 110volt winch. Makes bringing the wood up easy. And injury free. We're testing the Alpha version which uses the wheels to crawl up the side of the veranda. Next version will come through the floor, like a wood butler
She's hoisting a treasure. That's a load of fir! One of the old trees that was used to support an outbuilding and fell down in a windstorm. Waste not, want not.
It has been a very busy week. When isn't it? Finished an online Permaculture course through the Oregon State University: Intro to Permaculture Design. A very eye opening and thought provoking course. Permaculture is going to be a big part of our farm.
A quote from Bill Mollison: "Tho the problems of the world grow increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarassingly simple."
Let's keep it simple.
Deep November, the Mud has finally, mostly frozen over. That's a huge relief. The snow is now streaming heavily heavily Westward past the kitchen window and I am almost looking forward to it.
I still don't have the Winter's wood supply in. We need approximately 10 cords for the house and Green house and I only have about a cord and a half. And were starting to burn that in ernest. The bright side is I have all the wood I need on the property. Acres and acres of it. The downside, I suppose, is that I have to get it to the Wood shed.
Mostly it is bug killed Pine. We are 10 years, or so, into the scourge and we have been through the red phase, where the needles turn red, to the black phase: all the needles have fallen, the trees are dried to cracking and any wind is starting to knock them down. I have a couple of very large ones that are down and just need to be cut up and hauled to the wood sheds. Having a log grapple on the skidsteer makes the job quite a bit quicker as I can just bring ten foot logs to the sheds and cut them up there.
It saves one round of lifting firewood size blocks. All progress, I have been told is made by lazy men. Thanks to an old friend, Randy Andrew for that one.
The log home we live in is mostly heated by a wood stove that sits in the middle of the main living area. We also have a large wood burning furnace and electric backup. Using the electric, forced air side, is convenient to keep the place from freezing up if we go away, but it's like burning money. We use the wood furnace when it gets below -20C as we can load it up.
I cut our wood rather short, around 14 inches. That way it can fit in the upstairs ( second story) wood heater.
I have been looking into Rocket Mass Heaters, and will try one out in the green house. They offer astounding energy efficiency which translates to less wood required.
I have tried burning Poplar. It's abundant on the property, not know for it's BTU's, but we have plenty of it. The trick seems to be to keep it off the ground as it sucks up water like a sponge.
As our main wood burning occurs on the floor above the walk in basement it was quite a chore to lug the weeks wood up fourteen steps so I jury rigged an elevator from a handcart and 110volt winch. Makes bringing the wood up easy. And injury free. We're testing the Alpha version which uses the wheels to crawl up the side of the veranda. Next version will come through the floor, like a wood butler
She's hoisting a treasure. That's a load of fir! One of the old trees that was used to support an outbuilding and fell down in a windstorm. Waste not, want not.
It has been a very busy week. When isn't it? Finished an online Permaculture course through the Oregon State University: Intro to Permaculture Design. A very eye opening and thought provoking course. Permaculture is going to be a big part of our farm.
A quote from Bill Mollison: "Tho the problems of the world grow increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarassingly simple."
Let's keep it simple.
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