"Farm" Site Made Woodfuel

[SteveUnruh]

Well folks a sad tree-growing end to this particular property.
That ass-wipe niegbor I refered to above kept up his harassment to me with 2-3 false accusation police call outs.
My wifie got too nerveous this would evolve between him and I to v-e-r-y b-a-d outcome.
This reason, and 3-4 others ($2200 a year in property taxes; US markets now peaking at high-bubble for another 10 year meltdown slump; proposed additional future tree harvest restrictions by my now-gone Green county, etc.) caused her to put this property onto the open real estate market. This was her land from her parents by will pre-dating our marriage. My veto to retain one ( the highest, best drained) of these got nullified. Sigh.

She got a willing buyer. He has now just finished de-stumping this ~10 acres. Eventually be 10; slightly +/- one acre house lots. Evens out for us. Drop five adjacent neighbors who wrapped this property. Pick back up five different new neighbors abutting our remaining 8 acres once fully built out.

I ended up getting induced to be the 7 days night fire-watch man for the 100 stumps at a time burn pile.
Shocked ya’ with that one, eh?
Yes. Still could legally be done. Takes a four agency allowance signing-off. State Department of natural Resources issues the very conditional Forestry Burning Permit. The State regional assigned Fire Marshal inspects and assigns the designated burning site. (they wanted to do this in four piles - - he dictated allowing only on pile) He also directs the time of year. Nov/early Dec are our wettest times. Everything is soaked now doen to as far as you would care to dig. Local Fire Department monitors for compliance and any problems like wind and such. Southwest WA Clean-Air Authority can shut down for too many smoke complains. Or a regional air inversion.

So since I began this topic with this properties with tree-mass yield numbers; I will finish with these too.
~3,000,000 pound of bio-mass was left on this property in the tree stumps and roots systems. The Caterpillar D8R and 5800 series LinkBelt track-hoe only would have jerked out of the ground maybe 2/3 of that. This is wet-wood weights.
This was all recycled back into the air (where it originated) by first open air burning to char, then that stump evolving surface char burn up to atmosphere CO replenishing. The remaining mineral ash pile originated on this land from roots system up-taking. Stays on this land. A 15 foot high by ~60-70 foot in diameter cone of it. Ha! Yes with a 40-60 degree slope.

The alternative would have been to bring in a big trailer mounted tub grinder. Been weeks of full RPM multi-cylinder big diesel engine fueling of then to get it all ground up. Taken weeks of operator track-hoe running to feed it stumps. Move the tub grinder around from made shred piles. Lots more Cat operating time to spread out the shred piles.
So, lots more from-Alaska north-slope oil; or Persian Gulf oil, needed to get this done. And be years rotting that woody shredded ground covering down to soil capable to make household yards.
Tried experiences here; proves all of this.

I did salvage two of the not chemically damaged re-plant DF’s to be our Christmas trees this year. The rest were Cat stump holes leveling near-surface buried into the soils as a natural soil builder.

So I a bad not-CO sequencer?
No, I am.
I greatly minimize the plastics carbon+oxygen in our buying. I wear as much as possible wools, cottons, leathers and now even hemp.
Still, the plastics creep into out lives, eh.
What they will take in Recycle, I/we, do. News blurbs now saying that too much of that gets out-of-continent shipped on dead-heading back ocean shipping cubeage. Diesel expened to collect. Diesel expened to compact ans bale. Diesel to ship it gone-and-away.
No certainly at all that it is getting re-purposed previously in China. Now from here going to Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, and others. Just what is happening to it?
So anymore I feel no hesitancy putting all of the discard plastics in out lives to be landfilled.
After all. The oils/fossil coals CARBONS in these DID come from the ground. Sequestering the made plastics back into the ground is just putting it back. Keeping out of the gullets, of the wildlife. Keeping from outflow dumps in 3rd world countries, Then out into the oceans.

You young’ers watch. Just about the time consumer plastics are made truly biodegradability; the still cheap raw makings for plastics will source depletion bottom of barrel scrape and then from price jumping we will finally go back to using metals, glass, wood products like true cellophane for our “stuff”. Materials that do have high recycling, re-purposing rates.

Todays plastics just have too many chlorine, phosphate, formaldehyde, fluorine, and base/rare metals (in the colorants/inks/dyes) to be safely burnt or gasified in my opinion. Air pollution craps we will all get to breath in then.
I will not do this. I will not participate in this. Will not help others develop for this.

I am still deciding if our remaining 5+8 acres of treed land grown; re-planted; in-growing still makes me a “tree-farmer”.

Steve unruh

[Bobmac (Robert Mackey)]

Once a tree farmer Steve, always a tree farmer, now you can say I’m a retired Tree Farmer.
Bob

[Wallace]

I started to burn my contaminated paper waste products last year.
I think much of this was diverted to waste because its not clean paper.

Then I thought maybe its OK to burn the clear plastics with no recycle marking on it.
This would also include packaging blister packs not just food grade plastic.

I just thought it was better than going in a hole in the ground…
You have made me rethink this Steve.
I won;t burn anything anymore that is plastic at all.
But I am not happy about the fact so much of this is non recyclable.

I shop a lot at this store.
https://www.bulkbarn.ca/christmas/
They offer a weigh your container service and reuse.
You bring in any type of jar or container and they will weigh it and let you buy their bulk products without having to buy new packaging.

This is the way things should be.
I just wish they sold cleaning supplies this way…

There should be an environmental charge for all packaging recyclable or not.

Quote Steve
" And be years rotting that woody shredded ground "
This product is basically fertilizer ( potassium nitrate, probably from a south American nitrate works/mine… bat shit no joke … )

It feeds the microbes that eat wood to speed up decomposition.
maybe there is a less oil intensive way to eat up waste biomass and stumps.
I looked at the piles of wood waste a block away from my home where they are clearing land and saw all this chipped and part chipped wood.
I salvaged as much birch and maple as I could for myself.
BUT if you were to add something to speed decomposition like the Potassium nitrate to the stuff left to rot I bet it would return to the soil much faster than just being left as it.
within month of the clearing some was already starting to decompose.
Nature could do this more effectively with just a little help, even if we had to add some external energy.
The faster these nutrients are returned to the soil the faster that can be reused by other plants.

[Jeff (Jeff Davis (Erie, PA))]

SteveU, I can understand how you must feel! No one can stop progress except progress it’s self. No one wants tree farms, they want subdivision farmers.

Plastic, I just read that plastic helped make the American dream come true and I though it was a nightmare.

I enjoy using my Noodlers fountain pen that is made by an interesting individual. Yes, mostly plastic but the type that decays in nature. I think some kind of vegetable plastic. Feels somewhat warm to the touch. Can last a life time or possibly two. One can make your own ink but for now I’m enjoying his ink. However, it takes some skill and maintenance but the feel of the nib and ink flowing across the junk paper we have now makes it extra worth it.

Remember the one thing they can not take away from you is your ingenuity!

[SteveUnruh]

Hi guys an evolved update on the single huge ash pile I described above from forced burning of 600+ plus tree stumps.
At first it was snow-cone shaped rounded top with heat still rising. For PNW locals like Mt Saint Helens before she blew out her guts&top. More ash grey-ish than any other color. With a few protruding out charcoal blackened stump legs. You could smell the releasing CO, CO2 because of the high percentage of then non-open flame releasing near-clear hydrocarbons.

The weather then biased to rain, and more rain. Four inches in 24 hours. On/off days of 1/2 inch to 1 inch. Two different windstorm fronts came through kicking up the char burning heat consummations. More hollowing out slumping down. The original old Mt Saint Helens snow cone shape evoked down to first a hollowed out center, even with a north side bite out like the just post 1980 Mt Saint Helens.
Surface appearance changed from any grey to red. This red somewhat fused clumped minerals.

More rain washings. More evolving out tree stumps that had gotten fast burn ash covered up before consumption. These still tunneling out burn-gasses releasing.
Now a hollow ring with a current in-center hump of dark red’ish crumbly deep sub-soil appearance and black char chunks.

Earth and air; to trees. Back to Earth and air almost completely. And the solar energy stored to make the first transitions; quick released, versus decades slow rot released.
S.U.