Life goes on - Summer 2023

Pure wood-burning poetry mr SteveU :smiley:

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Frosts the last two mornings. Cool days.
Makes for time to use up my sack-cubes of woodshed floor scrapings.

First make a shallow hot char bed with real wood splits:

Place the tightly rolled double up sacks-cube on to that hot char bed and get the paper sacks flame burning. This heating will generate tars usually glueing the outer particles in the cube-stacks:

Keep aired fed flaming-combusting to then char the surface particles:

Cut the air back to minimum and cruise along on with slow released out heating for the next hour and a half:

Later all gassed out; and mostly consumed down; level it out, and put another fuel sack-cube on top. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.


Ha! Ha! What is inside the fuel sack-cubes:

Bark chunks. Wood chunks and splinters. Wood and pitch dusts off of the woodsplitter. This one, like the last one, needs more woods dusts in the mix to tares glue better.

Smokless out of the chimney. A bit different smell than pure clean wood.
I used to rake-up and wheelbarrel all of this stuff out into ground holes and along walking trails. But dry fuels just laying there. Inside. Under cover. Just begging to be used. I just had to develop a technique to use it as-is.
9 sack-cubes generated this year. Two half days of heating.
As said: 75% of everything is developed experiences.
And only DOing makes experiences to learn from.

“Waste-Not. Then Want-not”
Steve Unruh

Edit add: Another day; a better sacked mixed with more dusts fines and it tars better holding it’s shape better:

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Nice going charbeds you have there Steve- its been so hot over here on the east coast- i had to leave my fan on low to stay cool last night- we got about about 4 more days above average heat clear up in central michigan area-looks like your new camera working great- mi old camera would have only showed a blinding light.AND my neyber tried to sell a fire place incert at the local auction- and if i had not put a bid on it-it would have sold for about 8 bucks after sale charges- gess were all sick of winter wood heating up here in michigan.

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Little nip in the air just north of you as well Steve

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Rambling on all kind of topics, woodgas is still my main interest. Here is my cooling/filter tower for the Drizzler/open top experiment. Still not working how it supposed to work. this can only bubble up in a messed up mind like mine. So, there is progress, slowly but coming.

In the back wood for the Atmos, no time to light it. Pelletboiler from Kovan is taking over :slightly_frowning_face:. Pellets are bought, mmm, maybe connect the heatpump again and tweak it a little…first things first, work

Eight weeks until the vacation and still six units to deliver, ducting included. A few silo system for EPS, ha, no sleep…

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You betcha’ Marcus; wood for heat rocks!
40F/4C this morning. Hopefully though the air flow is supposed to shift from the NW coming directly off the Gulf of Alaska to a more eastern wind flow from out of the continental center.
Supposed to be 70F/21C. here late afternoon.
Back to the really hot stuff 90F+/32C+ ( hay making and gardens growing) in 4-5 days.
S.U.

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Forgot to snap a picture but my little pomegranate tree is doing great! I love how the leaves are red when first budding out, then mature into a green. The main sapling had died and didn’t grow back after winter, but two new shoots have naturally coppiced their way out and they’re already at the height of the old stem. I guess this winter I should stuff hay into the cage I’ve set around the sapling. I put the cage around it so nobody mows it down or steps on it.

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Yup it has been cold hear too in East Wenatchee, in the mornings. But dry clear skies, warming up to the 80’s °f by 12 O’clock noon. Winds blowing in the 10 to 15 mph. And gust up to 25 to 30 mph. No need to put any heat on in the house, we just let the bright yellow orb in the sky warm things up.
It is a good thing The YEHOVAH Almighty God gives us all this energy it gives off for free. We would all be broke if we had to pay for the energy it gives us every day. God is so Good to us all.

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My late father said many times “starting is half the work” ,…


IMG_20230601_203140

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Excellent work Obelix :grinning:. That red machine is just for show. Stara kamena, i really like that.

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Let me guess, you were bored after beating the master Japanese swordsmiths craftmanship, and now you are trying to beat the egyptians by building a better pyramid. :slight_smile:

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That is so excellent Tone. I wish I could work on that with you. I love working with stone. That first set of stones to the far left of the picture is perfect. Cement Mixer? Are you laying that wall up in mortor

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Tom, welcome to the construction site, there is no shortage of stones here, I “fight” with them all my life, sometimes the stone wins, and sometimes I, well, but in the end I have to humbly admit defeat and adapt to it. Here I see how he mercifully returns to me, and I look at him and observe him, he is an incredible material that lasts.
As you can see, I prepared the sand, now I’m mixing the concrete, which acts as a binder and filler between the stones. :grin:

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My Great Great Grandfather Stamey was a stonemason, he built a few churches that are still standing today in the mountains near Boone and Asheville. He also did some work for the Vanderbilt family. I’ve always admired the skill and patience for stonecutting, it’s been around before mathematics were ever considered.

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Often times rock-free and stone-less lands have different problems unresoveable. Be just too energy exspensive to overcome:


June the 2nd and what I’ve photoed in this morning killing frost in the best patch of ground that we own.
Wife’s German-American Grandmother grew fodder beets in this ~1/2 acre strip after the drainage ditch was improved. For her dairy cows. Ha! Otherwise in a rainy months of March and April water pooling-flooding, southward draining, passing through here from higher surround up-valley lands.
The soil here is settle-in 8-12 foot thick deep, and rich with NO ROCKS!

Wife’s Father invested into the small AG tractors and enough equipment to seed and grow hay here. Those grasses are not frost sensitive.

Three decades later along comes son-in-law Steve and I worked some of this up for vegetables. Potatoes. Tomatoes. Beans and such. Frost killed in mid-May. Replant. Frost killed again early June. Re-plant again. Weeks growing and maturing lost by then Then: too soon Frosts here again in the last week of August, or first week of September. Corn-maise killed; drying beans and Tomatoes killed before full maturity.
So really as Grandma Minuth used it this patch only able to grow brachalius type vegetables here.
So back to the folks rocks and stones cleared, 10 foot higher, 400 feet away garden patch. Only 12-14 inches of soil on top of more rocks, than not up there. Back to that patches soil bugs and spores built up problems. Just too damn labors expensive to de-rock and set up there (four to six weeks longer frost free) for a good three years patch-use rotation scheduling.

Just as Curtis Stone says re-locating; you get to then pick your problems (challenges!), you will be fighting. No place will be perfect.
Ha! Why we are moving. To be up on the top; instead of the nightly air settling drainage. At the top then you can more easier drain down away earlier for the heavy Spring rains. Then like my local up on the valley sides, neighbors; I too can grow figs and popergrantes too. Maybe. Just maybe even have their peaches every 3rd-4th year too. Maybe.

This mornings dogs walk-around breakfast table gleam for the ladies:


The white daisies obvious. Right for this time.
The green leaf spray and the single left hand pink flower are wild rose. Just right for this time of the year too.
The yellow flower are creeping buttercup. Non-native invasive. Grasers will starve themselves not eating these.
The right hand centered light varitigated purple flowers are “Flags” Easter Lilies. Graser animal toxic. A full six weeks later then they should be bloomed out.
Out blueberry bushes flowering also a full six weeks late. Just 100 feet and 3 feet higher than the 1st picture area. Not Spring post bothered. Early autumn frost makes for sweeter berries.

Only living true Rural can you see, and experience learn, these things. Able to truly judge the upcoming season by natives plants.
Urban and even dense Suburban living the buildings, paved driveways and sidewalks isolated from too much of this. They change the nightly cooling down. They change the settling air flow patterns.
Steve Unruh

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Yep. My only full sun gardening spot is also in a frost pocket. So far, had our last frost 5 days ago. Now I am trying to get hundred of indoor started plants in the ground and it’s sunny and high 80’s F and I can’t tolerate either so I have to rush down for a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening to get anything done. I often think it must be so easy when you can plant in late march or early April like the youall, biscuit and gravy folks do but then you have the heat and humidity and bugs. Not for me. We adapt to our environments. Frost is not a mortal enemy. Bad soil, rocks and stones, too much rain, not enough rain. All just something that takes a little extra thought and effort. Well worth the effort for the freedom it affords. No interest in being Old mother Hubbard.

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You just need better tools! I am of the belief that egyptians had far more advanced tools then we give them credit for, or we don’t give them enough credit for long hours of boring, menial work. Either way! You got this! You are almost there, you already have the excavator!

Actually this video may be closer to forging. It is patience and soft blows (and good tools of course) Now I need new tools and to find some rocks. :slight_smile:

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I’ve never used a rotohammer to work stone. Just seems sacrilegious somehow. The old time stone masons first learned to read stone during their apprenticeship. Their only job, long before they were allowed to pick up a mortar trowel, was to split rock for the journeymen. Stone tells you how it can be split. It has a grain, like wood. Just like the Japanese wood craftsman let the wood tell him what it wanted to be, so does stone. Properly read, many stones will open up with just a few hammer blows. Other will reveal their secrets with a little time in a fire but that is a risky move because just a minute to long and you will have a pile of stone crumbs. Some stones are like people and just to stubborn to do anything with. Stone is a gift from God. Strong and beautiful.

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Ski in the back is my old 750 pro. Finally restored and 800 two stroke now. Wife gone shopping, kids everywhere but home and the press is sold for good money. Enough is enough. Gonna jump high tonight.

No more projects, time for woodgas

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Woodgassed jetski?
Bridging probably not a problem but you’d need a big condensatetank. :joy:

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