Improvised Kiln-Dried Firewood

A brainwave today has I hope made some huge lumps of ash burner-ready well in advance of their natural drying time. I was burning a load of old papers, credit-card slips etc, in our garden incinerator - one of those holey dustbins with a chimney in the lid. I balanced some of the big bits of ash on the top, turning them regularly to avoid them setting alight, though they still scorched a bit. The results are quite pleasing - the six pieces feel dry enough to burn without worrying about clogging the chimney with moist deposits. 

Don't for goodness' sake try this on the burner itself btw - I did an experiment, monitored very closely, and within a minute or so the wood on top showed signs of smoldering. Round the sides, a few inches away from touching the burner, is in my experience fine, though I always feel better keeping an eye on things. 

Years ago holidaying in a gite with friends at Easter we dried a couple of substantial logs at the side of a big open fireplace. Every night the other guy and I struggled to light the fire, to much comment from our wives. When we asked if they could do a better job on the last evening they more or less set a match to the by then dessicated logs which burst into flame as if soaked in paraffin. So drying's worth the effort. 

On Trees and Losing Them

Yesterday as we drove to our allotment we passed along a street where some fine old trees have just been cut down, trees with trunks a couple of feet in diameter. Our guess was that they had been removed because they were warping the pavement and trips and falls were filling the pockets of ambulance chasing lawyers. So the aspect of the area has been changed for the next several decades because of a fear of litigation. The street looks like someone given a razor haircut against their wishes.

Is it hypocrisy that one of the things we went to do on our plot was cut down a tree? In that case it was a pear, a substantial tree perhaps 20 years old, but that in our seven years there has only yielded one decent crop, in spite of much TLC - manure, sticky bands, pruning... Most of it is now in the allotment shed, one large bag brought home and put in our wood-store. That tree was also shading too much of our land, and our neighbours' land, and we had the foresight to plant a small cherry tree close by two years ago with the idea that the pear would go sooner or later.

Will the local authority plant replacements on that now bald street? Or will they think it too much effort (and cost, and future cost)? Their thinking about trees it seems is mainly what the possible dangers are, however unlikely: a few years back some other fine specimens, laurels of some sort I think, were removed from a park here because they were close to a children's play area, and the leaves contain a poison. After the felling it was pointed out that just to get a bit of a poorly tummy a child would need to eat several pounds of the leaves.

Death of the Ash

This post is not in any way meant to celebrate the forthcoming slaughter of the ash trees across the country as the dreaded die back fungus takes hold. The sad prospect of large numbers of trees being felled and then burned does prompt a question or two about what will happen to the wood. Does it have to be burned under controlled conditions? If so, what are they? Or will there be a sudden glut of ash firewood on the market? If the wood from trees felled to beat (some hope) the fungus does make it to market, will wood-burner makers see a sudden upsurge in business with prices for the fuel falling?

We have been given a portion of our neighbour's ash that came down recently, only fair as it came down on our nearly new shed. It is usable when green supposedly, though we intend other than with kindling to leave it  until next year's burning season. And it splits really easily, even huge slices across the bottom part of the trunk can be broken down with a few lusty blows of my somewhat blunt axe. Our greenhouse, empty at this time of year of plants, is currently full of netting sacks full of the wood in a variety of thicknesses, from chunks that will burn for an hour to kindling via firewood sticks, the hope being that the wood dries more quickly in there. It's an ill wind and all that.

Free Firelighters

Well, firelighters that are free if you prepare them while cooking a stew.

Somebody told us the other day that lemon and lime skins when dried out slowly make good firelighters. Sounds odd, but when you think of how hard a lime forgotten in the fruit bowl goes, it makes a bit more sense. We tried it, and it works a treat. One fewer thing  to compost, but free firelighters seems like a good enough trade off.

I have to remember two things here - one not to throw the juiced halves in the compost bin; two to put them in the oven when a stew is being cooked. Not too hard, and they smell better than those white petroleum-wax things too.

Wet, Wet, Wet

I visited Henry Rowntree on his farm near Gisburn today to do an interview - I have a piece to write for Lancashire Life on his Aberdeen Angus herd and his environmental work. The most sobering point we discussed was the effect of all this year's rain - he thinks it will be the worst since 1912 as regards rainfall. The marginal land where only grass is an option for farmers becoming less viable in such a climate, silage impossible to make when this wet, cows full with the water of what they chew rather than the good bits, tractors struggling to cope with conditions, and the need for grain on many farms to supplement animal diets - reducing in his view the quality of the meat.

We can be happy that improved earnings in the poorer countries mean improved diets, but competition gets stronger for the same food, extreme weather causes reduced yields, and the population rises inexorably. We need marginal land to remain productive in this country for food security, and for the look of our countryside.

Save the Planet, Wear a Hat

There are innumerable small things we can do to reduce our energy use (and thus costs, reliance on Russia and the Middle East, etc etc), thereby lessening our impact on the environment. It seems to me that wearing hats during cold weather is one of the easiest.

I bought a Scrooge-style nightcap for my father the other day, not in his case really for warmth, his house being generally over-heated, but for comfort - and it has helped him sleep better. As he is almost as bald as me, maybe it is something to do with keeping his head as warm as his duvet-covered body.



Our house is a tougher prospect to heat, being somewhat larger and having four rather than two storeys. The central heating here can be all on or all off, so rather than heat the entire house while my family is out, we have the radiators off in the middle of the day, and I wear a jumper. This is no sacrifice, it is cosy. If it gets colder I make sure the wood-burner is fired up to keep the chill off the place, and put on slippers and a smoking cap - quickly taken off if the postman or couriers arrive. If I venture out I wear gloves. This is not a difficult concept to master.

When did we start thinking that we should roam the home in shirtsleeves or less all the time? Pepys I recall (though I didn't know him personally) wore a waistcoat in bed until the spring weather arrived. It used to bug me travelling in the USA when I ran a company there that in summer the offices you visited were freezing, and in winter they were boiling, defying the elements and then some. When I drove with salesmen I wore a sweater to combat the aircon which was set at something Scott would have jibbed at. The attitude seemed to be deliberately wasteful of energy. Here in Preston I have noticed over the last couple of years that even in winter many men out shopping wear shorts or cargo pants, and women have jeggings and micro-shorts.



Is it too much of a sacrifice to don a hat and a woolly in winter, provided you have the means to own such? By not having the central heating on all day we must cut our energy bills significantly. Happily, unless I am imagining it, hats are becoming slightly more fashionable again. Or maybe people have cottoned on to how warm they keep us?


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Eco Houses and What They Bring

Grand Designs again. A house built on Skye, which would have looked fine on a Californian beachfront, or perhaps a Swedish forest, but on that island looked as out of place as humility on Boris Johnson's face. It was a fine idea, using clever new methods to ensure the insulation was as good as could be, the builder did a marvellous job, and it was eco in the double sense of being economical as well as environmentally friendly. Except it wasn't friendly to the visual environment, it stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. Perhaps when the wood bleaches in time it will improve.

I like houses to be different one from the next. The worst place we ever lived was an 'executive estate' where the houses were pretty much little (or big) boxes, and the majority of the people wanted to be shut up in them, scuttling from car to front door in order to avoid social contact. Where we live now there are barely two houses alike, and the people are great - we had a fireworks party last night with a load of neighbours round. Not sure if there is any correlation, but our first home was in a similar area architecturally as where we live now, and again the people were in the main terrific. So different is laudable, desirable, but there are limits - and a wooden shed on Skye probably went beyond them. One truly positive point on that house, however: the architect had done a fantastic job on making the most of the views from within the house, the windows framing the best of them. Pity that from those same views his building would not have enhanced the picture in return.