Thunderstorms after work.
Jun. 26th, 2023 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIt poured rain this afternoon. I did get the black raspberries picked (714 grams) before the rain came pouring like an avalanche coming down the mountain.
However, what with the torrential rain I also got Free Chainsaw Time. Yay? (I do not love chainsaws. However, I live in the country with a two mile private dirt road between me and civilization. As the dirt road goes through the woods, sometimes trees fall across the road. So, a basic familiarity with chainsaws is a thing in my world, like it or not.)
I cut up the trees that had fallen across the road and moved them out of the way. Good times. One's a decent-sized tulip poplar, firewood on the hoof but leafy green and needs some aging to be burnable. If it's nice this weekend I'll see about doing something with it but for right now, it's in big rounds along the side of the road.
And then, since the world was dripping wet, I lit the burn pile on fire. (The burn pile consists of mostly un-firewood-able trees like slippery elm and pine. There's also a fair amount of brush and hedge clippings from buildings at work. Nothing other than wood and wood products gets burned on the burn pile.) You might think that I'd have trouble lighting the burn pile on fire right after a torrential downpour.
You might be wrong. :) Half a smallish cardboard box and we are off to the races.
It's my burn pile. I carefully stack it so that it will be light-able in any weather conditions. No matter how hard it rains, there is, at the base of the pile, on the windward side, a sheltered dry spot with very dry kindling. Petroleum products (diesel fuel, lighter fluid, whatever) for lighting fires are what people who are bad at fire use to light fires. If you do a good job up front, you only need a couple of pieces of cardboard to get damn near anything to burn.
I watched it burn down to just whole big lumps of wood (fire danger: low) and I'll check on it tomorrow morning. Some of the red elm pieces are knee-high in diameter so they're going to take a while to burn. Might take more than one fire. We'll see.
In other news, on Sunday my mom brought me apricots. (Like a five gallon bucket full of apricots. This is not a few apricots, this is a surfeit ofeels apricots. Mom has three apricot trees that make no apricots most years. Most years. Some years, though, they make all the apricots known to man. Lots of famine, with the occasional feast. This year is a feast year.)
Apricots have the lifespan of mayflies. You have to do something with them kind of right away. So I spent most of Sunday afternoon playing with the apricots. I'm going for apricot butter, sort of a spreadable fruit item that could be put on, for example, toast. I've done this before and it's gone fine. Just... takes time. I've got everything cooked down and pureed, about halfway done. I have to put in another couple of hours tomorrow evening before I can put it into jars and pressure cook it.
However, what with the torrential rain I also got Free Chainsaw Time. Yay? (I do not love chainsaws. However, I live in the country with a two mile private dirt road between me and civilization. As the dirt road goes through the woods, sometimes trees fall across the road. So, a basic familiarity with chainsaws is a thing in my world, like it or not.)
I cut up the trees that had fallen across the road and moved them out of the way. Good times. One's a decent-sized tulip poplar, firewood on the hoof but leafy green and needs some aging to be burnable. If it's nice this weekend I'll see about doing something with it but for right now, it's in big rounds along the side of the road.
And then, since the world was dripping wet, I lit the burn pile on fire. (The burn pile consists of mostly un-firewood-able trees like slippery elm and pine. There's also a fair amount of brush and hedge clippings from buildings at work. Nothing other than wood and wood products gets burned on the burn pile.) You might think that I'd have trouble lighting the burn pile on fire right after a torrential downpour.
You might be wrong. :) Half a smallish cardboard box and we are off to the races.
It's my burn pile. I carefully stack it so that it will be light-able in any weather conditions. No matter how hard it rains, there is, at the base of the pile, on the windward side, a sheltered dry spot with very dry kindling. Petroleum products (diesel fuel, lighter fluid, whatever) for lighting fires are what people who are bad at fire use to light fires. If you do a good job up front, you only need a couple of pieces of cardboard to get damn near anything to burn.
I watched it burn down to just whole big lumps of wood (fire danger: low) and I'll check on it tomorrow morning. Some of the red elm pieces are knee-high in diameter so they're going to take a while to burn. Might take more than one fire. We'll see.
In other news, on Sunday my mom brought me apricots. (Like a five gallon bucket full of apricots. This is not a few apricots, this is a surfeit of
Apricots have the lifespan of mayflies. You have to do something with them kind of right away. So I spent most of Sunday afternoon playing with the apricots. I'm going for apricot butter, sort of a spreadable fruit item that could be put on, for example, toast. I've done this before and it's gone fine. Just... takes time. I've got everything cooked down and pureed, about halfway done. I have to put in another couple of hours tomorrow evening before I can put it into jars and pressure cook it.
