Cleared the branches

Finally, moved all the branches from north side of my plot and stacked them along the slope of my other plot.

The slope, before

Two birds with one stone. The other plot's north border is more distinguished, and I also cleaned some garbage from my other plot and buried under the new branch wall. At the same time, north border of my bamboo plot is clear and I can access the bamboo logs that are lined along it.

The slope, after

Hauling over all the branches over to the other plot was such a boring job but somehow I finished it within a couple of days.

The bamboo plot, after

At the same time, I started stacking bamboos a little more to the south, inside the plot. My plan is to be able to drive behind the stacks along the north "wall" with a small backhoe/digger. The whole plot is now clear from bamboos and weeds, and I also made the borders nicer. All I need to do now is to move the stacks more towards the middle (already started with that) and after that, cut down all the bamboo in the neighboring plot to the north (as agreed with the owner) and dump them right there.
After that, I shall cut down all the sugi trees (except one) and when that is done, I can start digging out bamboo roots starting in the north, and then plant tree saplings row by row, starting in north.

Nice east border, taken from south east corner

Below is a picture of the whole plot taken from afar. I have taken a couple other pictures from the same spot before so it is easy to compare the progress so far. For example going back almost a year ago the picture from same spot showed a plot overgrown with bamboos.

I hate bamboos

Back to reality

OK, so I am still cleaning the bamboo plot. A couple days' work and the plot is now almost all clear.

Just the stuff in the north left

After I stacked the bamboo neatly and bunched the branches/twigs next to it, I was left with a whole lot of too short or too heavy or half rotten old bamboo that I can neither burn nor stack nor just leave around. It was A LOT. So I just dumped it all over the bamboo lands to the south. No one is maintaining those parts anyway, plus the bamboo on those lands fall over every now and then and I felt like I am returning years' worth of all that back to those plots.

Looking south at the dumpy bamboo lands

Believe it or not, there was barely any difference between before I dumped my bamboo in there and after. It almost looked the same after.
As for the branches and bamboo I have stacked in the north, as mentioned before I have to put them somewhere else for now, so I can access the north bamboo plot to cut down trees.
Looked around and suddenly a genius idea hit me: I'm gonna haul over all the branches and most of the stacked bamboo to my other plot, and line them up not on my land, but on the public strip of land to its north.

This is where I will be dumping my stuff

I had a look just to make sure it was doable, and yep, as the picture shows, there is room in the north of my west plot. I just clean it up a little and start moving shit there.

Zoomed in a bit more. This is the slope.

There's already some garbage dumped there anyway. A couple of rusty small gasoline/oil cans, lots of plastic and foam boxes here and there. So I guess it is an accepted dump site. It is "public land" meaning that it is owned by 200 people so I assume it's all on paper and no one owns it actually... 

Looking over to the other plot

Just a few pictures of the other plot as it is right now. Pretty messy... but I have to start thinking about it sooner or later.
First a map I kinda made...

nice ain't it?

The big O in the middle is Mr.O's land. "East Plot" is my bamboo land where I have been working so far. And "West Plot" is my other plot. The red line is the path which belongs to the city, and the green is the 1-2 meters wide sloped strip owned by like 200 people.
Now the pictures, of W.P.

Took this pic facing west from O.

Here are the logs my nice neighbor dumped in my plot

standing in the path, facing N.E.

Not only logs to clear out but also heavy weedage

Taken from the path, facing north, from the S.W. corner

You can see in the last pic the difference between the field to my west (clean land on the left in the pic) and my plot (the messy rest)
There's a whole lot of work to do here. Luckily it's not a bamboo land cause I cannot take any more dealing with bamboos....

Re-planning just a little bit

I've been cleaning the forest little by little, and thinking how to proceed...so here is a summary of what I have decided so far.

The plot as it looked in middle of November

The north part is getting a bit messy, cause I have moved everything that needed postponing over along that border. There is lots of bamboo branches that I put there from the middle of the plot, then there are 2-3 neat stacks of bamboo, and behind those we got more bamboo which I originally put there to use as separator/wall.
With the branches and the stacks, it is easy to misunderstand where my plot begins cause the slope which marks the border is now hidden beneath/behind all the stuff. So I decided I should clear all that, and put it all somewhere more appropriate.
The branches should go all the way around the plot's borders, and the stacks of bamboo of course should be burned. But while they are waiting their turn to be burned, they should be moved a little more to the middle.
I went over to the owner of the north grove, who is an extremely old guy who mumbled and swallowed every other word when he talked. I explained the situation for him and asked him permission to cut down bamboo that looks like it will fall over onto my land, and he said OK. But he wanted to know how far in I will be cutting, and I said 10 meters (cause the bamboo are 10 meters tall, so to be safe from falling bamboo I should clear 10 meters in) which scared him, so he said no, 10 meters is too much as his land is 10 meters deep, and I should cut only bamboo that threatens to fall. Hmm, his land is at least 40 meters deep on the map so I am not sure if it is the Alzheimer talking...
There is actually a 2 meter wide strip between my land and his land which is public land, so I guess 10 meters measured from my land would mean 8 meters into his land, so I will not be cutting 10 meters, which should keep him happy. I told him that he can check the progress and let me know if it is not to his liking. I think I am being very nice to offer to clear out his messy land, which he clearly doesn't have the energy to do. He said he doesn't want to sell the land by the way, he he.

fallen bamboo reaches middle of my land

I started to fell a few bamboos on the edge, and as they fell I could see that they reached a couple of meters past where the barrel is now. So yeah, I will need to cut that far in.
There is another reason I need to tidy up the north part of my land. As it is now, I can almost not enter the old guy's land as I am blocked by everything I put there. I can kind of climb into his land from the sides, but those paths are extra messy and difficult to get through.

Just an example of how messy his grove is

I'd rather just walk up from the middle cause I have cut away a little there already and cleared a kind of path.

View of my land from inside the grove

Once I move away all the stuff from there, I should only have a tiny bit of wall to climb to get into the grove, and can cut all the bamboo there and put it neatly among the rest of the mess inside the grove.

The wall/fence I made originally

The fence I made before is actually pretty tidy. Too bad it is hidden behind all the crap I put there.
Anyway, that is what I will be doing in the weeks to come. Eventually when I run out of bamboo to cut I shall move to cutting sugis and later to digging the ground.

The plot, beginning of December

I have not burned anything in a long while because I am waiting for a good mask/filter to wear to protect me from the smoke and particles. The surgery mask I wore before so far blocked nothing so I got a bad cough for a couple of weeks.
As bonus, here are a couple of pictures showing how new life is breaking down the old fallen sugi trees and branches.

Sugi stump

The sugi stump had all sorts of mushrooms and moss and stuff growing out of it, and just turned to mush when I kicked it lightly. Good job nature.

Sugi branch

There is this kind of weed that grows on the surface of the fallen sugi branches. It has very shallow roots running along the surface, and the leafs are pretty long. 

Clusterbeets

All the vegetable seeds I planted in the garden have now germinated and tiny leafs are everywhere... In case of daikons, well, I just put a bunch of seeds in the ground every 10-20 cm, and now the leafs popped up in clusters.
I am now pulling out the weakest ones every day until there is only one or two left from each bunch.
I guess I should have planted the seeds 1 by 1 in a row instead.

Bit of waste of good seeds

In the forest front, I keep burning bamboo a couple of time each week... however, I noticed that I have started coughing recently, because my usual mask is apparently not enough to protect me from the smokes. So I will go hunt for a good anti smoke mask, and reduce the burning to once a week tops, and during the burning try to stay away from the barrel.

It's opening up

I am almost done with clearing the plot and stacking bamboos. After that (maybe this weekend) I will go to the owner of the plot to my north and get permission to clear out his plot from bamboos. I could not plant any saplings in my plot as long as those tall things are leaning over it threatening to fall.

I want to tidy up the north plot with stacks of bamboo just like mine 

I hope to be done with that before X-mas, and start to cut down sugis on my own plot. When that is done, I should be able to start digging out bamboo roots in my plot and prepare the soil for planting trees. So there is still a lot left to do.

Exterminate!

The real flattening

In the forest, right now I am picking weeds and moving all the bamboo from the floor over to the north where I stack them neatly and wait for them to dry so I can burn them. The bamboo that cannot be piled up cause they are too small or too old, I just throw in a pile near the center. That pile is where I get the bamboo to burn right now.
Anyway, it took me 3-4 more hours to burn the rest of that pile from last time.

All done. No pile left.

Of course, a new pile had built up almost immediately after I had done more clearing out...

Episode IV: A New Pile

So that's how the burning goes. Every day the clear area around the burn barrel gets wider and wider. And now I arrived at the big heap of branches that I had gathered and put in the middle of the plot. It's almost like a wall, and has to go somewhere else if I am to continue clearing the plot.

The branches

It looks simple enough, but actually it's much bigger than it seems. The weight is pressing the branches down together so they look much smaller and fewer. I started to haul them over to the north, behind the stacks of bamboo. At least for now it is a good place for them to be. Later I will burn them little by little...

3 hours later...

Moving them took much more time than I expected. Maybe cause I was extra careful cause lots of tiny leaf frogs had chosen that heap to hide in cause every time I lifted a bunch a few frogs jumped out and away to hide among the leafs nearby.

This is where I moved them

The north side is covered now with all kind of things, and it is almost impossible to see where my plot begins. First, I chopped all the bamboo in the public land and laid them there, then I put some thick bamboos on my side as posts so they wouldn't roll down. Then I laid a few more bamboos behind the posts on my side as extra support, all that formed a thick strip along the north, made of bamboo, half of which is on my plot. During my weed clearing I just tossed all the weed on top of the strip which dried quickly and has started to decompose. Now the strip looks a lot like just soil, but underneath it is still bamboo. So if someone who doesn't know looks at it, the norther slope which marked the border to my land is now 2-3 meters inside my land. Therefore it is important that all this north strip is just temporary and that I burn it as soon as I can so the original slope can be seen again.
My bamboo stacks are just south of that strip, and I have now filled the tiny gap there was between the strip and the stacks, with branches.

It's a mess

Going back to the wall of branches, one more day and the whole thing was finally moved over to its new home.

No more branch wall

Let the flattening commence. Once the weed and the bamboo on the floor is cleared away, I will spend time burning bamboo mostly. In between burning, I will chop down sugi trees in my plot and also bamboo trees in my north neighbor plot, after I get OK from him.

Spider-man

I took a couple of hours and cleaned out most of the beds in the garden, and put in winter seeds. It's mostly things I don't think thief animals would be interested in... like onions, beans, carrots, daikon and broccoli. But one never knows.
Also to prevent the ever growing bigger passion fruit plants from freezing to death again, I wrapped their stems in bubble wrap (yeah, that's the first thing I found laying around. I'm lazy) and partially covered the lower part of the plants with fine netting. Hope this makes the frost a little milder for them and they don't explode like last year.
Oh, and I took this interesting photo one night when I was tucking the chickens in. They seem to have gotten themselves a house pet.

It's pretending to be a fly on the wall

Second burning

Last Saturday I went to the forest prepared and determined to use a full day and see how much bamboo could be burned. I started around 10:30 in the morning, with a pile of half-soaked wood.
It took me maybe 10 minutes to uncover the barrel and get anything to actually catch fire, but once that was done, the fire was on...

I kind of was expecting this whole pile to burn within a day

I threw in more and more wood whenever I noticed there was space opening up in the barrel, and in between I spent time picking weeds and moving bamboo that is laying around and pile it up along the north wall. I knew around 4 PM the sun starts to go down and it would get dark and scary so I counted a bit backwards and with a bit of margin decided to start putting out the fire at 3 PM.
Based on that I decided to add one last load of bamboo around 2:30 PM, and just let that burn to ashes. Figured half an hour should suffice.

After. Around 2:30. Barrel is still burning though.

So, yeah. I could burn a lot of wood, but not as much as I wished. Burning everything will take a few months if I burn say once or twice a week... I guess I shouldn't wait till all bamboo is burned before starting to cut down sugi trees.

First burning

This! Is! Sparta! (Just noticed this is my 300th post)
Last weekend weather was expected to be cloudy in the morning and rainy in the afternoon so I thought it was suitable for trying the burn barrel. Headed over to the woods and found this cute mushroom had made a home on my bamboo pile.

Almost felt sorry to stack more bamboos on top of it

Most of the bamboo was still damp from the constant rain a couple days before so I had brought with me some paper to start off the fire. But it didn't want to take... I ended up burning all the paper but not even the tiny bamboo branches had caught any sustainable fire. After maybe 10 minutes of trying all that without results I happened to glance at the bamboo stack on the north which just as designed had kept itself mostly dry.
Picked a bit of dry bamboo from there which easily caught fire with just my lighter, and used that to start the fire in barrel, removing the dampness of the remaining bamboo...

..and after that the fire was almost perfect

Of course every time I threw a new bit of bamboo in, being all damp, the fire got smokey for a few seconds, but after that it went back to almost no smoke, so the few air holes in only the bottom of the barrel were enough I guess. After maybe an hour of burning, I noticed that the clouds started to disperse, and the sun came out. Later it turned out to not become a rainy day at all. I kept hoping that the clouds would gather so none of the nearby homes would think about hanging out their laundry and get angry at my fire. At times when it got smokey and the wind went the wrong direction I felt kinda bad... but I suppose they are used to it especially with all the farms and farmers around that area, who burn everything. At least I don't burn plastic or garbage. Just wood. I figure if they chose to live there they must have understood what it means, and have a bit of tolerance. I won't be burning everyday neither...

The barrel doing a real good job

Anyway, after 2,5 hours I called it a day. At least for a first session it should be enough. I had burned more bamboo than I expected too. Plus I wanted to know how much "after work" would be needed, i.e. putting out the fire, emptying the barrel and cleaning it, and letting it get cold so I could cover it again with tarp.

After burn

I poured water to extinguish the flames and also bring down the temperature of the barrel itself so I could grab it. That took only about 12 liters of water. After that I dumped the ashes and coal in a pile nearby and poured maybe another 12 liters on that so it stopped steaming. Then wiped the bottom part and the barrel's inside with towel, so it wouldn't start rusting right away, and let all of that cool down and the remaining water evaporate. All that took maybe 30 minutes tops.

Inside of the barrel after I wiped it 

and after that it was time to wrap up and go home. Nice.

I also put a plastic lid on top of the barrel under the tarp

Burn barrel

I just want to pause and think about how much different the forest plot is now, and how far I have come, although I am not finished at all.
So I took these pictures last week, trying to take them from the same spots as the ones from before I cut bamboos. (Before pics are here:  https://mrbnatural.blogspot.com/2018/03/i-hate-bamboo.html )

It is really different

And hopefully when I finish it will look even nicer 

Burning bamboo in the pit I had made works OK, but it is not efficient cause I have to break down the bamboo to tiny 30-50 cm pieces before I toss them in. And I can't burn any larger amount at once if I want to keep it safe. Maybe I can burn 10 bamboos within 3 hours or so.
So I started looking around and found a guy who makes and sells burn barrels pretty cheap, so I drove over and got one. And put right where the fire pit was.

Brand new rusty

Although I just noticed the burn barrel doesn't have air holes in its sides... It only has holes in the bottom shelf (above the low square opening).
So I guess I will do a trial burn, and if it is not smokey, fine. If it is smokey, I should try and remove the bottom shelf and see if it improves. If not, then I have to haul the thing back home again and drill a dozen side-holes.
Oh, I also finally removed the shredder, which was just sitting there all dead. I will see if I can give it to some junk collector...

More typhoons

Just when I thought we were done with typhoons, another approached us. It was supposed to be the biggest in 60 years. The news said it is like 10 times bigger than the last one this year, and that one was pretty huge and disastrous, and we were urged to prepare for worst and evacuate if told. Its calculated path was right above Chiba. So I prepared for the worst.
Before that though, I paid a visit to the forest to burn a bit of bamboo and to check that the newly cleared path was still there. When I arrived I saw the city office' truck parked at the entrance to the forest, and further down I saw 3 guys walking the path toward my plot.
Hooray! They're here to check where they should be pouring gravel. I ran and caught up with them and showed them around. Told them where the path goes and how it is expected to look.
They said they would do it today, but they had typhoon preparations so they promised to do it next week. Yippeee! Finally I can drive there.
I cleaned up a little more inside my plot, and moved the logs of the sugi trees that I fell a couple of weeks earlier and laid them along the new path, to mark where my land is. Those logs are pretty heavy and it's not as easy as the bamboos to just move aside by any passerby.

My plot is opening up from the center and outward

The path with logs

My plot seen from south-west corner

Anyway, back home and shut the shutters and tape the windows and wait for the worst. There was a lot of rain and an earthquake, before the typhoon hit us.
The typhoon was pretty normal to be honest. It was over within an couple of hours and not much had changed when I looked outside the next day. Even the forest was almost unchanged, except maybe 2 trees that had fallen. None of them in my plots though...
I suppose when they said the typhoon was the biggest ever, they meant the area it covered, rather than its wind strength. There were some tornadoes maybe 5-6 hours before the typhoon came, and those caused much much worse damage, like tore up houses and turned cars upside down and killed people. Otherwise, the typhoon brought with it lots and lots of rain and people were suddenly wading to their nipples in water. None of that was near us though. We saw it all on the news, where they showed how rivers were overflown.
The next morning, I checked the forest and it looks like one tree that was leaning dangerously over my other plot which I hoped would get cut down, had actually decided to fall over, but was stopped and supported by one of the sugi trees in my plot. Oh well, I guess it will fall when the next typhoon hits.

It's leaning all right.

I hope the city office folks don't think it's too scary to lay gravel under there...
Speaking of leaning trees, both the walnut saplings in my garden are leaning fiercely to the north-west. Even normal wind is pretty strong there, so even though I planted them straight, they keep leaning more and more. I guess I have to come up with some sort of support till they have grown bigger.

I'm just using ropes right now, but need something more stable