Monday, October 28, 2019

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

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

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...

Monday, October 14, 2019

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


Monday, October 7, 2019

Right turn

So it seems Mr. I did talk to the workers and they "tidied things up". Basically what they did is that they rearranged the logs that they had dropped in my lot, so now they are not pointing in the air and aren't inaccessible anymore. So I will be able to cut them down to size if I wish to. Apparently the fact that the logs don't belong there in my plot doesn't matter.
Looks cleaner from far away already
Anyway, I'm not gonna fight about it cause it's all organic matter and I am not in a hurry to do anything in that plot. So I don't mind. In fact I am looking for an excuse to leave it for a while. All those logs lying around are just the perfect excuse, so I can focus on my bigger, bamboo, plot. Maybe in a couple of years when the logs are nice and rotten I can start looking at that plot.
This counts as cleaned up these days
I am right now focused on talking to the city office folks, and asking them to do something about the road, which has no cover and is so muddy that I get stuck in with my truck every time. It took a few phone calls and several week's waiting and a couple of visits by me with maps and pictures to get them to have a look and it seems they will put some gravel along the road. Well it is better than nothing. The guy who was there said it is not decided yet, but they will cover the worst parts which is 70-80 meters starting from end of my bamboo plot (where it borders Mr.K's) to the end of my other plot (where it meets Mr.O's)
Map
Also he said what they will be covering is a narrow path, just enough for the Kei truck to not get stuck. So it's not gonna be super wide. All to keep costs down. Oh well.
My problem is that the path created by people and trucks passing on it is a straight path, whereas according to the map it should turn right. (The "A" road in the map, the dotted line is what it looks like now) The bottom part in the map is pretty well-defined thanks to the big trees along the path. But after the trees it just continues straight forward. It results in my plot getting smaller and part of it being used as road.
Started to fix the road 
So just a few days before the city guy was gonna visit, I cleaned up the actual road (it was overgrown with bushes and small fast growing trees), flattened it and turned it to the right. It is still not according to the map, but it is much better. I also talked to Mr.K and asked him to drive on the new path from now on because it is in his own interest to keep the real road clear of vegetation by driving in it. That way his plot will also not be shrinking. He was pretty impressed with what I had achieved in such short time.
After that I laid new bamboo along the correct path and made new borders, and filled it in.
Before filling the new bamboo borders. The diff is easy to see.
So this way I regained a triangle, with base of 2-3 meters and length of 15-18 meters. That's more than 20 square meters. Not much but it counts when a plot is as tiny as mine.
All done.
The new path is still not turning dramatically to the right, but that slight turn makes me happy. The map's turn is not a big turn neither.
So the guy came and looked at the path and took a few pictures, and said they will cover the path the way it looks now, i.e. will use my new path.
Back in the garden, not much new going on... the passion fruit has grown enormously and I made a couple of add-ons to its trellis, so now it is a 3-D trellis.
It is also now creeping up on the strawberry bed...
The fig tree is also getting bigger. I noticed tiny figs on its branches.
Not sure what I am supposed to do with it so I just let it grow
Zoom in to tiny figs
Remember I removed some big bushes to plant an apple sapling? It all went fine and the apple likes its new home. I did fill in with some compost and raw garbage when I planted it, which turned out to be a kind of mistake.
Lots of tomato seeds in the garbage apparently, so the bush area that I cleared, it now bushed over again, this time with lots of tomatoes.
Well, at least it is edible stuff and not totally unwanted. But one can see how out of hand tomatoes can get.
D'oh! my finger got in the way
OK, no finger. The apple tree can hardly be seen