We leave a layer of needles to keep the soil covered.
Loading Pine Mulch
Category: Forestry
Blue Oak Vista Campsite
Going up the road-trail behind the shop you will shortly enter a much healthier and welcoming grove of Ponderosa Pine where there is plenty of room to make a shaded tent site or two. Going just a few steps more you will come to this nice spot of the canyon that looks out over a grove of blue oaks. Very peaceful.
Sunday May 12th
Beautiful Mother’s Day!
Just quick bullet list of activity for Canyon log.
- Moved the big boulders, that had fallen off the cliff face onto the drive way, to their new purposeful location in front of the house to direct vehicle parking back from the flower bed. This will keep a nice shady pathway open to the house. This was done by dragging with the Tundra and a 20′ long 3/8th-inch diameter chain. Quite the endeavor!
- Selected and cut up 4 or 5 pine trees on the continuing work of drought and fire hardening of the land.
- weeded a bit in the garden. ( Harvested what is probably the last of the asparagus.
2019 Burning To Reduce Forest Fuel – a really wet year.
This Saturday was a great set of weather conditions for burning piles that we created in the summer of 2018 in the forest by “selective thining” and fuel reduction. There have been several good burn weekends this year – 2019. We are finding that by cutting up the branches and trees into smaller pieces before stacking into piles, the piles are denser and burn better. Also covering the piles with plastic after they have dried out for the summer, and before the fall rains come, makes the piles possible to burn when the rest of the forest is soaking wet or even covered in snow! We have done the plastic covering for several seasons now and are saving the plastic sheets for reuse. We just fold them up and store them in the shop or storage shed. Here are a couple more photos of forest controlled burning. Chipping would be nice to try, but that equipment is too expensive, not in the budget.
Here are a couple photos of the tools of the trade. When you are burning and the litter is dry enough to “creep burn” you must be very careful to not let the creep get to big or it will soon too big for you to be able to stop it! That is how a controlled burn turns into an out of control burn.
Snow Flowers?
I found this small patch of beautiful flowers that look a bit like low elevation snow flowers. The flowers are very near the only Sugar Pine tree that know of on our parcel. I want to return with my flower ID app.
Winter Wood Supply Harvested Just In Time
Yesterday, was Canyon Thursday, Oct. 13th. I met White Glove Chimney at the Forest Ranch Store so I could guide them down to the Canyon to clean the “House” wood stove and chimney and the “YAHB” wood stove & chimney. Part of the winter check list. Also last weekend we finished our 2nd load of short dried manzanita logs and stacked them under the pole barn. Manzanita burns long, and warm. It actually has a bit fewer BTUs per cord than Live Oak* – but at the Canyon we have LOTS more of Manzanita than Live Oak. ( I did not know this but here’s a chart)
firewood-btu-charts-btu-of-firewood-cord
So Juan Arturo Gutierez is set for the winter.
We are “harvesting” the Manzanita to the north (up canyon) from the pole barn on the road to Juans’ Trail / Dipper Pond.
