Last night I attended (well, presided over) the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Coos Curry Small Woodlands Association Annual Meeting and Dinner.  This was my second year as President at the meeting.  We had about 50 people in attendance.  The meeting went quickly and we even got a long motion by the Scholarship Committee dealt with (approved with one amendment). All the experience I had presiding over the meetings of the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild came in very handy!

Gary Haga, a local  logger and entrepreneur, was one of the speakers.  His topic was  Economically Utilizing Biomass (What to do with those slash piles?).  I found it VERY interesting.

When logging is done, the loggers take the “merchantable timber” to the mills, which leaves everything that isn’t a log there on the landing - and that includes limbs, tops, bottoms, rotten trees … anything that isn’t a solid log suitable for sawing into boards at the specs of the particular mill(s) being delivered to. Some of the residual can sometimes be taken for chips, but even so, that needs to be clean and able to be loaded onto trucks. However you look at it, there is LOTS of stuff left over (90,000 tons in 2009 in Coos County alone).

Last year I asked the loggers to leave anything that could be firewood separately stacked, but their definition of “useable for firewood” was considerably different than mine … and we still had a huge pile. I hate the slash piles, but figuring out what to do with them has been problematic (not just for us, apparently). It just seems like all that wood could be used for something!

From the piles from last year we’ve been picking out firewood and let others do the same. We also went up and chipped some of the branches and such to put on the space between the raised beds in our garden. That was a LOT of work (but the parts of the garden that got done did look very “Martha Stewart”!). Even so, we hardly made a dent into the piles.

A couple of years ago I got the idea that maybe they could be chipped and then turned into pellets or something that could be used in woodstoves. Like Presto Logs or something. I even did some research on it, and come to the conclusion that it would take financing and expertise far above what I have. Turns out, that’s exactly what Gary Haga’s talk was about last night.

Gary has been doing research into the possibilities of making hog fuel (dirty chips that can be burned in large burners to provide heat and/or energy) and also into making pressed blocks or pucks that can be burned like logs in a woodstove. So far he hasn’t found an economical way to do it. The chips have to be dried and pressed … and the machines that do that run upwards of $500,000. There is also the issue of getting the equipment to piles, which are usually on log landings at the end of bumpy, rutted, dirt and gravel logging roads. All in all, it’s not feasible YET - but he’s still working on it.

In the meantime, I’m still trying to figure out what we can do here. This year we’re going to have some more logging done and I’m going to be even more specific on how I want the slash separated and piled. Hopefully we can figure out something we can do here that will utilize at least part of it more efficiently.

In the long term, it will take the establishment of a co-generation facility being built in Coos County that can utilize the potential fuel to generate energy. There are research and feasibility studies being done, but it will probably be quite a while before anything is actually realized. I just hope it’s in time help the timber industry and economy here locally.

Yesterday I got a call from the owner of our local Feed Store (capitalized because that’s actually the name of the store).  Since it was 7:00pm on a Sunday evening, I knew something was up.  Turns out that a woman in town, Carolyn, had become the unplanned foster parent of 11 mallard ducklings.

The back-story is that there was a momma and her babies trying to cross the road.  The momma got scared by the cars and flew away, leaving the ducklings scattering.  If you’ve never seen baby ducklings before, they are extremely small and very uncoordinated.  A passing man picked them up (to save them from being run over) and - instead of leaving them safely by the road for momma to return to, he packed them in a box and took them to Carolyn.

Carolyn had just raised some chicks, so she had facilities to care for the ducklings overnight, but she lives in town (and is in her 70’s) and didn’t want the duck.

Long and short of it is that now we have 11 ducklings safely in our baby-duck-and-chick raising pen.  As of this evening they were all healthy, warm and somewhat confused.

We’re hoping that some of them will be females.  Turns out that of the 18 or so other ducks we still have living on the pond, only 3 are females.  I think the drakes out there would appreciate evening up the score a little!

Tonight after dinner I looked out the window and saw an elk in the yard. The picture isn’t very good since it was dusk and he was about 75 yard s away, but it is proof that he was there!

We have several small elk herds that wander through the ranch, but they generally stay near the tree lines and away from people and roads.  They come out into open areas to graze.

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OSWA - Oregon Small Woodland Association, Coos-Curry County Chapter, has a new President.  As of the Annual Meeting (sometime in March) I will be taking the reins for the local chapter.  I’ve been on the Board (and not really doing much) for a year now.  Last week I decided that if I’m going to do it, I might as well DO it.  It’s not as if I don’t know how to be the President of a small non-profit group!

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That’s what the license plate holder on my truck says now.  I kust put the new Handcrafted Soap Guild license plate holder on my truck.  Required a little cleaning up of things to get the mud off, but I think it looks pretty nice!

It’ll be cool to drive around and have it be known that I’m a member of the HSMG and a soapmaker. Maybe it will get people thinking when we’re towing a horse trailer or carrying a load of hay.

It was such a spectacular day! The trees are turning, the sun was out - stunning. This picture was taken from my porch of the house.

She’s a little hard to see, but that white speck by the barn is our horse, Heavy (well, actually her name is “Heavenly Tears”, but she’s just Heavy to us).

Looking out my window this morning, my level of doubt rises. Snow falling and on the ground. In APRIL!!! Doesn’t seem much warmer around here this spring, that’s for sure.

On the other hand, I can’t complain. I love the look and feel of snow. Since we don’t get it very often (maybe 5-6 times a year, max), I have to enjoy it when I can.

Sadly, as I write this post at 10:30 am, the snow is already gone.

We have new baby ducks!

Momma duck laid her eggs in the barn so we put them in a safe place (a very large, low cage) until they hatched.

They arrived, happy and healthy on July 10th. Momma took them down to the pond immediately and they’ve been cruising around the yard already.

They’re mallards, basically wild but living here, so we’re hoping they stay when winter comes.

We just got a new puppy! I’d been talking about getting a little dog as a friend for Max, but never got around to actually looking for one. Yesterday a cute little girl puppy fell into our laps and is now a member of the family.

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We went riding yesterday, the second time this week. Good for the horses and good for us. We ride bareback, both for riding practice and because it’s really good exercise. Jere rides Heavy, our Belgian-mix mare, which is sort of like riding a sofa. I ride Mellow, our thouroughbred, which is more like riding a jack-in-the-box (he’s just a tad skittish at times).

Yesterday was one of those skittish times.

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