See the Eric’s book review.

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.

After talking with Jim, I called the Sheriff to see what needed to be done.  Since he was already dead, I was looking for the “non-emergency” phone number, but I couldn’t find one, so I called 911.  Turns out they consider a dead body an emergency even if it has been dead for a while, so there were great goings-on to find an available Sheriff (we don’t have many in the county).  I met him on the road about 2 hours later, and we went up to the cabin to see what was what.

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The Family Tree Puzzle is on 8 2″ blocks.  A total of 12 pictures, each cut into quarters and glued on the sides of the blocks.  When I sent it out, it was jumbled into pieces, my theory being that family members would want to put it together!

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Check out this video … but probably not on an empty stomach!

I designed and made the site as a volunteer.  This was my first website using java-scripted menus.  I think they turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

The picture used in the header is one that Jere took from a hillside near our house.

L to R: Coven, Elizabeth, me, Aurora, Miranda, Jere, Harley, Desi

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I’m excited about going and looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.  What I’m NOT excited about, is flying on United Airlines.  I’ve detailed my past bad experiences with United - one where I ended up sleeping in baggage claim in Chicago, and another when my tickets were changed.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any options because United Express is the only airlines that flies out of our small airport at the moment.

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