Domino effect, part 2

One thing leads to another. And another. But it's all good, in the end.

Hurricane Gustav's ravages led us to decide to add more fruit trees to the back corner of the yard. (Downed trees and limbs opened up the area to the sun.)

That, in turn, led to cutting down a 75-foot water oak. (Had to eliminate even more shade.)

Looking at that felled oak led me to make my own lump charcoal. (I couldn't stand to see all that oak decompose around the brush pile.)

We have no fireplace – this is South Louisiana – but we DO have a wood- and charcoal-burning grill. I’d already cut, split and stacked enough hurricane debris to last at least two years of grilling and smoking. Cutting that water oak into firewood would be an exercise in futility. In our climate, even oak would rot long before it ever hit the grill.

Because it won't rot, I decided to make charcoal, lump charcoal.


Lump is the term for natural charcoal as opposed to the manufactured briquettes under well-advertised brand names that crowd supermarket shelves. Lump is pure wood. It burns clean and leaves nothing but ash. Almost every briquette is made from charcoal dust mixed with binders and other noxious chemicals.

I’m an avid outdoor cook – rain or shine, steaming or freezing -- and I switched to store-bought lump charcoal for grilling and smoking a few years ago. Reading about charcoal on the Internet, I’d stumbled across ways to make it yourself.

As I took my chainsaw to that downed oak, I flashed back on the idea of making my own charcoal. Ah, the Internet: a source of endless knowledge and even more diversion. A search instantly turned up a half-dozen techniques for small-scale charcoal making. I also spent hours reading about -- and watching videos of – old-fashioned and large scale charcoal making. I’ll spare you all the details.

Making lump charcoal is a simple concept: burn wood in a smoldering fire with limited oxygen. When all the water vapor, tars, gasses and other organic compounds are burned off, cut off ALL the air. After it cools for a day, you’ll have nothing but carbon: charcoal.

I settled on the easiest method that needed the least equipment but made the most smoke. (More on that in later post.) I bought a recycled and reconditioned 55-gallon drum with a removable lid. I bought four fire bricks, the kind that line fireplaces, and cold chisel. Total cost: about $50.

I used the cold chisel (never knew such a thing existed) to cut five, 2-inch holes in the bottom of the barrel. Hammering hard enough to cut a barrel to cut through steel is a loud and violent process.

Here’s the short version of making charcoal in a 55-gallon drum. I set the newly ventilated drum on the four bricks, piled newspapers and kindling on the bottom then filled it with chunks of water oak and lit it from below. Once the fire was crackling along nicely, I slapped the lid on top and propped it open with a piece of steel reinforcing bar. Then I shoveled dirt around the bottom to cut off the air flow except for a four-inch hole.

Then I let I burn.


Or, more accurately, smolder. That went on for about four hours, pumping out a steady cloud of thick, white smoke. (More on that in a later post.) Once the smoke thinned out – signifying the conversion to charcoal was largely complete – I sealed the lid and used dirt to cut off the air flow from below.

And I waited. For 18 hours. Needed plenty of time for all the coals to die out and the batch to cool down. The next afternoon, I headed back there like a kid heading for his stocking on Christmas morning. What would I find inside.

It wasn’t great but could have been worse.

The barrel –once filled to the top – was now less than half full. I stopped the burn a little early and about a third was only half burned – or brands, as we charcoal makers say. No problem. I set them aside for the next batch.

I sorted and sifted and sacked up about 15 pounds of quality, pure charcoal. I was quite delighted with myself. It worked and I would make more.

Now, the hard work began: cutting and splitting the rest of a 75-foot oak into small pieces. It was far more effort than cutting it into 2-foot chunks and hauling them to the brush pile.

But, I’ve come to love that work. Growing up, my family had mountain cabin in Virginia heated by wood. I was raised using chainsaws, axes, sledges and wedges. Back then, it was just work. Now, much later in life I can to appreciate the joys of felling trees, splitting logs and stacking firewood. (My 12- and 14-year-old daughters, however, do not share my appreciation for a well-stack wood pile.)

Rather than go the easy route and leave the oak to rot and get on with planting the orchard, I took the tough road. I sliced the trunk into six-inch disks and cut any limb thicker than 2 inches into manageable lengths and stacked them all.

Then came the splitting. What was once a chore had become something I looked forward to. Before we turned our clocks back, I had time to change clothes after work and split a few rounds. If found a sense of accomplishment in filling bins and stacks with the split wood. (By Christmas, two and a half months after the tree went down, it was all split.)

Speaking of Christmas ... we actually gave charcoal for presents this year, but more on that later.

The domino effect

Few things come easy.

At our house and in our yard it seems that every project needs prep work. Sometimes lots of prep work. I call it the domino effect: you can’t do one thing without first completing one or more other projects and those projects often spawn others.

After Gustav, we decided the hurricane created new room for more fruit trees. Two prolific satsumas give us the desire for greater number and larger variety. In South Louisiana, we can grow grapefruit, lemon, lime and orange trees. They are low maintenance and productive in our climate and soil.

Our friends and family share in our citrus bounty. I also work at canning Satsuma marmalade with varying degrees of success but that saga is for another posting.

We’ve also looked at other fruit trees and ruled out all but pears. Everything else – apples, peaches, plums – are too high maintenance for us. We have no time in our lives, nor room in our yard for anything that demands a spraying schedule.

So, Gustav’s depredations got us dreaming about a small orchard. On paper, that looks good but, in real life, few things come easy. Gustav did not completely clear the way; other trees had to come down.

We are blessed with almost 50 trees on our acre and a half: several species of oaks, a few kinds of pines, sweet gums, hackberries, a holly, elms, one majestic sycamore, cherry laurels, wax myrtles and yaupons. We are cursed with far, far too many water oaks. If you don’t know them, they are the problem children of the oak family. Often ugly, always messy, water oaks are short-lived trees forever dropping branches and limbs.

One or two may be nice but they dominate our yard. Most of the damage during Gustav came from water oaks falling on houses, power lines and roads. Not at our place. Every one survived. Including one in the back corner of the yard – smack in the middle of our planned orchard expansion.

It had to come down. No qualms from Dr. Spouse. She hated that tree: wrong species in the wrong place. Even less regret from me: any excuse to crank up the chain saw and I love cutting down a tree. I don’t often get the challenge of felling a 75-foot oak and dropping it on a specific spot.

If I did it right, the oaks crown would land smack on top of the brush pile. If I did it wrong, the worst that could happen would mean more work hauling branches a little farther to the brush pile. I grew up with chainsaws, axes and sledge hammers. I learned early how to cut split and stack firewood. My lumberjack skills aren’t razor sharp but felling a few of our trees over the years have kept those skills in respectable shape.

Dr. Spouse (she’s a veterinarian) did not share my self-confidence. She came out to watch and up her chair about 90 feet in the opposite direction from where I planned the drop the 75-foot oak. She had her cell phone.

To save time. For when she had to call 911.

She never had to pull out the phone. I dropped the tree right where I wanted. No great feat, the oak was straight and balanced easily persuaded. “That was a thing of beauty,” Dr. Spouse said.

With the rush of felling a large tree still glowing inside, I began the drudgery of cutting off the limbs and slicing the trunk into manageable pieces. We have no fireplace, just a large charcoal grill. I do plenty of grilling and had cut and split more red oak than I would burn in two years. In our climate, the bottom of the stacks would probably rot before they made it to the grill.

With that much wood already stacked (thank you, girls), the newly downed water oak was destined to rot away on the brush pile. Something deep inside me would not let that happen. I looked at that trunk and felt a primal urge to cut, split and burn. Water oak is mostly useless. Not good in the landscape (even dangerous in a hurricane) and too cranky and brittle for lumber, it does burn.

That’s when I remembered: charcoal. It stores forever and could be fun to make.

I hustled back to the internet and found myself a new hobby … and more work.

The domino effect at work.

First planting/entry

We live in the city and we have a huge backyard.

By huge, I mean an acre and a half.

In a city of this size - about a half million, not counting outlying suburbs - a yard that size is unusual. We're not on the edge of town. We're five blocks from the main library and ten blocks from State Police headquarters.

In the 11 years we've had this place we've made many changes. This place has changed me too.

Before we bought this place I had no interest in gardening or landscaping. I have evolved, along with our yard. I've learned about composting, vegetables, fruit trees, lawn care, irises, mulch, gardening tools ... the list goes on but you get the idea.

In the last few months, my wife and I began taking a new look at the yard and realized we can make it more productive. Where there are two citrus trees, we see an orchard of a dozen or more. Where there is shade, we see sunshine. Where there is an unused playhouse, we see a hen house. Where there is a weed-choked vegetable garden, we see beds bringing forth a bounty.

This change in perspective began in September as we cleaned up after Hurricane Gustav. That storm hit our city hard. There were only two deaths but falling trees destroyed hundreds of homes and damaged many thousands more.

Four months later, some neighborhoods remain damaged and friends are still coping with repairs and rebuilding. We were lucky. A couple of trees down, a few fences damaged and the yard trashed.

Big yard + hurricane = huge mess.

Downed trees -- once they are cut up and cleaned up -- meant more sunshine and more possibilities. Gustav opened up the back corner of our yard, out behind the vegetable garden and our two satsuma trees. We looked around and realized we had room for more trees.

Our seven-year-old satsumas had been prolific producers for the last four years. Satsumas are a smallish fruit like a tangerine, clementine or mandarin orange. They are native to Japan and thrive in South Louisiana.

They taste great.

Sweet citrus in fall and winter. For free. We love that combination.

In the past, we'd toyed with the idea of planting more trees. Now, after Gustav we're doing it. Or fixin' to do it. Really, we're working on it.