They came for me in uniforms

The second day of the year was nice one here in South Louisiana. Clear with a stiff breeze. Cool but warm enough to work in shorts and a tee shirt. It was a Friday in the midst of a looooong holiday weekend. You gotta love those Thursday holidays with the thrown-in Friday off.

At least. I got to enjoy a four-day weekend. Dr. Spouse, not so much. She was at the clinic. The day after New Years, when most people have the day off, is a big day in the vet biz.

It was great day to be outside. I sorted, sifted and packed a load of finished charcoal already in my kiln, a 55-gallon drum. (Read about making charcoal here The domino effect and here Domino effect, part 2.) Then I filled it with another load of split wood. After wood splitting, loading the drum is one of my favorite parts of the operation.

The splitting is a rewarding on a physical level. My maul and I making wood do something it does not want to do. A little intellect in decoding where to make the hit followed with brute force. (If you've ever split the reluctant water oak, you know about the force needed.)

It's a guy thing: a touch brains and lots of testosterone combined with violence. Maybe that's why I can't get my daughters interested.

Splitting the oak into small enough pieces takes work. But seeing tubs full of chunks ready for the barrel or bins full of wood for seasoning gives me a sense of accomplishment. Maybe because I have a desk job.

Also, I like carefully loading the barrel to get as much wood in while leaving room for air circulation is like putting together a three-dimensional puzzle. Then I get to set it on fire.

THAT is the best part. Burn, baby, burn. (I guess that's another guy thing.)

Once the fire's burning strong, the drum lid goes on to limit air flow and the batch smolders for hours and hours as the fire cooks the wood into charcoal.

The process pumps out smoke. Not in wisps but clouds. Smoke thick enough to withstand a good wind. These pics give you the idea









Now, my little lumber camp is in the far corner of my backyard, a couple of hundred feet from the nearest neighbors who are across a deep and fenced-off canal. I've cooked up a dozen or so batches over the last three and half months. On calm days, I can create a pretty good haze. Even in wind the smoke takes time to disperse.

On that first Friday of the new year we had a stiff gusts. Not strong enough, it turns out.

While the kiln smoldered, I was up beside the house shovelling the last of a load of wood chips I had convinced some tree trimmers to dump at the house. Great mulch and almost free. (I did tip them $20.) I've embarassed my daughters in inventive ways over the years, inclucing chasing down trimmer trucks towing chippers and loaded with shredded wood.

I was loading the wheelbarrow when I heard the fire truck. The siren wailed closer before it switched off while the engine was down the block. I could hear the rumble of a big diesel engine and the hiss of the air brakes as the truck crawled by.

I left them alone. Why flag 'em down? I had no emergency.

The truck cruised by and I went back to my task. Not long after, I was in the back corner spreading mulch under our satsuma trees when I saw a fire engine cruising down the street on the other side of the canal but paid them no heed. Still no emergency here.

Another few minutes and I hear the hiss of air brakes on my side of the canal and here come a couple of our city's bravest pushing through an overgrown gate and fighting through thick weeds and into the yard.

Busted.

"Open burning is against the law," the big guy says while the little guy heads for the barrel. (By this time, the smoke was more wisps than clouds.)

I warn them about the dogs. We have four and when they're in a pack, they can be a handful around strangers. Fortunately, the biggest were in the house and no clue about the commotion out back. Our Chihuahua mix, never bright and always fiesty, greeted them like old friends.

"It's covered," I say. "I'm making charcoal."

"You still can't do it."

"What if I was cooking meat?"

"That would be different," he says.

"Right," I think to myself, "I wouldn't be making nearly as much smoke."

The little guy reaches the barrel and sees the bin full of finished charcoal.

"Hey, he IS making charcoal."

They relax up and tell me a neighbor had called in a complaint. Twice. They couldn't find the source of the smoke on the first trip and took 20 minutes to track me down on the second.

I seal up the barrel and end the burn.

Then, I spend a couple of minutes outlining the charcoal process and promise to change my technique to not make so much smoke. They are suitably awed by the size of the yard (we're in the middle of the city) and get a view of the recent four-house mini-development that went up on what once was the 2-acre yard on the east side of us.

The didn't even know the houses or the private street were there.

I ask if they grill at the fire house. "Yes."

Gas or charcoal. "Charcoal."

They leave with about 15 pounds of premium hardwood lump and I'm left with a partially cooked batch in the barrel.

I can't blame any neighbor who complained. My hobby cranked out A LOT of smoke.

I haven't cooked up any since but all that split wood won't go to waste. I have two bins piled a half-cord of oak split into 4- to 6-inch chunks. I will make charcoal, just in another way. After all, my charcoal cooks great on a grill and was a big hit as Christmas presents for friends and family.

Thanks to the Internet, I know another (cleaner) method.

I'll get another, smaller steel barrel that fits in the 55-gallon drum. I'll drill holes in the bottom of the smaller barrel set it up on fire bricks inside the big drum. Fill the smaller barrel with chunks and seal the lid. Building a fire inside the big drum and under the small barrel will cook the wood into charcoal.

A well-ventilated fire in the big drum will make little smoke. Cooking the wood chunks in the smaller barrel emits tars and gasses that will burn, creating even more heat to cook the wood. Essentially, the smoke that irked a nieghbor converts to heat. It will take more attention to keep the cook fire going but keep the Man off my case will be worth the effort.

Looking back, I shouldn't have taken the easy (and smokey) way. I wasn't being a good neighbor.

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.