The water pressure in our house isn't really great, especially in the summer and especially if anyone else in the building is using the tap, so lately the pump that ought to start the heater isn't working, leaving us with cold water to shower with. Mind, it's still early April, so that's not really an option, but once you get it to start, then it's fine. The past two days I had to heat up some water and used a bucket to rinse myself, while the damn pump played hookie. It was necessary, because we've been working upon the vineyard hill again and we weren't only filthy and muddy, but also stank of smoke. Why, yes, I was burning things again. Some things more successfully than others.
The main objective was leveling out the beehives platform, which is what G and Rockstar did, the dogs basking and dad chainsawing anything that refused to run away from him. Later we all made effort to dig up, untie and re-set the posts that keep the grapevine line in, well, line. They tilt inwards over the years and re-setting them takes ages, like, an hour for each line. (And there are over 40 lines), and it's exhausting work. But it's been raining, drizzling and foggy, with completely wet grass and young trees everywhere, so it was ideal for burning the waste piles from pruning and forest-line clearing ... IF I managed to get them going. The problem is not small rain - I can burn anything in the rain and it's very helpful, safety wise, especially if there's zero wind - you minimize hazard to a null that way, if you know what you're doing. Problem was that both piles were completely fresh - family's made no effort to stack cut off branches upon old piles, which would enable me to ignite dry stuff within. Normally I pride myself on being able to start a fire using nothing but a single match - very rarely use any kind of paper, especially since there's plenty of old spruces and dead shrubbery in the woods easily collected for kindle, but you can't start a fire on fresh wood - in the rain. You can, and then the dry stuff you ignited just burns up and nothing else happens. Trick is, to burn something fresh AND wet, you have to dry it while heating it up. Build a normal fire underneath first, and feed it paper, very slowly, one ribbon after another, until the temperature is fit, and wet old wood will start to join in. Then add more and more wet old wood and once that is going, keep pulling the fresh branches onto the pyre. It can totally be done, but you have to constantly keep the flames alive, keep blowing into the embers, keep adding spruce dead branches (full of sap) and keep heating the rest of the pile up. The surrounding area of the pile was carpeted in young nettles, I was of course constantly on all fours - and most of the shrubbery around there has thorns.
Hence the title of this post. :D It was great fun, we got plenty done, second day in a row, but I can barely freaking type :D And I still smell a bit smoked. (Dad's rule is you can't really have smoke, the fire needs to be hot and clean, but dude, I was working with wet rotting old leaves and grasses.)
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