🔥 Fire Buddies 💯 A Day Of Labor Rewarded With Some Toasty Dad-Daughter Bonding 👨👧
Today's work was a mix of Hive, wheelbarrow trips, hoeing, raking, and digging, ending with a little firepit action for Monkey-B and I.
Free Dirt Is The Best Dirt 👷♂️
There are so many places on our property that need a little extra dirt, mostly because of erosion problems that none of the previous owners ever dealt with. One area I have been working is the former fish pond turned snake pond. I filled the bottom of the pit with broken concrete roof and ceramic floor tiles, then began backfilling the area with dirt from across the old road and the highway.
The dirt in the ditch at the edge of the highway and the cliff above it is a mix of sand and clay, and this stuff is the most plentiful, easy to dig, and easy to move because every direction is downhill from here, much easier than hauling rocks uphill from the river. When I've got the amount of dirt I want, I like to just go across the old road to scrape a gray rocky layer with my hoe, then add that as the last layer because it prevents the clay layer from sticking to shoes and feet and basically anything it touches.
Raking Rocks 🪨
These kind of non-technical projects provide great quick escapes from mentally draining Hive work. I can do a wheelbarrow dirt run anytime, as many as I want, and it keeps me fit without having to waste time exercising for the sake of exercising.
The gray rocks are a nice top layer, and very easy to rake and smooth over. The last and final layer will be big flat river rocks that will be friendly to bare feet. The firepit will likely eventually be relocated to the middle of this little area, and the space will be just big enough to offer circular seating around the firepit. Being so close to the house makes it more likely that we'll make fires in the evening and enjoy the ambience and heat.
The Old Firepit View ⛰️
I must admit the old firepit view was pretty scenic, but we never really made much fires during the day, and at night you can't see much of the scenery anyways, but you can definitely feel the cold river air and the mountain also sends some pretty extreme winds down the mountain on most nights. The new space is shielded by the house on two sides, so it's a lot more practical.
Fire Time 🔥
With the evening approaching, I decided to make a small fire for Monkey-B and I to enjoy. I like to stack the wood like a jenga tower and light a small fire on top because it provides a maintenance-free for several hours. This is the way I used to build fires when I lived in Colorado where the temperature often got below -40°C at night. I always had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to add a few logs to the fire, but this stacking method prevented the need to add a log every few hours.
Most of the time fires are lit from the bottom, but fire likes to travel upward and quickly burns everything. A small fire lit on top will slowly work its way down to the bottom, and uses much less wood over a longer period of time. With a maintenance-free fire the conversation flows more freely, but there is still a deep caveman-istic desire to play with the fire, so Monkey-B satisfies this primal urge by holding sticks over the fire and igniting the tip.
That pretty much sums up the day folks, so stay tuned...
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Give thanks my fellow curator, always an honor.
I tell you that lighting a bonfire in the middle of the forest was always one of my unfulfilled dreams, I have a family that lived in a rural area, I visited many times this place.
But I always wanted to do this activity alone, I never could because they always told me it was a danger, and today I understand it, but I wanted to live the moment, to feel like a hermit of the forest lighting a fire to survive, that was my frustrated dream.
I like that you always share with your daughters, I send greetings to you and all your family.
That is a nice story, haha, and you are welcome here anytime you want the hermit experience. We have 50 or so villagers near us, but our little community is very isolated from the rest of the country. Now we need the fire every morning, there is a cold snap in Cambodia now, reaching down to 15 C at night, that's really cold for us.
What you have done were all amazing for me. Your industrious and responsible, looking forward for the betterment of everybody. In doing so, stress was released and was a good one.
There is no better stress reliever than staring into a wood fire. Most of the time here in Cambodia, a fire is inappropriate because it is too hot even at night. Luckily here in the mountains we are high enough that it's chilly enough for a fire any night.
Yes, that is a very good job my brother, filling up the yard area around our house with soil mixed with rocks. There are so many benefits that we get, one of which is that the yard of the house is protected from muddy clay. because if it rains it can cause problems for us haha 😅
Wow.. the bonfire was so beautiful, it's been a long time since I've never enjoyed the light from a bonfire. I can't wait to go camping again in the mountains or in the forest 😘
Another added bonus of making fire on the clay is that it creates burned clay, and that is no longer sticky, basically like broken pieces of brick. This burned clay is very useful in the garden, so perhaps I should but a new batch of clay on the bottom of the fire everytime.
the brilliant ideas that you put out when you are working on your own project, if the pebbles you take and you spill them on the yellow clay will be a very good mix when the rainy season comes, it will definitely not be slippery on the ground. when we walk on it, but it's good that you spill it with lots of pebbles, then you compact it again using ballast. If you don't understand how to make ballast to compact the soil, let me give you an idea and a little knowledge about it... first take a bucket that is the size of 5 liters of water, then you make a hole in the back of the bucket... after you make a hole in the back of the bucket, then put it in its own position, don't forget to take a little wood to close the hole ,, then you take the cement that you have mixed with the file that you feel stir evenly like casting cement, then you pour it into the waste ... as soon as you pour the cement rod into the bucket, don't forget to prepare a piece of wood the size of a hoe handle beforehand, for you to enter into the hole that you have made a hole in the back of the bucket, if you have poured the cement into the bucket into the bucket, then take the plywood the size of the bucket then turn it upside down towards the ground... time cannot be slow and you have to work fast to insert wood the size of a hoe handle in the waste section that has been perforated...
if the bucket has been turned upside down at the bottom, you have closed it using plywood, and on the top you have installed a failure or wood the size of a hoe handle, then let it sit for 24 hours,,, the next day it hardens, then you use it to compact the soil like you did that there is no warning to us,,,, if the idea that I suggest is useful,,, please make a post and let us all know hahaha....... it will definitely be fun to look forward to....
I do have some cement mix, but I do not have any compacting tools, so perhaps I will do this soon. Sometimes I use the back of a shovel to compact the dirt, but I have to swing it very hard and it is not heavy enough. Well, I certainly do need a tool of some kind like you've described, and I will indeed post it when/if I make one.
We have now taken so many rocks from the riverbank around the corner that it now looks like a sandy beach at the sea. I will use flat rocks in this area so we can walk barefoot on them when we are enjoying the firepit.
Damn you look sexy in that skinny jeans! Fortunately this is side view in that Asian squat 🤣
The firepit activity totally reminds me of this video
Now that you mention it, those jeans weren't always skinny jeans. I think the puris and poppadums are going to my hips because now putting my pants on feels like making leg sausages.
I need a micro firepit now, and perhaps a double-sized firepit too 😉.