In this episode, I took the time to more or less do some general cleanup around the grounds. One of the biggest things that is in need of cleanup is the area of the fallen trees. For a recap, we had several large pine trees brought down due to them either dying or already being dead. Prevention was the best medicine since the last thing we need is more risky trees breaking at the wrong time and falling on something and destroying a lot. Anyway, even with the cutting that I have been doing, there is still a lot of material left. There's still whole trunks laying on the ground that need to be cut up into manageable sections for moving to the driveway where I typically do my log splitting. The trunks would need to be cut into short sections so they can be moved easier without the use of heavier equipment.
In the process of cutting these fallen trees, there's also the matter of the branches and other smaller detritus that we don't have any real use for. This small stuff I cut up and stack into a burn pile in my designated burn area so when the pile gets large enough and stacked with enough garbage that I could fire the pile and ensure complete consumption of the waste. Well I had more than enough brush after a short session of cutting earlier that I was able to fire up. I moved from one end of the pile to the opposite end where all the branches from the tree tops were laying so I can cut as much of this up to stack onto the burn pile. By doing this I can clear all of the garbage from the area and dispose of it, allowing me to dedicate my time more to cutting up the larger trunks and branches into usable firewood. I really don't want to have to go back and forth cutting and stacking branches, then moving on to chopping up trunks for firewood then back again. After having allowed the brush pile to dry out and having stacked plenty of regular trash under and around the branches stacked in a teepee formation, I went ahead and fired the stuff up so it can burn down, even while still cutting up branches for further stacking. I had my half drum in the work area to burn the smaller pieces that could be fully consumed within the can versus trying to bundle these small pieces in my hands to walk them across the yard over to the burn pile. With the brush pile burning and me adding more material as I went along, there were times that I did cut up larger sections of branches that were too good to just burn up with the rest of the garbage. These pieces I did take time to cut up into lengths that were movable and allowed me to stack them with the other pieces I already had staged. I continued to add to this ever growing raw firewood pile, knowing I'll have my work cut out for me when I do get to where I'm doing nothing but splitting firewood. But just like with me wanting to cut up the smaller garbage pieces of wood and burning the stuff up now so I can dedicate my next phase in the project to just cutting the trees into raw firewood, I want to make the 3rd phase be the splitting into the final product. Eventually by the time I got tired of cutting wood and the burn pile burned down, I made a sizable dent in the fallen tree pile. The next little task I decided to take on was processing the scrap wires I pulled from the 65 Mustang in the recent past days. Most of this wiring was the original wiring from the car with a small portion being extra wire I added in the process of running new circuits and hooking up new lights or other devices in the car. Since all this wire's out, I went ahead and did the same thing that I did with the wiring pulled from the chicken coop cars prior to my work on them. Of course I had to get a fire going in the half drum so I can have a good cooking surface with which to burn up the wiring to get the insulation off. After I got that started I went ahead splitting up the wire bundles to separate the individual wires so I can cut usable sections from the wiring. From here I rolled up the lengths of wire and taped them up, stacking up a pile for storage with the large amount of wiring I already had on hand from the past cars' wiring. I even saved some specialty plugs and multi conductor plugs and what not since these can be used in another car's wiring or some new circuits that may incorporate these pieces. Once I salvaged all the usable wiring I was comfortable with from the bundles I pulled out my grate to lay over the top of the half drum. I put all the leftover scrap wiring on top of this and sat the grate over the fire, letting it do its job of burning the insulation off while I went ahead and cleaned up my tools and any other stuff I had outside for the day. This way when the wiring was done burning up I'd have everything else inside and I could set the grate on the ground to cool off real quick before sticking the bare copper into the bucket that I currently have other burnt copper sitting in, awaiting their trip to the scrap yard. Once the other mess was cleaned up the burnt wires were cooled down sufficiently to stuff into the drum. I already put the rolls of salvage wire into the storage trailer so with that, the day was done. A large amount of fallen tree crap was cut up and disposed of, the brush pile was nothing but ashes and a large bundle of wires were also taken care of, clearing up more of the yard so I can be able to conduct other work in the future. The fun continues...
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