i've been following all of that, with the beetles and everything... many many kudos to you for doing something concrete about it all.
it's pretty fucking scary. a lot of the things i've seen/read have related the unprecedented beetle infestation with climate change and such. i know any ecosystem is way too complex to be boiled down to a one-sentence explanation, but shit. it's not right.
i'm curious about your thoughts on all of it.

We went through that in the mountains around SoCal. The county actually sent a team of guys in to cut them all down and haul them to a central location. There, they were all burned in the same type of incinerators that they use for medical waste. Not only did it make me sad that the trees were dead, but also that they couldn't be put to any use.

Fucking mountain pine beetle.
Fucking too warm winters.
I heard somebody on the radio the other day suggesting that all the beetle-killed pines should be used for the manufacture of bio-fuels

You like the velcro spur caps, huh? I admit they're pretty comfy, but in the middle of summer they don't let your legs breathe at all. I prefer the half-wrap rigid aluminum. But then that's what I learned to climb in.

Are you working for the forestry service, or is it all private contract stuff?

That's wholly soul crushing.

Awesome. I love trees. why must everything die? Have fun climbing.

www.myspace.com/conant
send me a message and i'll friend you so you can see the pics.

i'm jellyfeesh obsessed.

duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude! i am so happy to see that you're back. i'm still on the fence about leaving, but i'm starting to lean towards not leaving. it still sort of feels like home here. and 40 bucks a year ain't bad at all.

That's one of the luxuries of working in the bush.
I can drop a 100ft Douglas fir between 2 houses pretty nicely, but one rarely finds that kind of room in the city.

I love crane work. It's fast, it's easy, and there's not much clean-up. We do more than anybody else around here, usually 5 or 6 a month. We're also the big tree experts around here, so rigging is our thing.

The company we used to use let os ride the hook, even though it's not exactly legal. It's certainly faster than climbing. They tipped one of their cranes at one of our jobs, though (strictly operator error. Don't know what they hell they were thinking sending us the new guy.) and we don't see eye to eye anymore. The new company is strictly by the book. Check my "trees" folder for pics.

I'm off to bed hombre. Glad to have you back.

So, besides 'unhelpful' fire suppression, and a lack of killing frosts, aren't there other ameliorating factors such as natural predators for the mountain beetle? You know, like woodpeckers of various types? Or does colorado have an active campaign against woodpeckers?


Are there plans to do controlled burns? Also, where in the hell are all of the deciduous trees?!

That's fucking awesome. You just keep getting cooler, don't you.

Not the trees dying part.... that's just terribly sad.

Ha! His insurance company would, no doubt, shut themselves, if they heard about that.

tree hugging hippy!

barely. But i'm still kickin

thanks bro.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?


whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!



get the fuck outta here.

kind of makes you say, "I soft like marshmallow," doesn't it?

you betcha.

i made some illegal yogurt. do you like illegal yogurt?


by the way, jason went to the hardware store to get a trash can for me the other day and came back with a ready-made electric smoker apparently it was cheaper than all the stuff combined that we needed would add up to (it was $60).. it has a big element, too, so it should get plenty hot.
i was looking forward to tinkering, but ah well, i need to make another rocket stove anyways, so i'll use my pent-up tinkering energy on that.

it is awesome. i haven't had store-bought in years, but i won't hesitate to say it's way better. it's more like greek-style yogurt, too. more tangy and not as thick.

also, not yogurt, but i thought you'd be intrigued about this too: i'm making a big batch of vinegar out of really diluted whiskey. it's not quite ready, but it smells really good. 5 gallons, hopefully that will be sufficient for all of my pickling needs.
next year i'm going to tap some hickories and make vinegar out of the sap.

last time i made a rocket stove, it was out of chimney pipe pieces. $8 or so. you can make them out of old aluminum cans, but i dumpstered for quite a while and couldn't find one big enough.

well, for the whiskey vinegar, i just sterilized a food grade bucket (i have a bunch, for sauerkraut, mead, etc) diluted the whiskey to about 5% alcohol with distilled water (chlorine in tap can kill the li'l acetobacteria in the mother), added a bit of raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar to inoculate it, covered it with a clean cloth (do not seal! the bacteria that make the acetic acid are aerobic), and put it in a dark spot for a spell (i think it's been a little over a month)

with the sap, i might have to boil it down a bit if it's not sweet enough, i might add a bit of yeast or just leave it to catch wild yeasts... wait until it goes alcoholic. i might then leave it to catch wild acetobacteria, or add some of my vinegar from this year. basically anything with the right concentration of sugar will eventually turn to alcohol then vinegar, because wild yeasts and bacteria are just so ubiquitous. the advantage of adding yeast or whatever yourself is really just to give them a bit of a head start over other microorganisms and makes the results more consistent. but it also changes the whole nature of it. for instance, ever had a beer with wild yeast? like a lambic?

pizza biz is okay. a little slow now. stupid snow birds!

yeah, fermentation is really fun. the original alchemy.

i used this sourdough culture for quite a while:

it's really awesome knowing that your bread is rising thanks to the progeny of yeasts and bacteria from egypt thousands of years ago.