Outgrow the system

The Swedish torch is good for an efficient and contained fire, it’s controlled and good for cooking over and produces less light and heat than other fires. It can be difficult to keep going once you burn through the original log

The teepee is your traditional campfire. Good for heat and light not great for cooking, burns through fuel fairly quickly

The star fire is one of the slowest burning and not well protected but provides an even heat good for slow cooking and is excellent if you have limited fuel and need the protection a fire can provide

The lean to is a compact and efficient fire that evolves into a dense and hot bed of coals. The structure creates a good source of air flow which can help damp wood burn. A slightly better cooking fire that isn’t as bright. It also provides protection from wind on one side

The platform fire is incredibly hot and will create a very thick bed of coals but it doesn’t have a lot of air flow and is a little harder to get started.

The log cabin is big and bright and has lots of air flow which again is good for damp logs. You can also use this structure to start a smaller fire in the middle while drying out bigger logs. This fire will crumble into a messier bed of coals that don’t produce particularly even heat for cooking.

Happy summer solstice! Here’s a recipe to honour the day:

(Makes about 30 cupcakes or 2 big cakes)

Ingredients:

Cake:

450g plain flour

225g butter

4 tbsp honey

150g sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

4 eggs

250 ml milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Icing:

150g icing sugar

20 ml water

1 tsp cinnamon

As much honey as you want

Lavender (optional)

1. Lay out cake cases or grease your tray if you are making one big cake and preheat your oven to 180C/350F

2. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together

3. Add the eggs, honey, butter, milk and vanilla extract and mix until smooth

4. Put the mixture into whatever you are baking it in

5. Bake for 20mins (cupcakes) or 40mins (big cake)

6. Whilst cakes are baking prepare your icing. Mix together the icing sugar, water, cinnamon and honey until smooth. Add more water if you need to.

7. Once the cakes are done, take them out and leave to cool

8. When the cakes are cool, drizzle the icing onto them. Add lavender if you wish

Do trees need pruning? Every wild forest in the world has big, successful trees never touched by human hands; trees do not need us to cut down their limbs. Trees know what they’re about; they want to grow up, grow big, be as rich and tall as possible, possibly house a squirrel or a bee hive. Have a few little nests with tiny birds on their branches.

Humans mostly prune trees for their own selfish reasons: it’s too big for their yard, they built a road there and now lower branches are obstructing their field of vision, they put power lines over the tree and the tree has now caught up, they want to keep a big tree small and ungrowing, the tree branches are pushing too close to their house and blocking up the windows, the tree is too big and could present a danger if it fell down, they want trees to grow too close together, and for purely aesthetic reasons, to make the trees ‘prettier’ (no sense of respect for the beauty of wild nature).

There are some benefits trees can experience with good pruning, but I want to go over the disasters that will happen to trees as a result of malpruning, that people often do.

1. Over-pruning. No matter which tree you prune or why, you should never take more than 30% off of the tree. For some specific trees, it shouldn’t even be more than 10%. The width of all branches on a tree, when added up, is equal to the width of the trunk. If you take away more than 30% of it, the tree will suddenly find herself without 30% of her body, and she will freak out, and immediately grow back the missing width in thin, unruly branches that are called water sprouts. Here’s how that looks like:

If you cut these off, they will immediately grow back double in quantity, because the tree will want to maintain her body volume even at the cost of us thinking ‘thats not pretty’. So the way to deal with this, is to firstly, avoid it, do not stress the tree out in re-growing her body back in small branches, you will have created a tree that needs to be constantly pruned again, or you have to leave the water sprouts to grow for 10-15 years before they turn into real branches, and can be cleaned up a little without the tree freaking out.

2. Second mistake is topping a tree. This means to cut off the tree’s top, as an attempt to make the tree smaller. This can be done to fruit trees, to keep them forever small and keep the fruit low and easy to harvest; but you never want to top a big, non-fruit bearing tree. This tree will become a mess, it will not stay small, it will explode in water-sprouts or get multiple branches competing as a new lead. It is also likely to get sick with rot, create a new, unsightly top from water-sprouts, and it will stay unnatural and weird-looking, possibly forever. These are examples of what can happen after you top a tree:

In the last example on the right, see how this branch on the left starts to grow horizontally, and then changes the direction to grow vertically up? It became the new top, however this tree had rot introduced into the main trunk, which you can see how the tree is already black and sick from the inside. The rot will reach its way all the way down to the roots, so this tree isn’t like to live a long life after getting topped like this.

Another problem with a topped tree is that the re-grown branches will be very weak, poorly attached to the rotten core, so the tree is very likely to have branches torn off, or fall during a storm. Tree-topping can create dangerous, risky trees out of healthy and safe ones.

3. Next thing you should never do to a tree is cutting her branches in half, either to shorten them, or create some sort of shape. Trees shaped like a ball or a cube are not pruned well. These trees will not stay that way, they will have branches dying from rot, trying to out-grow the shape constantly, or exploding with water sprouts so they have to be cut over and over again; this creates a lot of additional work of trying to force a tree into a box, the tree will eventually get very unhealthy and not very happy about losing it’s ability to grow up.

With this knowledge I’ve given you, please shame everyone who tops trees next to the road, I know you’ve seen trees inexpertly topped off, by people who acted as if they know what they’re doing, and feel free to judge all cube-shaped and water-sprouted trees as well, these are Mistakes people did to trees.

“As soon as a man emerged from the caves, with cutting implements, he went off and cut off the top of the tree, and it felt good. They’ve been at it ever since, and Plant Amnesty has been trying to convince people not to do that.” Plant Amnesty (source for this entire post)

My first recipe to share with everyone is this yummy 'farmers bread' recipe I got from an old cookbook sometime last year on my quest for tasty home baked breads.

It makes 2 loaves and requires no kneading! Super bonus there as sometimes my wrists hate the kneading motion and I dont have a lot of time some days for multiple dough rises and kneading times.

You will need

*6 1/2 cups flour. *4 1/2 tsp yeast

*2 tbsp salt. *3 c water lukewarm

-mix yeast, lukewarm water & salt together.

-let the mix rise 10 minutes

-mix in the flour, resulting dough should be damp or wet.

-you can leave the mix in your bowl, but cover with a wet cloth and let it rise for 1 hour.

IMPORTANT

You may add anything you want after the hour to your dough I've done chopped tomatoes, minced garlic, shredded cheese, seasonings. I'm thinking thin sliced apples and cinnamon next batch I make~ anyways the basic recipe I use will be what finishes out here~~

*10 minced cloves garlic

*3 tbspn rosemary

*2 chopped tomatoes

-fold into the dough well

-grease 2 loaf pans and put 1/2 the dough in each pan.

-preheat oven @400 degrees f. When preheated bake bread for 30-40 minutes

Let cool at least 5 minutes, slice and enjoy~

champignon