mountainFrugal Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

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Background:
We use wood heat almost exclusively. With the large stove we have and the large thermal mass of brick around the stove we usually only get it going in the early evening (6pm) and put a final round in ~10 pm. We keep the house around 55F, but that increases locally in the living room once the stove is ripping. We have various personal layering systems to keep us warm during the day that we have for our winter Ski-touring/camping outings. I am sitting here typing this with down booties, thick wool socks, fleece pants over shorts, wool base layer, jacket with hood over my wool hat and headphones over my ears. Stylish! :)

We use a combination of Douglas fir and mixed pine harvested from the local national forest land. The Doug Fir is by far the best local wood (https://forestry.usu.edu/forest-products/wood-heating) at 20.7M BTU/cord. It does produce a decent amount of smoke if not combusted completely so it is important to get the stove ripping and up to temp quickly. We do not really have problems with indoor air quality. We have an air purifier for wildfire smoke season with a sensor built in. If placed directly next to the stove it will only turn for a short period when opening the door to put in more wood. We live in a very rural area so we are less concerned about air quality problems (this would obviously be different if we were in a city). Further, burning these cut up tree snags and downed trees helps clear the local forest of undergrowth fuel load for when the inevitable "big boy fire" comes through our neck of the woods.

I have tried many different ways of starting fires in our stove to get the most efficient cold start. For our current set up this method seems to work the best after trying nearly 40 different combinations. The wood needs to be cured and very dry for this to all work out well. I start by tearing up some newsprint with some of my large charcoal gesture drawings (no one in the world wants to see this art) to make a fire bundle (1). I put a large thigh* sized split piece of wood in with the bark side to the back of the stove and the point of the wedge towards the front (2). The thigh size piece of wood is angled towards the door opening slightly and rests on top of a forearm sized piece (2). One forearm sized piece of wood rests on top of the metal inlet square so as to not block airflow directly into the center of the fire (2). The tinder bundle is placed directly next to the air inlet with three pinky sized pieces spread out on top (3). The two thumb sized pieces are placed perpendicular to the pinky pieces and on top of the larger pieces (4). The remaining forearm sized piece is placed offset the pieces below to maximize airflow/updraft to the top of the stove (5). A simple light to the bad art and away we go! This configuration does an excellent job of maximizing the combustion reaction from O2 availability through the inlet and having the door cracked while simultaneously heating up the larger pieces of wood, keeping the heat contained to build up a coal bed quickly, and not having to check in it for an hour. With a nice coal bed we just use larger thigh sized pieces which burn for 3 or so hours with the damper fully open. You could make them last slightly longer by reducing the damper, but then you are getting much less efficient combustion and lots of carbon build-up so a tradeoff exists.

We end the night with a large round (un-split) for the night log. With the stored heat in the stove and bricks it can keep the thermoelectric fan going until 6 am when we wake up. If I happen to get up to pee at night I will through in a few forearm pieces to keep the coal bed longer if the temps outside are going to remain well below 20F during the day. With the thermoelectric fan and a box fan propped up on a table at start of our hallway we can easily move the heat around the house when it is really cold out.

*forearm sized if you are @theanimal. :)

theanimal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by theanimal »

Ha! You may be overestimating my musculature. I'll have to try your setup, I do mine differently.

My stove is a bit different, my air intake is in the back but I think your method would work well if I just reversed everything. Since we have the factors of a big stove and a small abode, we try to shoot for a goldilocks approach to our fires: hot enough to get to higher efficiency and away from creosote formation temps but not hot enough to turn our place into a sauna. My start ends up being more like a log cabin, a couple slightly bigger than forearm size logs running parallel on bottom, with thinner logs running diagonally across and another forearm size log atop that if it's cold. Kindling and such is at the base between the logs. It doesn't fail but it sounds like I need a bit more maintenance than you as I often go back in ~30 minutes to adjust some of the top logs.

That Norweigian wood book has a very counterintuitive approach. Kindling goes on top! I don't remember the breakdown after that but I seem to remember it being the reverse. Logs criscrossed with a row of 2 finger thick kindling and the tinder/kindle pile above that. I tried it a handful of times years ago but never stuck with it. I might have to experiment with that again.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

theanimal wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:08 pm
That Norweigian wood book has a very counterintuitive approach. Kindling goes on top! I don't remember the breakdown after that but I seem to remember it being the reverse. Logs criscrossed with a row of 2 finger thick kindling and the tinder/kindle pile above that.
I will try today!

I should also add that if the large thigh piece is really resting on the forearm piece, once the smaller logs breakdown the large piece will collapse directly on top of the coal bed keeping it lit. This allows for less readjusting, but depends on the size and shape of the large piece how well it works. I will split some specifically to this size next year.

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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by theanimal »

The approach this guy talks about seems to be something similar as Norwegian Wood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNidEAavLlo

I remember the kindling being all the way on the top, but I may be misremembering. I need to review that book!

sky
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by sky »

I make a pyramid of three pieces of wood, which leaves a small gap in the center. I put some newspaper and a firelighter in the center gap, light it, and stack the top piece of wood on top. I leave the woodburner door open with a small gap for about 5 minutes to increase the draft. Then close it up and it is good for about 2 to 3 hours.

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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by jacob »

theanimal wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:08 pm
My start ends up being more like a log cabin, a couple slightly bigger than forearm size logs running parallel on bottom, with thinner logs running diagonally across and another forearm size log atop that if it's cold. Kindling and such is at the base between the logs. It doesn't fail but it sounds like I need a bit more maintenance than you as I often go back in ~30 minutes to adjust some of the top logs.
This is pretty much how we do campfires [on top of one of those campsite cast iron platforms].

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

The log cabin method is tried and true. It also works in our stove, just not as well as the method I described.

We do keep a few cm (~1 inch) layer of ash on the bottom of the stove to insulate the coal bed once it is formed. This may be a carryover habit from my buckskinning days, but you are more likely to have a coal that you can blow back into flame rather than starting from scratch. It makes it easy to throw some kindling on top of a few coals and blow on them with a bamboo straw to concentrate the airflow. Flames right back up.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

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theanimal wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:25 pm
The approach this guy talks about seems to be something similar as Norwegian Wood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNidEAavLlo
About to do a cold start and watched this video. The method in the video is actually very similar to the method I (hopefully) described. The main difference is that I use the much larger log instead of a medium one for the back base and have the two base logs shifted so the V is directly in-line with the door crack. He also uses more layers of wood above the paper starting material which I will try today. We have similar tubes with holes in them at the top of the stove that he describes. Our stove (Country Brand from 1992) has an additional chamber at the top before exiting through the stove pipe to further combust the smoke/gas (pyramid shape that the fan is sitting on in the illustration).
sky wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:34 pm
I make a pyramid of three pieces of wood....
I am now curious if my method or the one in the video works well for a stove with a straight exit pipe out the top? Maybe this is why @sky's method works so well for him?

Anyway, thanks for all the comments and discussion everyone. :)

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

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WINS
I wrote 5 blog posts (2 work, 3 personal).

1 back-country skiing and 3 xc-skiing ice beards with full snot and breath ice crystals. Mountain social signaling at its finest.

The sketchbook that I had in my minimalist sketching kit was nearing completion. I found that Stillman and Birn make these small cold-press paper (150 lb) notebooks for watercolor/mixed media. A perfect small addition to add water color to my kit (old sketchbook paper could not take washes). I also did some research on bookbinding/stitching smaller books of mixed paper. It seems like a fun future project that could save a few bucks purchasing larger sheets of paper and making smaller books from them.

IMPROVEMENTS
I spent a lot of time XC-skiing this month and leveled up in 2 skate skiing techniques. I still had some bad falls when I did not get the timing correct of poles and ski movement, but I am much more comfortable quickly shifting poling sides and alternating strokes on flat terrain (large efficiency gain). I also spent a lot of time working on my uphill V1 technique, especially for side slopping uphills. Skate skiing (like swimming) offers a lifetime of technique improvement opportunities based on fitness, slope angle, snow conditions, wax etc. Sign me up!

After reading about various forms of fasting/intermittent meals on the forum I decided to do a background experiment. I have been playing around with it for ~7 months now. What works well for me is eating between 11 am and 7 pm. I usually exercise starting between 10-11 so that I can have a meal directly after instead of a recovery snack. It works well for me to not eat before exercise at all unless I am going to be going hard (Zone 3+) for more than 45 minutes. I can physically do it, but performance drops off and it takes longer to recover during heavy volume weeks. Exercising on an empty stomach has also decreased my need for food while doing much longer weekend sessions presumably because I have trained my metabolism to rely proportionally more on energy from fat reserves.


NEW DIRECTIONS
I am actively working on weaknesses in drawing. A large part drawing realistically from imagination (as I understand it), is first getting really good at drawing from memory. Looking at objects for a set amount of time and then drawing it from memory immediately after. Once you get good at this, you can draw more from memory of more distant events and train the ability to more accurately translate from your imagination. I am double dipping here by also studying pages/layouts/visual story-telling to make master copies.

DRAWING
Pencil miles! Sketched every day this month. I had 23 days where I filled at least a full page in a sketchbook (many days it is a few pages). I finished editing my 7 page story and am waiting for feedback from my partner before doing the thumbnails/layouts (main drawing goal for Feb).

OUTDOOR ADVENTURE
See stats.

WORK
2 data blog posts and implemented some new models incorporating a new data type. I will likely be able to consult after on projects I am interested in, but it is looking like Feb 2023 is when I will pull the plug on FTE.

SOCIAL
Visited with one of my best friends for a week. Along with skiing together a lot with our partners, we collectively had a Japanese themed meal week. We used Tokyo Cult Recipes by Murota as the main text to work through. Yum!

I have a "collaborative" art/watercolor sketchbook that I bring with me often to social events (on book 3 of 3 over the years). I have number of entries from friends and randos alike. Anyway, I learned that the watercolor paper in the current book can take WAY more water then I thought possible and not buckle thanks to my friend's 6 year old. She did these heavy washes with large droplets of water with pigment suspended in them. After the pigment settled the tops of the droplets were clear and eventually evaporated. The leftover pigment was intense and made interesting patterns. The washes/pigment did not bleed through either!

My partner and I had some great open ended deep conversations this month about ERE, creative living, cocooning (Plotkin), and what we wanted out of different life stages. I think that short days and cold temps lead to this sort of conversation more easily. :)

My former pro ultra-running friend that smokes me up hills (see Sept 2021 review for reference) is no match for my skate skiing skills! We had a good laugh about it and I taught him and another friend some of my technique improvements. Soon they will be passing me, but I am currently faster so I will take it. haha!

RoamingFrancis
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Inspiring! Do you mind me asking how old you are?

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:48 pm
Inspiring! Do you mind me asking how old you are?
Mid-thirties in age. Forever 20 at heart. :)

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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Very cool stuff. I've heard that drawing from memory exercise is helpful for comics. I remember a book I read once suggested just that, where you look at something for 30 seconds to a minute, draw it, then repeat until you have it memorized.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:48 pm
... look at something for 30 seconds to a minute, draw it, then repeat until you have it memorized.
I think that is a variation on what I have been working on. That would be a bit more rapid back into the drawing towards memorizing. I take to the time to deconstruct what is and what is not working. 90% of the time it is proportions so far. I will try the memorizing version tomorrow.

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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mooretrees »

That's a lot of xc skiing! I've seen folks doing skate skiing and it looks really fun. I'm still at a beginner level for Nordic but I can see the allure to having a different set of skis for different conditions. What do you mean by your uphill V1 technique?

I love the feeling of frozen nostril hair, it's just the weirdest thing. I'm sure having frozen snot hanging down is more crazy though! What a fun way to do your monthly updates too, really nice to see a different approach.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Thanks! Skate skiing is so fun once you get the basic movements down! If the conditions are right (somewhat icy) and you have a good fresh wax on you can cover ALOT of ground in a short amount of time. My partner is the waxing champ in our relationship. She comes from Utah ski folk stock who all have dedicated nordic waxing stations in their homes... :shock: ... so I have had some good teachers over the years to point out little tweeks here and there.
mooretrees wrote:
Tue Feb 01, 2022 8:00 pm
What do you mean by your uphill V1 technique?
Normally, I would try to describe something, but there are so many moving limbs, skis, poles and different angles it is easier to just watch a video with an instructor haha: https://youtu.be/WCSMTWvySrE?t=449

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mountainFrugal
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The Cocoon V1.0

Plotkin and his colleagues have been working on developing and successfully guiding people through a nature based spiritual path for a few decades now. I had read parts of Soulcraft in 2009 in the depths of grad school, but decided I did not have the time to devote to what was required for understanding and transformation. Coincidentally, as I was laying out my vision for mF Freedom To Motherfuckers! project there were murmurings of some of Plotkin's other work Nature and the Human Soul a few times on the forum. I downloaded an audio version and immediately devoured it. His description of entering the cocoon and what that feels like was very, very similar to what I had experienced as I was in the thick of creating my Freedom-To vision. He outlines some of the hang-ups that can catch people (everyone has some) later on if they are not dealt with before going all in on finding your mytho-poetic identity. He had a large list of items, but a few that stuck out to me that were most common and are relevant for ERE were chemical dependencies and addictions to things like Western consumerism. Nature and the Human Soul goes through the entire lifecycle of a human so that is likely why it is a WL10 book. Plotkin's other works mostly focus on guiding people through the Cocoon stage (and surrounding stages). I do not have time to explain his entire methodology here (deserves it's own threads), but one of the first suggested exercises is to make a list of memorable nature encounters so you can then draw connections between them. Rationally, I know most of this is just in my head and I do not think that I can actually talk with nature. However, the search for one's mytho-poetic identity leaves the rational behind for more sensual explorations of your own imagination interacting with the world. Here is my attempt at the first exercise.

# Fasted Hiking and Night Plateau Run
In college I spent a few weeks hiking in the high deserts of Southern Utah. I did a fast for a few days while hiking with our group and it changed my perspective on how aware you could be of your surroundings. When you are fasted and out in the cold (at night) for a few days all of your senses are much sharper (see @theanimals journal for similar takes). On our last night I did a long run on this open high desert plateau under the stars. It was cold, but I was sweating and far from the group so I needed to make it back or risk hypothermia as all the daytime heat radiated back into space. For most of the run my arms were out embracing the milky way with tears flowing.

# Sunshine on snowy farm field
There were many farms around where I grew up and I would often play in the woods and wonder along the tree lines with my sibling. The first time I saw "god" in nature was on a winter afternoon when the sun was getting lower in the sky after melting some snow off of a farm field. I just sat there in the cold for a few hours and as the sun set over the distant farm field horizon.

# Face to face with water moccasin - Elmers!
My family has a history of being terrified of snakes. This started when my grandmother was in elementary school. The older boys would catch snakes in the field and then put them in my grandma's desk for her to discover. She was so terrified of snakes that we had to call them Elmers. This conditioning transferred to my father who was equally scared and taught my sibling and I to be scared. I was out exploring while my dad was fishing and I wandered out onto a log over the river. I was mainly focusing on trying not to fall in and then came face to face with a water moccasin (poisonous) that was coiled up on the log. Nothing happened of course, but I got back to my dad and was shaking violently. I have since come to have many mutual respect encounters with wild snakes and have held pet snakes.

# Last backpacking trip with DW
Not willing to share the details of this one publicly, but we had a great time with some amazing sunsets. Some of her ashes are scattered in this watershed.

# Psilocybin
The scariest and most delightful feelings and ideas in the world come from your own mind. I took a heavy dose in college and had the most delightful softening of my reality. I felt scared when I was peaking and the mycorrhizal network beneath the grass assured me that the trees would take care of me and that everything would be okay. I wandered back through the neighborhood at dusk and could feel the warmth of the light radiating from the houses on my block. I arrived back to our dilapidated college house and immediately my mood changed. There were no lights on and it looked cold, empty, and haunted with no trees in the yard to act as protectors. I took a long shower and tried to overcome the paranoia as I came down.

# Sitting zazen regularly
It was during a particularly deep meditation session that I decided that peacefulness of mind was the closest thing to God there was. I became atheist on the spot towards a traditional Judeo-Christian God (although I now think the sidelined mystical traditions within those religions are closer to what the founders had in mind and think the basic teachings about brotherhood with your fellow man are spot on). Right around the same time I was getting into Wilber et al. because they offered a much more holistic picture of what spirituality could offer. In the end decided that zazen had enough to offer in its own path (Wilber admits this many times) and is much simpler and translatable across cultures than some of the more esoteric cultural ceremonies and techniques. However, AQAL and these other models still have a lot to offer for understanding the different aspects of reality physically, mentally, and culturally (I, We, It, It's).

# Climbing flow states on hard routes
I first experienced a flow state when pitching in baseball. The focus and calming of nerves to accurately throw is the same mental muscle that I used during climbing trips with large multi-pitch objectives with a competent climbing partner. It is all about the now.

# Solo Shelter and Milky Way
I wrote about this briefly for my buckskinning post. Leaving the suburbs, building a primitive shelter next to my dad's camp in a river valley (low light pollution) using Tom Brown as a guide and being rewarded with a new moon (dark) night and a stunning milky way.

# Oregon Coast Backpacking Trip - Cougar
A cougar was hunting some animal right outside of our tent next to a creek. We were inside the tent, but heard the classic cougar scream followed by fighting and a deep SPLOOSH in the deeper part of the creek. Taking a look at the tracks in the morning confirmed cougar and deer. No blood though and no other animal sign. I could hear my heart beating inside my head. Being in fight mode while trapped inside a sleeping bag is next level discomfort. haha.

# Raft flip in Grand Canyon
I think that getting worked in a rapid or an ocean wave set are two of the best ways to show how insignificant we all are. Nature can flick any one of us. Relaxing and diving deeper will usually let the rapid release you. Fighting it directly is a sure way to lose.

# High Desert Deer and Wind Movement
We were camping in the high deserts of Eastern Oregon. It was really windy and set up our tent in this area where there was deeper brush cover. The area had an outhouse on the other end of the pull out and there was a spigot that was dripping water near our tent. In this water limited environment this could be why there was denser brush there. We went into the tent early to get out of the wind and read. As soon as it was past dusk I kept hearing movement outside of the tent. I could not see anything when looking out the door, but every time the wind would blow there would be the sounds of movement getting ever closer to the tent. Finally, after keeping my head out of the tent for the next gust, I noticed that we were surrounded by a herd of mule deer. They had come to lick the ground around the dripping spigot. They stayed around our tent all night drinking and milling about when the wind blew. As I was falling asleep I had a very strange disconnect between wind and movement of the deer and which one was causal. Did the wind cause the deer or the deer cause the wind? This also reminded me of how the Fremen move through the desert so they do not attract sandworms in the novel Dune.

Thanks for reading.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

^^^^ Up-thread ^^^^^
mountainFrugal wrote:
Wed Dec 29, 2021 12:34 pm
Having extra space also allowed my partner to perfect a simple sourdough recipe that we use for bread, pizza dough, pancakes, etc.
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by Slevin »

That’s some great looking sourdough! Would love to check out the open crumb too!

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mountainFrugal
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Slevin wrote:
Mon Feb 07, 2022 8:10 pm
That’s some great looking sourdough! Would love to check out the open crumb too!
I will post when it cools and we have for din din.

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mountainFrugal
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As promised. We like it to be a fairly consistent for spreading nut butters or regular butter on. She has played around a lot before getting to this stage. One of the main factors is preheating the oven for ~1 min at 350F so that the bulk fermentation step will actually work. Our house is usually 55F so it is much to cold and she was getting brick loaves. The warmth of the oven plus the light on is enough if the fermentation step in between folding is done in the oven. I should also add that there are many (simple) steps that it would not be possible to do a fresh loaf for dinner if we did not both work from home. Another huge benefit to the system we are building. She uses these loaves to create great social capital by making two and giving one away to friends. A surprise loaf of fresh warm bread at dinner time usually goes over VERY well.

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