[Stoves] Report on?APBC - first two days

[vuthisa at yahoo.com]

Anand and Crispin. 
These pine plantations had typically 25 year felling rotations resulting in thick pine needle layers. When I was a kid we used to make sleighs from galvanized sheet metal and wood and skidded across the needles at breakneck speed. We may not have had snow in Christmas but this was the closest thing to it - and the end of the skid path at the bottom consisted of a carpet of needles neatly rolled into a heap. I distinctly remember the smell and I now know it was mychorhiza. 

The sawmill industry has changed since then and now sawmills can take smaller diameter pine as young as 14 years old provided a proper thinning and pruning regime was followed - resulting in a thinner pine needle bed.      
AD it will be difficult for someone to pyrolyse the pine needles in the plantation without having been subjected to an EIA - I have been told. Someone whose name has escaped me actually burned the flammable material inter-row as part of pre fire season preparations - and everyone thought he was mad - but he did prevent ground fire risk - and he was kept busy for many years. 

Regards

Kobus    

Cropped sections:
<Under these forests there are 60cm deep layers of pine needles that have
dropped from the trees above.>

<A voluntary agency in the Himalayan region
introduced our charring kiln into their locality so that all the pine
needles could be charred and briquetted and used as domestic fuel. One
could perhaps use the same strategy in S.Africa>

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