log rack neatly stacks firewood vertically for maximum storage | White Empty Flour Bag

But Hanson and other fire ecologists caution that the administration has it backwards: More logging can actually make wildfires burn hotter and faster. Instead, they say, it’s well-placed, smart management that will reduce the impacts to communities from wildfires—and unchecked logging is neither.

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The trade slowed when the state put a five-year moratorium on logging and exports in 2015. But with a presidential election coming up and the ban set to expire next year, farmers and activists said they fear a return to widespread plunder.

Bucket for waste/grey water – Mine is a plastic one I bought a few years ago, but if you don’t already have one, just find a container at the thrift store. 

The best woods for burning are heavy ones — ash, beech and oak burn slow and long. A wild cherry log can be a furnace of heat on a cold night. These are hardwoods, from deciduous forests, typically produced in the 10 per cent of England and 15 per cent of Wales covered by woods.

Creating a shopping list and sticking to it can help reduce impulse purchases and assist you in remembering to take advantage of discounts, seasonal sales and other price reductions. Take note of what you already have available in your pantry, plan your meals for the next several days or the entire week, determine what you need to pick up from the grocery store and come up with a carefully planned list. To avoid impulse purchases and unexpected expenses, don’t deviate from the list.

Portage – Mulch is collected into piles by a front loader at the Portage compost site on U.S. 12 Friday, Nov. 19, 2010. (JON L. HENDRICKS | THE TIMES)

Some of the pieces of wood he uses take more than a year to prepare before the crafting process begins. The goal is to keep the moisture in the wood, to make it much easier to turn on a lathe—the easiest piece of wood to turn is a fresh-cut tree.

“One of my favorite species to work with is hackberry, which is a tree that most people want to get rid of,” he says. “It’s not very interesting when you cut it—it has a nice background grain, but it is a very light colored wood—but if you take log of it, seal the end of it, and stand it up outside for a few months, the organisms that cause it to rot get into the wood, stain it, and cause really beautiful patterns. Maple and pecan also work well for that process. I will sometimes enhance the color of the grain with stain, or if a piece is really bland I will paint on it.”

Reality: You’re living life in the city or the ‘burbs. Your tan is nonexistent and all you want is to get in and out of the grocery store as quickly as possible. Your best bet (as we have told you before) is to buy frozen fish. Because it’s flash-frozen at sea or immediately upon coming into port before transit, it doesn’t lose freshness or flavor. Plus it’s often less expensive than the “fresh” fish on ice—which, by the way, was likely previously frozen and thawed anyway. (Despite what it might look like, it’s not as fresh.)

Double cheeseburger at Five Guys in Costa Mesa (Photo by Brad A. Johnson, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“This place is something we’ve envisioned since we started our company,” McDermott says, gesturing around what is still an empty space on Commercial Street but will soon be a Ste. Marie-designed hot spot. “We’re calling it a mill and bakery, but it is really that third place of a coffee shop.”