A Cone, Anyone?

In summer an ice-cream cone might be very welcome. The same may not be true during winter, though.

As part of our general after-autumn clean-up campaign, we collect all the branch off-cuts, windfall pine tresses and other organic material and relocate such material at our composting area or burning ground.

As well as pine cones.

(Above): This was the first garden trundler-load of pine cones. After two further loads, it appeared that I’d managed to collect the majority, except for those still attached to branches on the timber piles.  They will be harvested at a later date.

The reason for collecting the cones and storing them under cover to allow them to dry out a bit – they contain pine pitch (sap) which is excellent as a fire-starter – good for the winter fires. I know there are various ‘recipes’ but we simply use a bit of meths with good results.

So far – three cartons (Ref 3 400x400x500) filled with pine cones. There is an old saying, “you can never have too many pine cones.”

As a matter of interest, wood can be measure in cubic metres, or, more practically in cords, where a cord measures 4ft x 4ft x 8ft. converted 1.22m x 1.22m x2.44m which equals 3.63 cubic metres. As a further matter of interest (or not), our three cartons of cones represent approximately 6% of a cord.