2nd Job - The Cinder Path

No you haven't stumbled upon a Catherine Cookson book tribute !

This is simply a tale of more recycling - allotment style. I have multifuel stove to warm my front room and it will eat anything wood or coal. Just before Christmas we were offered aprrox two tonnes of coal for free as long as we shifted it ourselves. My husband and the allotment genie (aka my dad) spent a freezing cold afternoon slaving away to shift the coal and it has kept us toasty warm ever since.

When we were burning just logs there was hardly any waste - the fire would need clearing out once every few weeks so the ash went into the compost. However the coal is a bit dead and as a result quite clinkery - if you weren't brought up with a coal fire that sentance will be pure gobbledegook - quick translation the coal doesn't burn very well and leaves a lot of small ash and coal behind !

This waste would probably end up in landfil only I have decided to use it on my paths. I have collected cardboard from the shops i n town on bin day ( more recycling !) and laid this down and poured the ash out over it and raked it out.



What I thought was a lot of cinder turned out to very little when laid out -this is four months of burning and I have covered about a quarter of the path - at this rate it will take an eternity to cover the complete path - but at least the bit I have done looks a lot better than it did.


The grass grows exceptionally quickly at this time of the year and I want to get it squashed down as it looked apalling last year.