Olive bundles.

Although we live closer to Yátor than Mecina Bombaron,  Montenegro is part of an area called Alpujarra de la Sierra which also includes Yegen and El Golco.   We can see Mecina, when the Ayuntamiento broadcast messages we can just about hear them although they are not clear enough to understand - although I'm told  that  some people in the village can't make out the message either!  It's about a half hour drive round to Mecina which is quite a way when you just want to find out when the bonfire permissions are going to be available.  We've asked  twice now and each time been told 'maybe in a couple of weeks' - what we want to do is prune the olives and burn the trimmings.  (Yes we could phone but we'd get the same shrug.  We try to do a round trip when we have other places to go to as well.) 

Not a huge problem you'd think.  Must be a way round this.

Pottering in the kitchen a few days ago, I had a bit of a brainwave.  We keep loo roll middles as seed starters but don't actually use very many so have a big pedal bin sized bag hanging in the shed.  What if I cut the olive trimmings  down into small sticks, pushed them into the loo roll middles, stacked them into the empty (and not needed at the moment) fruit and vegetable drier, then burnt them in the wood burner?  Surely a better use of heat to warm us up indoors, rather than the atmosphere?

Complete and utter success.  What a brilliant idea, even if I do say so myself.  OK, so we've run out of loo roll middles but have a lot of newspapers from friends who share their old papers between three of us as fire starters.  Roll up a sheet of paper,  wrap it round your bundle and carefully, very carefully so the paper doesn't rip, pull tight.  After a day in the drier, even this time of the year, they dry out and  burn very well.  If the leaves are green it's a smokier fire but that's outside, the heat given off is the same.

So I've been making bundles - trying to think of a good name for these -  and can make 24 an hour and we use about 24 in an evening, supplemented with chunks of split wood later on for longer burning time which lasts into the night.

Will we bother going to ask about a licence?   Not sure now, we're pretty certain they've been issued as we saw fires a few days ago but if I can find an hour a day - especially when the sun is shining - it's quite a pleasant job snipping up leafy bits and tieing bundles.   And certainly rewarding when the house warms up so quickly.