Charcoal and a birthday

---

Geo: 16.3833, 103.933

Remember, remember ... quite appropriate really because today we are going to make some charcoal with a few pieces of scrap wood we have lying around the garden. When the rice goes through the threshing machine here it is split into three. The good rice gets sieved out into sacks, the inner husk is kept and used for duck feed whereas the outer husk is too strong for most uses. We are going to Ang and Deu's farm next door to help ourselves to a couple of sacks of this outer husk. We end up with 5 sackfuls on the bike then back to the house. We pile up the wood, get it to just start burning then cover it completely with the rice husks. This keeps it smouldering indefinitely without actually burning away. We lkeave it for the rest of the day and probably tomorrow morning as well and keep our fingers crossed.
Jai has been planning on starting to cut her black rice on Thursday but when we bike out to the farm it is obviously not going to be ready yet for a bit. The ducks are now a month old and this last week in particular have started to grow appreciably.
About 17:30 I go and buy a couple of beers and we bike over to Pak Chong for John's birthday bash. I was intending to only have a couple of beers but the best laid plans and all that ... it is about 24:30 when we bike back along the potholed road.

---