Artistic Licence

A bit cooler with a light breeze so set off for the Bannwald forest/woods above Ottobeuren. Being Holy Monday, I have managed to get the tower of Ottobeuren's Basilica in the shot. Need to look carefully in gthe middle of the photo, between the standing trees.

The track leading up from the car park was lined with piles of hard wood logs. This has been cut down before the storm two weeks ago and is all sold. On each pile is a label saying who it is destined for. Many of them was marked as being for "The Centre for Energy Wood". Back home I checked out who they were on the internet. Turned out it is a sister company of the State Forestry who supply large wood chip users with their fuel.

This practice of using perfectly good timber for this purpose is one of the dilemmas of the German energy policy. Like the "Bio-Gas" units originally developed to run on waste are now being fed on maize which is ruining the countryside (and bees!!!!!!!!!). But when you see maize produces 200m³ of gas per tonne compared to chicken or pig muck with around 70m³, it's no wonder.

We have the problem with our wood pellet heating. Originally using pellets pressed from saw mills waste sawdust which they had problems disposing of. Now trees are felled for them and of course the price has shot up. Many of the farmers around here also have some forest and moved to wood chip central heating. For them it makes double sense using all the unsellable "waste". On Thursday I am picking up a chipper to deal with all our branches etc from the storm. Farmer Franz will come along with a trailer and together with son Marcus, we will clear all the debris and he will use it in his central heating.

Flash had a good day thanks to the cooler weather. He suffers terribly when it's warm, panting almost all the time. He does have a very thick coat and an even thicker undercoat. The previous owners of our house had an old Aussie with the same problem and almost literally had it shorn. Looked a bit strange but the reckoned it had worked. I need to ask Emmy about this but given she spent much of her time in Iceland and Greenland, she might not have much experience of this hairstyle!

His hip/gait problems are here to stay. We will have to speak to the vet if there is something which can improve his quality of life. I don't want to pump him with stuff that makes him able to do a 2 hour ride out but simply ease the stiffness. Those who know BC's will know how often a BC gets up, lies down each day - not a second of peace.

Back at the ranch, more log/branch clearing.