Sunday, April 7, 2013

Stoker

Steam engines (steamships, fixed engines, and steam trains) were staffed with stokers, men who shoveled coal fuel into the firebox.  Large ships had massive crews of stokers: the Titanic had 163 stokers and 13 foremen to keep its ravenous boilers fed.  Shovel by shovel, perhaps 5 or 10 pounds at a time, the fuel was moved from storage and into the boiler by hard manual labor.  Now it looks romantic:



Me, I'm glad I don't do this to put food on the table.  This weekend I moved 80 wheelbarrow loads of mulch.  Here was the mulch pile when I started:


Here's what it looks like now:


I figure it was between 4000 and 6000 pounds of mulch that got moved.  I expect that the stokers of the titanic would have kicked mulch in my face for being such a girly man.  Like I said, I'm glad that I only do this when I play Gentleman Farmer.  But the rose garden looks pretty good.  Go Team Me!

3 comments:

  1. Stoker - that would be a good name for a lab.

    I broke a nail eating lamb bacon with Tam. Such is the hardship's we take on. :-)

    Great job on the mulch. Mine is sitting in a pile waiting until after the 5 days of rain that was supposed to be here but hasn't shown up yet.

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  2. You're picking up trees...it will make you tired if you think too hard about it. Cut a tree, chunk it up. Pick up each piece, split it, pick up those pieces and put them in your cart or truck. Pick them up again and put them in the barn to dry. Pick them up next winter and move them to the house. Pick them up and put them in the stove. The only magic in this process is making trees go up your chimney. Don't think too hard about it; you'll get tired.

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  3. Dude, Had I known you had that much to do I would have helped.

    Of course traveling from Texas, I would have gotten there in time to help you drink a beer or two.....Hmm, maybe that isn't a bug but a feature :)

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