Friday, May 20, 2016

Oozing Nature's Duct Tape

Yesterday we walked next to some pine trees which had some limbs lopped off. The result, the trees were oozing pine resin:

While I've yet to experiment with pine pitch, it apparently makes a durable, permanent, waterproof glue. It's sort of nature's duct tape, limiting you only by your imagination (OK, technically it's more like nature's sugur, but everyone knows what duct tape is).

To use pine resin you need to process it. Here's a video that explains how to prepare the stuff and another video that explains how to use it:

In this same stand of trees, there were these itty bitty pine cones:

If my research is correct, they're a edible. As a Scout, a learned early that pine trees are a natural source of turpentine, which is terrifically flammable. To this day, I know if I can find a heap of dry pine needles, a fire will be easy to start. But that's just the beginning of the pine tree's value, there's lots more it offers.

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