Antony Serio

Burdock is edible. I was actually surprised when I found that out.  It grows everywhere on my .125 acre urban lot as a weed, and it's leaves are huge. I used to pull it whenever I could, now I keep it for the greens. Mature burdock is a little bit on the tough side, but a few minutes steaming or sautéing usually fixes that. I've been told that the young roots are edible, as are the seeds. I've seen it used as a basket ingredient on 'chopped'.

I also have german mustard growing on my property. It has a spicy garlic-y taste that goes well with Italian food. I've also had it raw in salads.

Purple dead nettle is one of the first plants up in the spring, once the snow melts and the ground thaws. It has a strong, but not disagreeable taste, which I think compliments cheese grits.

Lambs quarters is another common weed in these parts. it tastes a little bit like spinach. There is one next to my front door that I am letting go to seed. I've heard tell that they are quite tasty, especially when toasted.

I have one that I use for cutting roots and whatnot. It works well for what it is. I haven't used it on anything larger than three inches in diameter. It tends to bind, but I thread it under a root and cut from above. Since you are going to be cutting above the branch, you shouldn't be having that problem. The one that you purchased sounds better than mine.

A few years ago, I had a batch of dried great northern beans that were infested with moths. From there, they spread throughout my kitchen and pantry, getting inside tubs of flour, opened boxes of crackers, other bags of beans, rice, etc. They even reduced an opened bag of slivered almonds to a dark brown goo. Since then, I've deep cleaned my kitchen and pantry and keep pheromone in my kitchen and pantry The problem is that I still have the moths. Even though I swap the traps out every few months, they are always filling up. I don't know where they are breeding, or what they are eating. Is there a way to eliminate them, short of taking my kitchen and pantry down to the studs and rebuilding?

I am in Northern NY. A few years ago, SUNY Canton had a 'Local Living' exposition, which had speakers, classes, etc., on their experimental farm. Associated with this, they had tours of a few off-grid households. One such tour was of a farmstead belonging to an individual known to the local community as 'Crazy Ray'. He had a solar powered wood-splitter that he demonstrated to people that were visiting his home. If I recall correctly, it involved a solar powered electric motor and a flywheel. When the flywheel got up to speed, he would engage a clutch, and a wood-splitter would travel a 180 degree arc and split a baulk of wood.

I've had good luck with secondhand HP laptops running Linux. I found an excellent essay on the how's and why's of doing so. Near me, there is a second-hand store that has used laptops for $250+-. I had one with a 15" display that I nursed along for years. It even survived cat puke on the keyboard. Apparently with older HP laptops, you can swap out the keyboard by pulling a few screws and prying the old keyboard out. Eventually the drive gave out, and when I tried to replace it, I could never get it to boot again. I had to unplug the ribbon cable for the display, and afterwards, I never could get it to work again. When I went to the used computer store, they had a HP gaming laptop with a 17" display for $250.00. It would throw a CMOS error on boot (unpatched Windows 10) , but I figured that I knew how to fix it. The store gave me a discount because of the error message. After installing Debian Linux, it still gave the CMOS error, so I opened the hood and looked for a watch battery. Couldn't find one. I began searching  various online forums, only to find out that newer HP laptops incorporated the CMOS battery into the main laptop battery. So, for thirty bux, a replacement battery made my laptop good as new.

I found BABW in a funky antique and craft store while I was on vacation in Isle Minnesota a few weeks ago. I'm already more than halfway through it. I noticed that throughout the book there are urls to various threads here at Permies which expound upon the ideas espoused in the book. Has anybody indexed all of the links anywhere at Permies?

First post under this account. I used a website generated 'strong password' when I created my account. However, I was unable to copy my password, so I could use permies on multiple platforms. My desktop is a new Mac Mini running Monterey and Safari (firefox doesn't play nicely with Monterey, to my dismay. I don't know when that will be fixed.). My laptop is running Debian Linux on a secondhand HP laptop, running Firefox. Yes, I could export my passwords from Safari, and import them into Firefox, but that is a pain. I do understand why password security is important, but is there a reason why I can not see my password in a human readable format?

The other day I was working in my back yard, when I found what appeared to be morels growing up along my fenceline. I picked them, for later investigation. Unfortunately, I left them outside overnight, and varmints took off with them before I could get a positive identity. The mushroom had the same type of honeycomb cap that a morel does, but I am wondering if there was anything else that it could have been. The cap seemed to be solidly attached to the stem, so I don't think it was a verpa thimble cap mushroom. Should I keep an eye on that part of my fenceline to see if any more of that variety might come up in the future?

Thanks for the advice, Big Al. The 'bags' were oversized ziplock bags, and had all been moused, so they have already been tossed. Also, thanks for the heads up about the Local Living Ventures. I enjoyed going to the festival you had a few years ago, and am glad to hear that you are still going strong. I wanted to go up last year, but was out of town. It looks like you hold the festivals every other year, is that right?

I am involved in an Amateur Radio group. A few years ago, one of our former members who was an EMT, made up a dozen or so go bags with medical supplies, bottled water, hard candy, granola bars, etc. for the group. The go bags were not maintained/rotated and were stored in an unoccupied building for four years with no heat/air conditioning and a mouse infestation. Yesterday, I decided to salvage what I could out of the go kits. Of course most of the granola bars were eaten by mice. Quite a few of the bottles of water had ruptured, either from mouse gnawing or too many freeze/thaw cycles. I tasted water from a bottle that survived, and it had a definite aftertaste of rye, so I doubt if it is potable anymore. A majority of the hard candy had melted, in many cases, mixing with leaked water to coat everything in the bag with a sticky pink sugary slime. So, I have several packs of adhesive bandages, gauze pads and surgical dressings that got slimed by the hard candy. They were in their original wrappings, and I rinsed off the slime as much as I could last night. Is there any way to tell if if they are still sterile and safe to use? There were also several plastic wrapped boxes of adhesive bandages that apparently have water infiltration, so I question their usability as well. There are tubes of triple antibiotic that was stored well outside it's recommended range of 68-77 degrees F. Would freezing cause problems? Can sunblock be frozen and survive? In fact I'm starting to question if anything in the go bags except for the bars of ivory soap (that didn't get eaten by mice) is still good.