abbie kruse

Great resources! I’ve also been fascinated by shoemaking for a long time. Just a couple days ago I found these amazing felted boots here:
https://www.wayoftheearth.com/ancestral-skillsgallery

I’ve also seen (somewhere?) woven basket-type slippers meant to be worn over felted shoes. Something like that, or maybe a rope sole, with a layer of tough leather for wear-protection would still be nice and flexible. Or maybe combine the felted wool with full-on Japanese straw boots (fuka-gutsu)

The soles do wear out more quickly than we are used to- but no petro chem. I recently read “The Birch Bark House” with kiddo, and was interested to read descriptions of how often moccasins had to be made to replace worn ones. Less labor, longer lasting would be ideal… just how to do that with local stuff? Or how to strike a good balance between wearability and longevity? The cool wooden slipper soles would endure, but I’m curious if they are comfy?

Mmm, Caravaggio….one of my favorites.

So many great suggestions- children’s book illustrations made me think of Maurice Sendak’s “Outside Over There.” My siblings and I pored over that book endlessly.

Here are a few painters I haven’t seen mentioned yet:

Amadeo Modigliani
Rene Magritte

And my “sorry, not sorry” selection is
Ivan Albright- not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but if I had a big book of his paintings I’d spend hours with it.

Thank you for being here to share your knowledge and experience! I am very excited to see “no-till” in the title of your book and am curious to learn your methods I watched one of your presentations available on YT that detailed a minimal till method of annual farming- the presentation was amazing, in part because of your scientific approach, but also because of your conversational style. Being able to hear your story and thought process in combination with the numbers behind your results was incredibly helpful (I’m thinking of your soil testing- nitrogen addiction recovery😂- and crop yields). I just saw that you posted a new YouTube video in June, so I will be watching that! Does this book describe your transition from minimal tillage to no-till? I’d love to hear/read your experience with that. Thanks again

Perhaps someone here has some experience with this, and advice to share...

I’m in Zone 6b, and am trying to care for an approx. seven year old Chicago Hardy fig at a local community garden. I’ve only observed it for the past two years. So far, it has been unprotected in the winter, and died back to the ground each year. The vegetative re-growth has been extremely vigorous, a circle/crown of unbranched canes shoots up 10-12 feet. It doesn’t produce fruit. In trying to figure out why, and how to correct that problem and get some delicious figgy goodness, I found lots of conflicting information online- fruiting on current season growth vs. previous year growth... Finding out now it’s complicated with figs! With their multiple crops and whatnot...
I’ve read about other people having the same problem (no fruit) but also a couple reports of the first year re-growth fruiting but not ripening by first frost.
At this point, my best guess is that each year, the energy our fig has stored in the roots is all going to vegetative growth each spring, and could have been redirected to fruit by pinching the terminal leaf bud of each cane after it grows to about half its usual height?
Yesterday, in preparation for single digit F temperature, we did some winter protection to try to keep at least part of the canes alive, hopefully giving them a head start on veg growth for spring. I’ve learned that with figs, though, longer periods of not-so-extreme cold and wind are worse than short extreme drops in temperature, and noticed yesterday that the tops of the tall canes already appear dessicated.
I’m torn now between pruning the canes back to encourage new growth at comfortable harvest-level (assuming having a head start on growth will help it fruit) and just letting the winter prune them... What i’m thinking is that if I prune them myself, the cuts may be injurious, but it would be easier to fully cover and protect the remaining stems.
Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Adorable

I know this is an older post, but I'm so curious about the results of your experiment!
I have a shaded/dappled lot in 7b, plan to experiment with growing chicken forage in combination with movable coop.
This will be my first full growing season here, but last summer I had some interesting results with container gardens I moved onto this property. Container grown arugula when placed in shade grew big leaves and never flowered... good for eating, not for seed-saving Container garlic chives are up this year with big succulent leaves, big difference from past years when they got ~4 hours direct sun/day. A local organic farmer I've worked for has so much expensive shade cloth to protect leaf crops planted in full sun in the summer... I'll just use the trees, and figure out where the sunbeams move during the days and seasons...

Thanks, guys!

Mark- it's good to know your bin heated up well with one person's "contributions." I'll have two people and a dog regularly, plus guests. Love your cover material idea- free woodchips are available in my area as well, but also have a sawmill nearby and lots of dead leaves. A big pile of woodchips would be a great resource for other projects, too. I also recently read on the forums and elsewhere about another style of composting toilet that uses woodchips and worms, developed by Anna Edey.

Joe- thank you for the YouTube links- invaluable info! I had the opportunity to read an earlier edition of the humanure handbook (2nd, maybe?) around 2005 or 6, and I started pooping in a bucket experimentally, using dry mown grass as a cover material. That experiment ended badly when someone (ok, I) left the lid off the outdoor loo before a torrential rain... I had been leaving the lid off to see how much fly action we'd get with the dried grass cover.

I haven't been looking too hard, but so far I've seen a few other designs for urban humanure composting bins:
- plastic barrels with pvc aeration tubes (Laura Allen, Greywater Guerillas, California)
- three bin system made of corrugated metal up against a building (Abdallah House, Australia)
- concrete vault (can't find the old YouTube video)

Hello! I'm interested in hearing from anyone doing humanure composting in urban areas, looking for inspiration from as many sources as possible! How does your system work? What does it look like? How is it integrated into other systems on your urban homestead? Thanks, permies