I was wondering if anyone has given livestock Amaranth to them as feed and if so how does it do as a feed depending on the stock it's fed to. I'm planning on growing some soon and wondered if it'll do good in this manner.

I have seen 2 topics about raising pot bellied pigs here and I've looked at both. I'm about to get 5 of these guys in about 2 weeks. Two sows, one boar and a couple of young-uns. My questions come from the need for right now penning them verses pasturing them (I have to set up a pasture for them so they are going to be penned for now). About how much feed per pig, what would be the best feed if you need to pen them. When would it be good to swap out your sows?

I grow some wild edibles along with my vegetables, and while I know the "old fashioned" daylillies are edible are all the other varieties? I have a bunch of ornamentals to put in and I have a few non-old fashioned daylillies to put in and I wanted to know if I should keep an eye on them in case they are edible.

not at this time no as I still need a good container for my wood ash to go into.

Thanks, Thogh I am looking for something a bit more homemade.

I am looking around for a good grease cutting dish soap that I can make at home. I am already making my own laundry soap, but I'm tired of needing to buy dish soap; and I've become sensitive to a lot of bar/liquid soaps that for bathing/shower purposes I have had to go no soap. Unfortunately after both me and my partner spent years working in food service we both have a strong desire to have them so well cleaned that we need to use some kind of soap product on the dishes.

Any ideas?

Balint Bartuszek wrote:What part of the " Russian masonry heater" you want to include?

Perhaps the open-able flue short cut, may be of limited use. Or the long, in the wall flue, but that is just as much rmh as Russian heater. And while a box feeding is convenient to operate, is hard to do right.

the wall flue is what he was looking to incorporate into the RMH.

Joe Braxton wrote:If you think all RMH have J tubes, I'd point to this - Kind'a long, but worth it.

http://donkey32.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=experiment&action=display&thread=113

Looks to me like a proper masonry heater with a rocket core. What do you think?

Thanks! My partner is practically drooling over that link.

My partner was wondering if anyone has gone out and tried combining the good elements from both the rocket mass heater, and the Russian masonry heater (I hope I have the term right)? If so what was the out come. If not does anyone think they might work together? My partner wants to try combining the two, but as he has been looking online to see if anyone combined them before so he doesn't make any mistakes that could be avoided. As the house we are building is a dome which should be fairly easy to heat we don't want something that will "burn us out" of it.

I joined this site not that long ago and a few days back my fiancee's email got sent a message from "supposedly" a woman that found him through this site and wanted him to contact her. Now as there is only one account from my household here.. and it's mine.. the only way they got his email is because we share yahoo messenger.. so the person took his messenger id and sent an email. Has it happened to anyone else?

I decided to experiment with my sourdough recipe and try to make some crackers. It didn’t change much in the recipe for doing this either

Now I know it might be hard to tell exactly that they are crackers but the are. What I used ingredient wise:

1 C starter

3+C flour (unbleached white)

2 C unclorinated water

2 T salt(I use sea salt)

4 T sunflower oil

1/2 C sesame seeds




Start with 1 C of starter in a bowl shake 1 t of salt over the starter (don’t forget to feed your starter). Add 4 T of your sesame seeds here. Then add 3 C of flour and about 2 C of warm water. I say “about” because sometimes I use more or less.. just depends on how it decided to “Work” that time.

Mix it till the dough is not liquidy but fairly firm. Then cover (I used a plate) and set aside to rise for 8hours to overnight. Before you work it after rising preheat your oven to 500 degrees. In the morning I noticed my dough was a bit more wet than I wanted so I added 3/4 C of more flour and 2 T more of sesame seeds to it and mixed it firm again.

Then on a floured board knead a little… yes I know I use a no-knead recipe but for this it’s necessary. When it’s firm cut it into 4 pieces and knead a little more again till it’s floured and firm. Take out a cookie sheet (I tried on a pizza stone, but I had no way to transfer it) and put either oil or cooking spry on it. Then place one of your pieces of dough onto it and press it as flat as you desire them to be. I managed to place 2 per cookie sheet as we like them a tad thick. Then sprinkle about 1 T of more sunflower oil on each flattened piece and sprinkle about another 1 T of sesame seeds and about that much salt. Use less salt or more based on tastes and your diet.

Then set them in the oven and I believe it took about 10 minutes to get to the color we wanted on them. However I started each on the lowest rack then moved then to the second from the top halfway through. This let them rise while baking then after moving them they browned very nicely. My kids wanted to gobble them up before breakfast.

I had found a wonderful recipe on youtube for a no-knead sourdough bread here it is:

3 C of flour
2 C of warm water
1 C of starter
1t of salt


Put your starter in a bowl, feed your starter. Then sprinkle the salt over it, then add your flour; then slowly add water till it forms a semi stiff dough. Cover and let rise 8 hours to overnight, in the morning.
Preheat your oven (if using a standard one, fire up your wood one otherwise) to 500 degrees and place inside a large covered baking vessel. I use an 8qt cast iron dutch oven for this purpose, that is only used for it. "Pour" the dough out onto a surface and fold the four corners in. Place your dough into the baking vessel (careful it's hot), cover and leave in oven for 20 minutes. Then uncover it and bake another 20 minutes.

I love this recipe and have recently started adding other ingredients to it and seeing what I can get out of it. My favorite so far has been oatmeal, flax seed, and sunflower oil.

I also suggest "The Tassajara Bread Book" (ISBN# 0-87773-025-3)

I also suggest "Adventures in Sourdough Cooking & Baking" By Charles D. Wilford (ISBN# 0-912936-00-2)

I have not gone through the first one as much, but I have read through a great many of the second's recipes. They all seem fairly easy to make if you follow the directions.

One more book I would suggest is "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" I don't recall the author, but for a book about making bread from yeast and wanting to do it by hand it's wonderful to "work your way through". One of these days I might get to replace my copy of it, Happy baking!

I do not know if anyone has heard of these buildings :

www.birdcagedome.com

...but we are planning on building one here (might take a while to get the supplies together)with adding on a layer of straw bales onto the outside instead of using insulation on the inside. Does anyone know anything about these buildings aside from what is on the website?

gani et se wrote:

We would love to try one of those on our soil as we half dug a root cellar with a bulb (3")bit for a drill and used a hammer drill to power it. Granted we're now filling up said root cellar as it's collecting an obscene amount of water, and not from rain.

Refer to other thread on digging a pond: location, location, location. Sorry don't have the url for that thread handy.
Is there any way you can locate your pond where you planned the root cellar?

I would but, as it's right next to our current building; it would not work out.

We would love to try one of those on our soil as we half dug a root cellar with a bulb (3")bit for a drill and used a hammer drill to power it. Granted we're now filling up said root cellar as it's collecting an obscene amount of water, and not from rain.

It was interesting to see how well the bulb planter worked on our heavy clay soil here, much better than using a pick or a clam shell.