i have been useing products from irrigrow international for almost 20 years, low flow and gravity feed. irrigation tape comes in different grades . i can irrigate anywhere with it , i just fill a barrel or bucket ,elevate it ,connect the tape and it does the job amazingly well. it is also fairly cheap and unless you plant your corn seedlings on top of it it will last for years and years. it can also be left in the ground. i can irrigat a 1 acre garden with a 200 gallon barrell or a row of new fruit trees 2 miles away with a rain barrel .
Here in Alberta Lee Valley tools sell the best hose connectors but they are costly.
hello I have elders here and they are pretty much unable to do a squat. I had them read the forum and their response was that as you age your sphincters don't function always on command and as females go through lifes hurdles of having children and ageing our bladders don't always work the way that we want them too either.The elders laughed outright at the urine diverters for squatting as they need a 5 inch lift on their seat due to hip transplants etc... to use a toilet and get off of one. I tried a two holer for a practice run and it might as well have been a one holer with the number of seniors and small children running about .
try and try again is all I can say, my trees would love the compost.
you are absolutely correct about not over feeding babies. I had a neighbor bring me a little lamb that they had been feeding milk replacer, it had a terribly distended stomach. A long story short is that they fed the little guy to death. Multiple feedings of small and moderate amounts are best for babies, just like their own mother would do.
i have raised lots of orphans, lambs, kids, calves, kittens, pigs, puppies, pigeons , usually i keep a milk cow around, and a milk goat, right now i have a sheep that is milking rather well. It is good practice to keep clostrum in the freezer, grab it and freeze it at every opportunity. The store bought stuff isnt any where near as good as the real deal but it will get you by in a pinch until you get your hands on the real stuff.If you have no critters milking and no milk in the freezer then There is almost always some one who has some thing haveing babies at the same time that you are, ask around, generally people will let you have clostrum and or milk as long as you will do the milking. If all else fails use the tried and true baby critter formula canned evaporated milk and corn syrup, add water to dilute to which ever species you are feeding and corn syrup the same. corn syrup has a laxative effect so be gentle with it. kittens and piggies and human babies need more syrup than goats and calves. some animals have a very high sugar content in their milk as well as a higher fat content so do your research and dilute accordingly. The formula has saved many little lives but it does not replace clostrum, i always prefer the real deal and do my best to locate the closest milk that i can find.
12 yrs ago I ruptured 2 disks in my neck in an accident and the result is chronic pain and spasms etc ,the first 6 months were major agony. This is what I learned over the years so far ; find or make yourself a rice bag or bags of appropriate size for warming the muscles when they are spasming and or refuse to stretch,a hot wet towel can help, use any kind of topical linament you find that works to confuse the nerves so that they are not making your life hell, do go to a good chiropractor, do find a good physiotherapist and do go to a good doctor, use what ever appropriate pain medication you need to get through this and be careful when mixing natural and maimstream pharma,some times an accupuncturist helps a lot, acupressure helps as well if one know what they are doing,some yoga stretches for sore backs have been helpful and can be found on youtube. Meditation is an absolute must because the more tense the pain makes you the more pain you are in.
Blessings
hello have you found anything in the Red deer area yet? If you haven't message me and we can chat. Our farm is East of Elnora out by the Buffalo jump park and we host woofers every year here. We are about 45 minutes from Red Deer
Leah
the neighbors/renters had a small herd of highlands and they were adorable astheticly, they were pretty docile, good milkers, high milk fat for people who love butter. They were also amazing foragers, they were out getting their own grass happy as clams at -20 F with a SE wind blowing, the usual breeds of cows were huddled around their hay bales behind a wind break fence. I have heard a number of people had good luck crossing jersey with highland for a hardier milk cow for the northern climate and really enjoyed the results. the downside is that you end up marketing the meat as inspected freezer beef on the specialty market or privately for people who don't want a huge carcass in their freezer, also they must be dehorned before they are sent to the abitoir or feed lot and some auction markets wont handle long horned animals either. Easy enough to do if done when they are very young but not when they are older it is a real pain in the butt (at least in my view,i hate it). The winters can get nasty here in Alberta and the Highlands seemed to like it. They are priced at about the same or slightly less than any other cow right now.
i so wish that I had the patience to sugar coat when I feed things back to people, but more often than not I fail. I suffer from chronic pain and after a couple of brushes with possible ending I do not seem to find that I have time to waste on people with narrow minds and hard extreme opinions. so I tend to just remove them from my life. The problem is that the "douche bags" as they are refered often are standing in the way of where I am trying to go and it is very necissary to deal with them in and effective way. I meditate a lot.
a drop of tea tree oil in the neti pot seems to be the go to for all the family sinusitis sufferers around here. they say it ends the problem pretty much immediately
free ranging rabbits can be a problematic idea if you are a gardener, as some of my friends have found out the hard way.More than one person has tried to be kind and worked very hard at digging in fences and trying to do every thing right and others thought it was no big deal if one or two was just free ranging about the farm.but after they breed and eat your garden and then the neighbors garden and then the neighbor sues and the local animal control and the county officials lay charges and you have to pay for it all, it becomes a big deal.It may seem that you are doing your domestic bunny a favour by letting them free range but in reality all you may be doing is either making them free lunch for the local wild life and/or bringing the local predators to your door or you maybe giving your bunnies a free lunch. A good sized rabbit tractor might keep your domestic rabbits happy and healthy, free from predators and disease.
There is also the fact that you have a responsibility to keep your domestic kritters from messing with the local biology .Not keeping your domestic kritters at home and contained can cause misery for years to come for any gardener and her/his neighbors as many have found out the hard way ,here in Alberta the powers that be hold you responsible for any and all damages your domestic animal causes, including their offspring, so free range has its risks whether it is a bunnie, a cow, a pig or a bird.
have you found any where to go yet? if you are interested, i have 9 acres of started permaculture site here in Alberta you can attack. My health is not what i would like it to be and neither is the farm although i am working my butt off at it. We host woofers here every summer and have campers and a spare room . shelter belts, fruit trees and one swale are in , you would have free reign for your ideas and energies.
please please, don't mess around with lung problems. go and get assessed by your dr, it may not be what you think it is. If it is pneumonia then modern meds are the best answer ,you don't want to screw this one up. It could also be many other things even fungal infections ,blood clots, lung cancer or even a collapsed lung. Take it from some one who has been there lung surgery sucks big time and chest tubes are not fun. Not being able to breath is a bad thing.
tea tree oil. I have never had any thing bite through tea tree oil. Even when I worked in the Yukon and North West Teritories where the mosquitoes, black flies and sand flees are legend did any thing bite through my tea tree oil. It has been used in Australia for ever. A few drops in a spray bottle whith water , shake and you are good to go. Pine tar works as well to keep bugs out of wounds but it is messy as hell. I carry a bottle of tea tree oil with me all summer and apply as required when ever and on what ever. Here on the farm we have a lot of houses for the birds and we do every thing we can to attract them , the seasonal,migratory and all year round ones it helps keep the bugs down naturally. hang bird houses,,and feeders and create enviroments for them all around the farm. and don't forget the bats.
what a great topic. I too am a chronic pain challenged person and I deal with spoons evey day, but it really does depend on my view of things as to whether I loose a spoon or not. pain is a teacher, it teaches patience, persistence,courage,and the ability to enjoy all the small goals that one would miss if you were too busy to see them.
paul you need more spoons. well here are a few. you do much more than you are giving yourself credit for moment by moment, every time someone goes to permies it is because of you, every time they gain a bit more curiosity it is because of you, when their questions are answered because they came here it is because of you, when ever they pass on an idea at work, over the dinner table at the pub it is all your falt. Every little idea after they have been to your web site or seen one of you videos or passed one on (and on ,and on.......) is all because of you. Every moment you breath you are making a positive difference in how people think and how they behave in their every day lives . you may not be seeing it growing by the leaps and bounds at your place as you may have imagined but if you put all the things people have done in their back yard and on their farms that you have put in their head together it would be massive indeed. Your goal of world domination is well on its way, humans are just slow.
All the best
Leah
the dailys are the first thing I go to every day and sometimes the only thing. basic, honest, informative and humorous. Keep up the excellent job Cassie
hi jack what do you want to do? you havn't really said any where what YOU want. Maybe you should find a good ethical investor and leave your college fund with him/her and get your butt out in the world and find out what it is that you want to do and experience. Woofing is a good way to do that. college isn't for every one and not for every on right now, you have time, people will change their carreers up to 7 times in their working lives. even 60 yr olds are going back to school. so no worries and no pressure. Try something that you have never done before, get a job that teaches you something interesting and useful, and be aware of what is around you ,always looking for the great things that are around the corner.
what a great idea, so glad it worked for you. I hope to put a rmh in my new barn when I get it built and I never thought of putting a brooder by it.luckily my buff hens do the job for me lately. As for the dog, the dog isn't bad, he is untrained and so is the owner. The reason it is bad to chase cattle like that is because it can cause injuries to the animals and it causes them stress and may cause them to injure themselves by running through a rence. Take yourself and the pup to obedience school so you both learn what basic commands are like 'come', leave it" and "stay". It may save your dogs life some day. You are responsible for his behavior and obedience school is NOT expensive.
thisles and dandylions are both deep rooted plants .they are there for a reason, to bring up nutrients. It is natures way of regenerating the soil. get a tiller and turn them over and do it a few times . lay down cardboard around your baby trees water wells . plant grain (wheat, oats etc) heavily between the trees to out compete the thisle roots them chop and drop the grain latter in the season as mulch after the grain has headed out. This has worked for me numerous times. once in a while I get the odd deer munching if I plant barley though. Don't forget to water your babies though. and leave the dandilions alone , they are doing what they are supposed to do, improving your soil. You will still have some thisltles but they will be chopped with the grain or you can cover the remaining patches with cardboard or dig them out. NO ROUND UP NO NO NO
kids are wonderful workers between the ages of eleven and sixteen , maybe not your own, but other peoples kids. I built my cordwood house one summer with pretty much just volunteer kids to help me, they needed hour for school work experience. A couple of ladies helped out off and on but it was the kids and I who did the bulk of it . the youngest kid to put logs in the wall was 5 and the oldest had just turned 16. They did not lose tools,whine, try to push the walls over (like some un named adult males who came by to gawk) they showed up on time and they worked late until they were ready to drop. They finished the summer knowing they could build something from the ground up, boys and girls and they have never forgotten the lesson. It has been 15 years and they still come 'home' to just sit in their house. My grandson is 5 and knows how to operate a cordless drill and helps build things (no saws until he out weighs them is the rule). He can plant and pick beans and pretty much anything else that is asked of him as well as help process. A bit of patience and guidance and it is amazing what they can do. We constantly insult childrens intelligence and abilities and they know it. A place for them would be nice at the lab they might surprise every one with the right teacher.
look at T&T seeds for ideas on perennial plants and trees for just a start. I am zone 3 and I grow apples.cherries. honey berries.raspberries.grapes,asperigus,rhubarb, sunchokesand,perennial herbs by the dozen. what causes die back here are Chinooks and drying wind more than the cold. micro climates ,the odd hoop house, wind protection is a must and a lot of mulch.
