Yeah, this is a no-go. They say hot sauce is acidified.
I'm thinking the next best thing, a series of BBQ rubs...
Haha, this isn't my dream Doug, I just need some extra cash because money is tight right now. Ideally, I'd have a little cafe or something, with my apartment up top, in a suburb of a large city where there is a cheese counter. Because the deli at IGA in town doesn't have Manchego and I miss being around humans.
But I can make a damn good cup of coffee, my sandwiches are the best sandwiches of anyone I know, and I'm friendly and polite in general. A little cafe with a griddle, a kettle for boiling water, some pour-over sieves, cups, plates, and like 6 seats... that'd be perfect.
When I had chickens, I soaked the feed, and fermented it with mushroom spores. Plus I let them free range over about 3 acres. My chickens were ginger broilers and they were as big as Narraganset Turkeys. And their body cavity was full of leaf lard when I opened them up.
Progress... Well, I've been wearing a kilt when I go out to get used to skirt breeze. I wear a skirt at home. I don't want to get beat up though. I shave my limbs regularly, keep my face cleanly shaved, do my nails regularly, and wear perfume. I'm easing into things gradually. I have my first appt at the gender clinic next month. I'm hoping for a good start to the prerequisite therapy before I can get hormones. Looking forward to my second puberty.
Casie Becker wrote:I am going to jump in with a piece of asked for advice that I swear makes like easier for women. If you take the time to do some small touch above basic cleanliness with your grooming people tend to treat you better. It can be as simple as a plain Bobby pin or clip pulling your hair out of your eyes, but I swear it smooths over a lot of problems before they start. I think subconsciously people treat you like you're worth more effort because you are showing them you expect more than the minimum. If people are going to judge you by your appearance, I feel like it's only fair you manipulate that tendency to your own benefit.
Thank you very much. I'm semi-obsessed with my appearance so this shouldn't be too hard to do. I often pick flowers from my farm to pin into my hair. Do you think that adds a nice touch or is it too much?
Nancy Reading wrote:Ruth, Good luck with your new identity, I hope it all works out well for you.
I'm sorry you had such bad experiences being true to yourself in the past. It sound like you have a good plan going forwards now, it will give your new friends and acquaintances time to adjust to the new you.
I have a friend who likes her utility kilts, so you could check those out as useful garments if you start missing having good pockets.
Thank you! <3
I have a utility kilt and a regular kilt. I have a cloth purse for the time being but I found a good one with multiple pockets in my favorite color that is leather for $30, so I'm getting that next month. It's kind of like a small messenger bag, so nobody should question it too much. I sew, so if I buy a skirt or make one, I can put pockets in them. I found a delightful fabric to make a skirt out of, it's a purple and blue batik. I'm thinking of buying the fabric now and waiting until my body shape changes to make it since my waist and hips will trade sizes (my fat will migrate because of the estrogen).
Ohhh, where do I start? Well. I have always wanted something I thought I couldn't have. But as it turns out I can have it. So I'm going for it. Ever since I was 5, I knew I wanted to be female. It defies reason. I found out there were others like me in 2010-ish, and came out the first time in 2011. I was 22. I had one supportive person in my life, and ended up having to change my phone number and move to a different town after my parents outed me to their church who then all called me with hate-filled messages. I went back in the closet to rebuild my life. In the last 10 years I attempted suicide 10 times and was hospitalized 16 times for suicidal thoughts. But I couldn't tell people why I was depressed for fear of their reactions. So I got all kinds of random diagnoses. I was re-assessed this year and only have Autism, Complex PTSD, and Gender Dysphoria. I was also adopted this year and have a new mother. Of my old family, 2 people accept me and 1 tolerates me. So I needed to replace the people I'd lost. I have a new parent and new siblings. They're not related by blood but they love me for me, and accept me even though I'm weird.
I've had gender dysphoria since I was born probably and known about it since I was 5. So I'm not part of the fad. But the fad made it acceptable so I could come out again. So I'm grateful for it. The fad is not just poseurs though. A lot of people found themselves during the lockdowns. That's probably most of the glut. And the people doing it for the fad aspect are going to have a rude awakening when they find out the therapy is irreversible and makes it so you can't have kids. I plan to marry an understanding person and adopt. Because I wanna be a mom.
In preparation, I grew out my hair, am losing a lot of weight, and am taking voice lessons. I also cleared my wardrobe of masculine clothing which I donated to the homeless shelter. I'm also building my transition wardrobe. It's androgynous clothes that go with my ambiguous appearance. This is on the advice of my therapist. Kilts to get me used to skirts, lots of hoodies, t-shirts, and ambiguous pants. My shoes are doc martins. As I transition, my wardrobe will gradually shift feminine. Speaking of that, I've been referred to a clinic, arguably the best in the state. And my insurance covers most of the medical side of things. It covers the hormones and surgery. But not the lazering off of my beard. So I'm selling Blacksmithing and woodworking tools to pay for my beard to get lazered off. Message me if interested. It's gonna be 6 months before I can start on hormones and 18 before I can get surgery.
I'm sure someone will tell me not to rush, but I'm not. I've literally been wanting this since I was 5. The feeling never goes away. I've contemplated the therapy for a decade already. I'm good. It's about time I lived in a way that made me happy. Please call me Ruth. I already put in for a name change on here.
I'm planning to make lime concrete for a walkway. I'm doing it from scratch. Currently building the kiln to make the lime from local limestone. Bagged lime is rarely used in this area so it may have calcined in the bag sitting in the warehouse. So I'm making my own slaked lime and mixing it with coal slag aggregate which is ferro-silicate glass ground up into a coarse sand consistency, and sharp granite gravel. The walkway should be more durable than the adjacent portland concrete walkway. Part of the new slab is going to be covered by pots full of culinary and medicinal herbs. The soil dug up from the slab location is going to become cob for building kilns. I'm building 2 kilns and a bread oven from cob.
Holy ship OP, what do I even do normally would be a better question.
Not many people plant a forest on a perfectly good pasture. That's the weird thing I'm doing permie-wise.
Diet, how about diet? I'm an Entotarian. Vegetarian but with insects making up most of my protein. I raise mealworms, forage for wild insects, and buy cricket flour. This is because I tried raising livestock and discovered that the impact of killing them myself was too great a burden on my empathy. I can still hunt if I have to but the raising livestock thing is too much and the supporting the factory farms thing is just horrific. Once my forest gets to be about 6 years old I should be able to forage in it often for native vegetation, insects, and eggs like a hunter-gatherer.
I'm also just weird in general. Like I have autism and don't think the same as other people.
Must love themselves
must set healthy boundaries and stand by them
must be in their late 20s to 30s
must use reason and logic instead of relying on fear and superstition
must be independent and love personal freedom
must have a strong aversion to harming children or animals
must treat the homeless as equals
must treat others with compassion and empathy within reason
must not be a tankie or politically conservative, anarchists preferred but anything left of liberals is acceptable though.
Must enjoy learning
My personality and belief stats:
Some things have changed drastically since my posting from 2 years ago.
Personality: I have an INTP-t personality type and Chaotic Good Morality
Religion: Non-Theistic Satanist with the Satanic Temple
Politics: Anarcho-Syndicalist and Neo-Luddite
Subculture: Nerd/Emo/Goth/Metalhead
Fandoms: Star Trek, Anime, Music, Manga, Deadpool
Sports: Archery, HEMA, Bushcraft
Languages: English, Spanish, Japanese, currently learning Latin
Wants kids
vv anderson wrote:did you take any pics of this set up? would love to see!
It didn't work out so I flattened the mounds and put a Ruth Stout bed there. The veg all got killed by disease. The corn got smut. I discovered that corn just doesn't work here. And the cucurbiticeae have to have rain protection. The mushrooms made no show of themselves, and the beans were all that grew reliably.
The original try was 2 years ago. I decided to give up on a 4 sisters guild.
I'm currently growing no grains. I just buy in organic wheat and I have a hammer mill for making flour.
My current lineup for veg is greens, beans, herbs, roots, and potatoes from seed.
I'm mainly focusing on the food forest though, my grandma is taking over the garden this coming spring.
We're changing jobs on the homestead because Grandma has been Diagnosed with Hashimoto's Disease, and needs more variety of vegetables, and I've been diagnosed with Disassociative Identity Disorder and the weekly intensive therapy wears me out. I'm only functional sporadically. I'm taking care of the Forage Forest only now, and she's doing the gardening. She's new to gardening, but I went to school for horticulture and will be helping out with knowledge and some assistance with planting.
We have 12 raised beds that are 3 ft wide circles and a single 200 sq ft Ruth Stout Bed.
I chose the following vegetables for her based on her diet, with only the beans being questionable.
Chinese Sweet Basil
Dark Purple Opal Basil
Lettuce Leaf Basil
Black Coat Runner Bean
Free Seed Variety 1
Ruby Queen Beet
50-Day Choy Sum
Yellow Heart Winter Choy
Chijimisai
Blue Borage
Yod Fah Chinese Broccoli
Free Seed Variety 2
Red Rubine Brussels Sprout
Nero Di Toscana Cabbage
Kyoto Red Carrot
New Kuroda Carrot
D'Elne Celery
Slo-Bolt Cilantro
China Jade Cucumber
Italiko Rosso Dandelion
Elephant Dill
Green Lemon Balm
Tigger Melon
Marvelous Mix Mint
Japanese Pink Mizuna
Komatsuna Spinach Mustard "Old Tokyo"
Heavy Hitter Okra
Mitsuba or Japanese Parsley
Easter Basket Mix Radish
Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach
Zucchini Golden Squash
Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard
Beni Kodama Watermelon
saved seed landrace squash
There are 12 greens, 2 melons, 2 squash, 5 root veg, 8 herbs (3 of which are for tea). and misc. The free seeds from Baker Creek are a mystery.
Nele Michele wrote:It is beautiful. Is that a particular pattern? I'm a knitter, not a weaver, so I know very little about how one would describe the method or pattern.
Let us see a picture of the finished product too!
It's a solid warp (all one color) with a size 7.5 rigid heddle. The stripes are 8 rows in each color. It is a plain weave. (Rigid heddles can only do plain or basket weave.)
Anne Miller wrote:Do you have wild turkeys in your area?
Do you feel that you will be able to attract them to your Food Forest or your Forage Food system?
There are wild turkeys here. But I plan to raise domestic breeds in a way that they go feral in a fenced area.
My Forage Forest System is a type of biodiverse agriculture that promotes a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and diet, while taking less space to do it. So you don't need 300 acres to forage, because you stack the deck in your favor. The property perimeter fence excludes competition for resources with natural predators and deer. It's like a food forest, but with a lot more kinds of resources than just food, and the animal systems are layered into it.
I'm writing a book on the theory and implementation. Part 1 is theory and implementation written during the development phase (It's a work in progress), and Part 2 will be written while I install my second iteration using what I learned from the first. Then I'll publish it. However, you guys get to see the development process for the first version of the system. In my second iteration, I plan to add a field system for cattle because I'm going to sell the land I'm currently on and buy a much larger piece with both woodlands and grasslands and probably a good size pond. So the second version will include larger stock and mixed vegetation types and zones. Our zone system is different than standard permaculture. It's not centered on the home. It's centered on established paths. Things you want are closer to paths and the further from the path you go, the more wild things get. It's a gradient of feral domesticated plants to wild plants. Hunter-gatherers are mobile, not sedentary.
Turkeys like woodland-field borders. So their habitat should have an irregular border between a field of grasses and sedges, and a food forest.
And why a food forest? well, they eat fallen fruit, nuts, and insects they find in the food forest. This is integrated into my Forage Forest System. This consideration is fundamental to that system.
This is it basically, it's simple. Turkeys eat nuts, seeds, bugs, small vertebrates, grass, buds, sedges, and fruits. If you set up their habitat with roosts they can reach, and food they like, and plenty of cover; you can leave them to their own devices in the Forage Forest system without feed cost or further intervention on your part. No need to build a shelter unless you're outside of their native range.
Because they won't be used to seeing you much, you will have to bow hunt them to harvest. But they will taste wild too. Recommended breeds are heritage breeds with recent wild admixture such as narragansett and standard bronze.
Aaron Lewis wrote:I bake twice a week and after trying all kinds of make-shift and cheap bake stones and Dutch ovens, I have settled on a Fibrament baking stone (in an electric oven) as being faster, easier, and producing a broader range of baked products of better quality.
Whole wheat sourdough bread baked at home on a good baking stone can be as good as any bread, any where, any time. It brings new meaning to "bread is the staff of life".
I use a dutch oven in my oven to bake a miche or batard style loaf, but a large ceramic pizza-stone for baking pizza, focaccia, baguettes, or pretzels. I use a glass dish for dinner rolls since they are a soft crust bread anyways. I also bake breads without an oven too, such as lefse, pitas, and garlic naan. I use a paella pan on a fire outside to do those. I want to build a double chamber cob oven, but just haven't gotten around to it. And right now I'm actually too sick to do any baking anyways. I just got out of the hospital and I have to recuperate before I do any big projects.
Julia Dakin wrote:You might try growing potatoes from true potato seed. Much more blight resistant, and I got better yields from seed than I did from tuber. But I know that is not normal. Still worth a try.
Here is a video of Joseph Lofthouse in my potato patch
https://vimeo.com/655068113
WOW! I've never seen such productive potatoes. And I adore potatoes. Especially weird ones. Plus, in my climate, a heavy selection pressure exists because of the moisture. If you'd be willing to send me an assortment of seeds (extras or something, don't want to burden you, just a few of each kind), I'd plant them in containers to build seed stock and then the next year start putting starts from seed out in my forage forest. Then let the STUN method select them for me. I'm willing to create an Ohio River Landrace. And because of the extreme moisture here, any resulting potato would be incredibly disease resistant anywhere with less fog and rain. And I'll send some seeds back if I succeed so you can get the benefit in your patch. I'll be selecting for disease resistance and self-seeding. My Forage Forest System Requires genetically diverse plants with the ability to plant their own replacements. I'll see if turkeys can re-seed them for me. Birds can eat fruits that would make humans sick. So what do you think? Wanna give it a shot?
Uh, well, I'm in sight of the Ohio River, so it's humid here 24/7 365 days a year. Fog almost every morning unless it's below freezing. Fungicides aren't really an option. It destroys the soil food web that supplies the rest of the garden with nutrients.
William had a good point about sunchokes, turnips, rutabagas, etc... I love those and I haven't grown them myself before. I'll have to give them a try.
Dan Fish wrote:Looks like a very good regimen. I know that that method of aiming (It was described to me as "point shooting") works with firearms, with tons of practice, so I have no doubt it would work with a bow. Although that is more self defense than hunting orientated for sure.
Do you feel like you would use this method "cold turkey" (a pun!) to take game? By that I mean with no warm up/practice before hand. Or if that was the situation would you aim in the traditional sense?
I'd practice ahead, I never warm up because the game isn't going to let you warm up. When I'm confident in the use of a new bow, then I use it to hunt. I can't use guns, I have really bad PTSD, and because I was hospitalized for it, I don't have access to them. So I also use a bow for self defense, and in such situations you have to shoot fast and well without a warm up. But if you have good posture and enough strength in your string hand's shoulder, you're unlikely to hurt yourself shooting a bow even if you don't warm up. I also have a sword and spear for self defense and I practice with them weekly using Roland Warzecha tutorials on youtube.
One of my dream hunts is to take a bear with a spear, and the other is to take a bear with a knife. The spear is not the safer of the two. The knife is just really ballsy, because you have to kill the bear in its den. In its den, it can't move freely and swipe you, so you have a serious advantage because you're smaller and can move freely. It is actually a traditional way to hunt bears among the Ainu people of Japan and Russia. I just have old fashioned goals. I want to test myself. See what heights I can achieve. That goes along with my ways of hunting, and my way of life. My dream job is hunter-gatherer.
Heart is my favorite cut of beef and venison. It is very tender and succulent. It has a good strong meaty flavor with a hint of blood iron.
When you get a heart from an animal you killed or from the butcher, cut it in half and rinse it out in cold water to remove any blood.
You can make it as a roast tied up with herbs inside, marinate and grill it, or smoke it dry for later use.
To make a tied roast, put sprigs of rosemary, some lemon rind, thyme, and oregano inside, season the outside with salt and pepper. Roll it up and tie it like a roll roast. Then bake it slowly at about 300 F until it is well done. Don't eat organs raw, you can get parasites.
The marinade I like is cider vinegar, sherry or red wine, cumin, thyme, oregano, parsley, and a couple of whole cloves. Marinate for about 4 hours, then grill it until totally done.
For smoking, you cut it into strips and hang it in the smokehouse, you want gentle heat, very dry, and moderate smoke, preferably from birch, alder, or oak wood. Once it is fully dry, it will be very hard and shelf stable for a long time if kept in a cool dry place. It is recommended to shave off or chop into small pieces with an axe and use it to make a simple soup with potatoes, carrots, fennel bulb, leeks, and cabbage or turnip. The smoked meat puts a lot of flavor in the soup. Lightly salt it, and serve with rye toast and a tart unsweetened jam. Blueberries and cranberries can be made into a fresh jam on the stovetop with just their own selves and a pinch of salt.
When camping in the summer, I use a hammock and wool blankets.
When Winter Camping I use a 8 inch deep pile of fir or birch branches, topped with hair-on deer hides 3 deep, and 3 wool blankets on top, in a lavvuu hot tent.
At home I sleep in an ordinary bed, or on a tatami mat if I'm lending my bed to a guest. The tatami mat folds and slides under my bed. It is very comfortable. I'm considering building a bed frame for it to raise it off the ground so I can use it more. I have a knee injury and it hurts to get up and down. I still get up and down regularly, but it does hurt.
So, there are basically 2 ways to hit what you want to with an arrow. You can aim, either looking down the shaft, or with a gizmo; or you can use your instincts to hit the spot you want to. I used to aim. But when I switched from compound bows to traditional bows, It was very fatigue-inducing to hold it at full draw long enough to aim. So I was pondering the problem when I read an article in Field and Stream about aiming without aiming. It's instinctive shooting. You look where you want the arrow to go and let your body calculate the elevation and windage. Through practice and experience, you can get very small groups on target from random distances and even with obstructions. And the shot is eventually loosed as soon as you focus on the target.
My weekly practice looks like this:
Shooting while standing normally, thumb indexed on chin. 3 shots each at 5 ft distance intervals at my straw target
Shooting while standing normally, thumb indexed on chin. 3 shots each at 5 ft distance intervals at my straw target with a tree branch in the way
Shooting while turned at the waist to shoot behind me, thumb indexed on chin in different location. 3 shots each at 5 ft distance intervals at my straw target
Shooting while kneeling, bow tilted 45 degrees to avoid ground interference, arrow resting on top of bow, 3 shots each in 12 ft intervals with or without obstructions
Ground on range is lumpy as is natural. Uneven footing is common in the forest, practice for it. Greatest distance is 45 yards. Because of my practice regimen I get 3 inch groups out to 20 yards, 6 inch out to 30, and 1 ft at 45. I often strike my own previously fired arrows.
Ryan Hobbs wrote:
I'm writing a cook book for time travelers...
That sounds freaking awesome!!!
The premise is that the book is for sale at the time travel terminal, and these are your favorite modern foods made with locally available ingredients in popular time travel destinations. Ancient people sometimes had measures, and sometimes didn't. That's taken into account too. The above recipe is from my rough draft, and the destination is 9th century Kiev. The long Pepper was being traded along the Silk Road to Baghdad from India, and then up the Volga to the Baltic and Scandinavia, and across the North Sea to the Danish settlement of Jorvik in Angleland (York, England). Kiev was a popular stop along the Volga trade route. So they would have had the long pepper. You can buy it at import markets under the name pipali, and it's commonly used in India and Pakistan. If you use it, taste it first, it's usually quite pungent and you don't want to overdo it. In my opinion, it's part of the way between real wasabi and very high grade black pepper. The Skyr is because it was a mixed settlement of Norse and Slavs. Tatars and Avars also went to market there. So it was a fairly cosmopolitan place for its time. Bulgarian yogurt can be used instead of Skyr for example.
I have a nutrimill hammer mill, and a victorio hand cranked small grains mill.
Victorio is slower because it's hand cranked and has feed issues. Nutrimill is a bit messy, but it really makes a lot really fast and with a high level of consistency.
I mostly use the nutrimill. I grind red winter wheat, hard white wheat, rye, buckwheat, and barley.
I also often make porridge out of wheat and rye, add them to stews, and use them as a healthy alternative to white rice because they aren't just starch, there's a lot of protein and fiber too. They are very nice and I make stroganoff with wheat berries instead of noodles. It's a lot less work. I'm writing a cook book for time travelers... It's in there.
Time Traveler's Stroganoff
1 cup boiled wheat or rye berries
1-2 lbs finely chopped red meat such as lamb or venison, browned in its fat
edible mushrooms chopped well and cooked in the meat
onions or leeks chopped well and cooked in with the meat and mushrooms
mix in the wheat or rye berries, parsley, dill, long pepper and very sour skyr to your liking, and salt it lightly
May be served with toasted bread, flat breads, or a side of beets or turnips. Pairs well with sweet ale, sweet mead, or german white dessert wines
This is a hearty dish, for winter. It has a warming effect. You can cook it all in one pot, if you cook the grain first, and then set it aside. Retain the liquid for making beer.
I need to calculate the fencing cost to surround 3 acres in a fence 6 ft tall.
The circumference of the area to be fenced is 1,320 ft.
If I have a post every 8 feet, I need 165 of them. The corners must use 3 wooden posts in concrete with mortised braces, 5 pieces of wood total for each corner. Additionally every 5th post must be wood. That's just how our soil requires it. 50 posts therefore must be 4 inch diameter wood. Plus the ends for the 3 gates. requiring 4 posts each. So there must be some 10 further posts of wood since 2 overlap with posts that are already made of wood. 60 posts of wood, 105 T-Posts.
Now to the Wire, this is the hard part as there are usable sections of pre-existing fencing. Specifically, the old fence was put up in the early 1940s based on the type of wire and posts. They appear to be drawn, machine-forged wrought iron. They were probably made in the 1930s. The posts are badly rusted, but the wire is still good to use. I may make the posts into wrought iron bar stock for blacksmiths, they have only rusted beyond usability at the bottom. The wire is covering 1/2 of the distance, but is only 4 ft tall. It is field fence for stopping cattle and has wide openings. So it eliminates the upper section for half the distance that must be covered. A finer mesh inside on the bottom 2 ft, and barbed wire outside to exclude coyotes is the bottom tier, and then on top is regular field fence. This gives the needed height to stop turkeys from escaping, and the bottom half of field fence has narrower holes. The top need not be narrower. They can only jump so high, The coyotes and deer are more of a problem if they get in. The deer would compete for food in my turkey system and the coyotes would eat the turkeys.
The fence is part of a temperate climate turkey-specific pasture system. More than 300 kinds of plants fill the system including as much trees as you can pack in there. You want a full canopy to protect the turkeys from eagles and hawks. Evergreens should be about half of the trees to provide winter cover. Many trees should produce nuts, seeds, and fruits that are easy for the turkeys to eat. A natural body of water is best for watering them and providing frogs for them to eat. Their diet should be very varied. Lots of berries and nuts, fallen fruit, insects, frogs, lizards, fungi, green edible, and medicinal plants and culinary herbs. It's a forage forest you share with the turkeys. If you have a riparian zone and are in the Americas, you should have a canebrake in the forage forest. Not only does the rivercane (bamboos native to the Americas are called rivercane) lend itself to crafts well, but it also provides habitat for the turkey's meat supply that turkeys will have difficulty breaking into, thus making the supply sustainable.
A forage forest is like a food forest, except it has more uses than just food. It has materials for projects and crafts, it has dyes, it has medicinal plants, it has livestock fodder. Any useful plant or fungi you don't have to pamper and care for consistently can be planted there. And because it's a forest, you can put plants that need to have shade in there once there is a canopy, like ginseng and pawpaw.
The system is set up, and once the turkeys begin to lay eggs, it's hands-off. Once the system is functioning as an ecosystem, you need only harvest turkeys from time to time to keep there from being too many for the system to feed.
Ideal turkeys are those with recent wild admixture, such as Narragansett, Standard Bronze, and Tennessee Red. There are others as well, but these are good examples. You don't want modern breeds that stuff themselves silly. They will rapidly deplete the food supply, and kind of suck at taking care of themselves. I'm going to be breeding turkeys to inhabit this system of agriculture, but for now, old breeds with recent wild ancestors are the best.
Try American Chestnut. They're native from Southern Canada and down into the north-eastern US. It gets damn cold here and they do just fine.
Another tree with a similar range is Black Walnut, though it also ranges further south.
Then there are butternuts, pignuts, shagbark hickory, and so on.
You can also eat maple seeds if you cook them.
It actually gets colder where I live than it does in Denmark. And I'm not even that far north. When I was a kid, we had -30 to -40 F a few times. North Dakota has it real bad and they grow hazel, chestnut, and hickory nuts just fine.
I don't think it's the cold that's the problem. Denmark has very sandy soil. It was why the Saxons left and went to Germany and England in the 400s. It was part of the reason the Danes invaded Northumbria in the 900s.
The only cold hardy nut trees that do well in sand are loblolly pines and black walnut. Loblolly can handle your winters, but not cool summers. Black Walnut is not the same tree as English or Greek walnuts. It's native to Canada and the US. But that tree hates other trees. It makes the soil acidic. It has more tannin in it than an oak by a long shot. After harvesting the nuts, I break up the shells and use it to tan hides. The leaves soaked in alcohol are also used as a bug repellent. And the juice pressed from the husks around the nut are the best cure for mosquito bites that I have found. The nut meats are mostly oil, like, you can squeeze it out with your hands. They also burn like a candle. The wood is very durable, close grained, and is the choice wood for heirloom quality gun stocks.
Ohio River Valley, on the Ohio side. Honey Locust is found in Africa, but also North and South America. It has a wide range.
To Eino Kenttä:
I had no idea dogwood was so dense. I will have to see if it makes a good Cornu (a nordic trumpet).
To Cristo Balete:
It's a food forest, sort of. It's a Forage Forest. There's lots of food besides the obvious things like fruit and nuts. Asparagus, ferns, pine cambium, pine nuts, the inner part of green pine cones is good roasted, all of the water plants are edible, and so on. I don't like persimmons, but I've got about 400 of them. Mostly for their wood which is blonde ebony. There's the edible parts of the birch too. Acorns and tanbark (tanning leather not eating) from the oak. Maple leaves and sap are edible. Not just from sugar maple. Sassafras has medicinal value, just be careful not to habitually consume it because of the saffrole oils. Rivercane I'm planting next spring has edible shoots, and the wood is very useful. It's a native North American Bamboo. So not invasive at all. Farmers destroyed the canebrake ecosystems to give cattle more land. I plan to make a small canebrake on my land with the 3 local varieties of the Arudinaria genus. Several kinds of reptiles and birds require them to thrive. One of which is locally endangered, the Canebrake Rattlesnake. And it might help to decrease the local rodent population. I do eat snakes. If someone accidentally runs over a snake, they know to bring it to me so it doesn't go to waste. The meat is sweet and oily. I rather like it. Oh and about animals, I plan to raise turkey, possibly rabbits, and possibly quail in the forage forest. I'll let them go feral inside the 6 ft tall fence and hunt them to harvest. I have several goals, so I'll only selectively harvest ones that aren't good to breed for food forest fowl. Wrong color, too friendly, bad at hiding, too stupid, and so on. The resulting breed of turkey should be able to hold its own in a food forest without human intervention, feeding, or protection. And they should have varied genetics to allow for adaptation to new environments when I sell them as an extra hardy breed for the STUN* agricultural approach.
*STUN = Sheer Total Utter Neglect, Nature works best when we get out of the way and stop messing with stuff.
I also fairly well hate Amazon. I was thinking of starting my own website for zero waste natural living and related wares all made locally and by small businesses and craftsmen. I don't want to sell my products on Amazon or Etsy because they charge a lot and their systems are convoluted. Plus, I've heard horror stories about people losing their livelihood on etsy from a single unfounded complaint. My site would be like an online phonebook with all the businesses showcased with their products, but links and contact info going to their own business' homepage.
So I'm planting this small forest, it is boggy in places. There is a riparian area. I've selected these species at the suggestion of my state's Dept of Nat Resources, and based on my needs.
% = plant less than 100
*= plant 100
** = plant 200 and so on
# = chop and drop, inocculate with fungi
::Copse Timber Trees::
American Hybrid Hazel ***
American Hybrid Chestnut *
River Birch %
::Conifer Timber Trees::
Bald Cypress %
::Deciduous Timber Trees::
Shagbark Hickory %
Honeylocust *
Hybrid Poplar *
Red Maple %
Sugar Maple %
Osage Orange %
Silver Maple %
Swamp White Oak %
American Sycamore %
Hardy Pecan %
::Useless but pretty Trees::
Redbud %
Dogwood %
::Chop and Drop Trees::
Quaking Aspen % - #
Pin Cherry %
John C Daley wrote:Ryan, what did you use to create that Farm plan please?
I used 3 things. I found my land on google maps. I used Snipping Tool to capture an image of it (actually 4 images zoomed in). Then I used MS Paint to stitch the images together, crop it, and overlay my designs.
I got ahead of myself. I was so enthused about building something cool, I forgot about the unsustainable need of buying-in feed for large animals. So I discussed my options for several hours with a conventional farmer I'm good friends with. We both agreed by the end that I should make 2.5 acres of food forest and raise turkeys and game birds in it.
Nancy Reading wrote:Ryan,
I'm trying to establish ostrich fern in a couple of area here, although in it's second year it still doesn't seem to be doing very well. I'm wondering whether it would prefer somewhere a bit sunnier - dampness is not an issue! I hadn't heard that they were good metal accumulators, that could be useful to know.
Of course bracken is pretty well everywhere here, I may get brave enough to try it sometime! I hadn't heard that it contained nicotine - are you sure you don't meant tannic acid (not the same thing). I think it's the extra preparation for eating that puts me off....
The instructions I was told when I made Yuk Gae Jang said it was nicotine. It was a recipe on the back of a package of dried bracken fern from a Korean market.
