mrhobbit McCoy

Yo - Paul,

As a premier site for home poultry raising, I was wondering if you've ever tracked how man has done it for centuries and centuries in the past.  Seems that my wanderings down that path has yielded me some incredibly enlightening approaches to integrating chickens into the household lifestyle - fowl without things getting foul... Permaculture at it's best.

Undoubtedly you've been spelunking the depths of historical evidence of successful home scale poultry raising... any advice on where you'd send folks interested in approaches that have worked in the deeper, pre-american past?  It would be nice to have a section on your site that heralds what worked in the past.  It'd be great for incubating modern thoughts and solutions.  Nothing like working approaches from the past - and folks like you tweeking them appropriately...

Burra,

Thanks for the update on this new book, and the great review.

My personal aversion to opinionitis leaves me quite amazed at your well crafted trip around the mulberry bush with your review.  Tells us virtually everything they need to know about your experience with the book.  And in the process, presents to folks whether there is investment potential there for them.  Thanks for doing that.  The book most certainly fills a niche...

On the other hand, Jacke's book was, at the outset, meant to fill a void in the professional world of man-made human supporting forest system designs.  I have no opinion as to whether it is the ultimate void filler... and see no point of trying to imagine there is one author that could possibly serve all needs on such a topic.  An honest effort from a well endowed individual expressing a deep love and understanding of the minutia their subject demands with a clear big picture purpose outlined and fleshed out - what more can you expect from a soul if it's their kind information you've found a need for?  Whatever the scale of the effort, it's all good if it's good.

Now it's just the small matter of demonstrations that persuade humankind to take up the only mantel worthy of the crown of creation.  And that, my friend is where it all matters.  Like I said before in a sneak attack fit of opinionitis, it can only be the Foresters of tomorrow that will inherit this world  - after and forever more.  The self consumptive dross of bumbling throngs & pretentious fools will be subsumed.

"I've little respect for opinions - but observations - well, you could say I've got a few of them to share... LOL" - God.

The world will be inherited by the Foresters of the Future.  And I am quite certain none of them will be using books to figure out what to do.  In the meantime, however, we will need inspiration, encouragement and hand holding.  And for that, books and other forms of publications of other's successes and failures in forestry are invaluable. 

After all.... life at it's best is always a great conversation, never an argument.

No question - don't waste too much of your cash flow on 'inspirational' books - that's what the libraries are for, spend it on heirloom quality knowledge repositories.  And take a hint from Jacke - spend a lot of real time in the forest. That's about all the inspiration you need to want to get busy replicating the magic closer to home.  And once that kicks in, all the rest follows. 

And as far as flushless toilets go, the major value to them is to demonstrate to folks how little waste we actually produce as humans.  Compared to the energy and resource squandering and expense that water based sewage management entails, flushless is almost bordering on magical in its incredibly small 'footprint'. 

Done right, in 5 years, one hobbit's kitchen and toilet waste will generate MAYBE 16 cu ft of solid so called "waste" transformed into pure concentrated humus !!!  That's just a wee, wee pile of stuff to deal with, barely enough to fertilize the plantings of a dozen trees and bushes once every 5 years.  If that doesn't put the "problem" of human waste management in the right perspective, then nothing will.    All the hullabaloo I've spent a career chasing down as a plumber/engineer/designer for village scale sewage management was just a bunch of unnecessary smoke and mirrors, wasted time and money to manage the ignorance of complacency that surrounds this aspect of rural living.  It may be comforting in a myriad of ways to just flush it all away - till one day you wake up and realize that 'away' place is in fact just yours or another fellow human being's front yard.  Then the horror of knowing that every flush is actually unnecessary, and never was for 100's of thousands of years of sane and safe human rural living... All toilet and kitchen waste takes is creative management that builds in the cycles and timing that mother nature needs to re-absorb it all with great grace and ease.

Thanks for the input Toby, I wasn't aware that you hung out here.

FYI, i posted that info here because it was likely a place to get the word out in the NW, most other sites already are up on Martin's work.  And Dave's too for that matter.

On a side note, Dave was touring USA in the late 90's and early 2k's researching his book... and stopped by a place where I was fooling around with some orchards.  I wasn't there at the time, so didn't have a chance to meet him.  I wish I had. 

After Dave left my place, I was debriefed by the hostess that had greeted him at the time - he mentioned that he was a bit concerned because in his travels for his book, he'd only found 5 intentionally designed and built existing examples of decent FG's in the USA.  And that two of them were there at my place...!!! Like I said, I wish I was there when he showed up.  We would have had a ball hashing out how it can be done on a low to no time and money budget and still get done while having a ball...  I am sure that his hostess hadn't mentioned that I spent my youth playing, hanging out, and drinking in the backyard forest gardens of the rural farmers in the Alsatian region of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Doing a few of my own was a life long dream of mine. I had NO idea about 'forest gardening' or permaculture at the time... just the gardens of my youth - full of food - the trees, the vines, the bushes and all that vegetation.  My work with the first of those two gardens in Colorado actually led to someone coming to me and asking if I'd ever heard of 'permaculture'  ... and of course that led to the second 'real' forest garden getting built, only that time very much intentionally. 

On another note, I remember writing Dave Jacke an email in 1994 thanking him for providing me another inspirational moment in 1993. I'd just seen a picture of a waterless toilet design of his...  It led to my developing the Sunny John Moldering Toilet, one of the few waterless off grid DIY toilets that some western counties are now permitting.  The Key? - two barrel vessels in a vault privy, only one being used at a time.  Once the 'light went on upstairs' on that minor idea, the whole idea of a perfectly odorless, off-grid moldering, dehydrating and vermiculturally supported toilet solution grew to become the first 'Sunny John' when my good friend of Econest fame showed up in 1993.  Robert Laporte and I sketched out the 1st Sunny John design in the dirt on site and had it up and running in a few weeks.  He was the one who, one day while I was smiling next to the finished project, exclaimed, "Hey, look! It's a Sunny John!"  ...

A new forest gardening book is just getting published:

Creating a Forest Garden
by Martin Crawford
(Working with nature to grow edible crops.)
Green Books, April 29th 2010. ISBN 978-1-900322-62-1. 380 pages (hardback).
The long-awaited definitive book on forest gardening. Martin takes you step by step through the process of designing, implementing and maintaining a forest garden. Trees, shrubs, perennials, short-lived plants and fungi can all be integrated into one system and this book tells you how to do it. Includes descriptions of many uncommon edible plants suitable for temperate climates. If you want one book on forest gardening then this is the one to get!
"A seminal piece of work on truly sustainable gardening, written with great spirit and soul" - Alys Fowler.

Published in Britain for now...

KurtW wrote:
umm, but if radon is heavier than air, considerably heavier than air, then how could it "burp up" into a room?  Once it comes into contact with the air pressure found above ground, wouldn't that keep it down where you couldn't breathe it?
Just wondering

Good thoughts, but as with all things obvious, life works differently at times.  If radon is in a room and you are too, it will get mixed up with all the air as there is movement. Air in a house full of breathing, moving humans seldom stays laminar.  If the radon has no where to go, it will stay where it surfaces, but it will also move around if the air moves.

The normal venting levels of radon coming from the ground change throughout the year - a 'burb' would just be my way of describing higher than normal venting (warm weather, low atmospheric pressure, wind response in the building, they all affect the release.)

Buildings vented to established minimums seldom have need to be concerned about a buildup in concentration.

I noted the question re: about mushrooms on felled trees.

FYI, fresh cuts only have a short window of opportunity for inoculation.  Each breed is specific, but generally their immune system of chemistry persists after felling and after it subsides, they are invaded with all sorts of spore entering the cut and through the bark.  The spores are lurking in an incredibly dense layer just on the edge of the trees defense mechanisms.

That being the case, inoculation is a waste of time immediately after felling or cutting a fresh living tree.  So... the trick is wait for the right time.  What that time is depends on the tree.  But generally, after two weeks spore can access them unhindered.  Within a matter of weeks, the wood can be infiltrated with mycelium from whatever spores might have been in it's environment. 

That being the case, I inoculate two weeks after the cut.  But I also wax the ends of the cordword immediately at the time of felling and/or stacking so that the moisture stays as high as possible and other spores won't infiltrate the butt ends while the log rests.  The best wax to use is a water based pure wax used by wood workers for sealing logs and lumber.  I don't know what they call it, but it is not melted wax... that is a total hassle and not worth the trouble.  The water emulsified stuff is a real treat... pour a bit in pan and dip/seal your logs quick and easy.  Use a brush on the branch stubs and you have a sealed log that can rest till it's immune chemistry subsides.

Once you've got your wood sealed, stacked in the shade or covered, order your spore from fungiperfecti.com or wherever.  You can get it as pre-inoculated wood plugs that are driven into pre-drilled holes along the length of the log and then waxed shut, or you can band saw them in half lengthwise and sandwich some chip based loose spore between then strap or nail the log back together.  There are other approaches for sure, but plugging seems to work for most. You can even generate your own spore by taking a good producing log, stripping it as clean to the core as you can then chip that core all up in as clean an environment you can manage.  That chip will be full of the living mycelium of the mushroom that the log was hosting and can be used immediately to inoculate other fresh, sterile logs. 

Then wait.  When the season for fruiting comes along, pop goes the weasel!  Mushrooms forever.... or until the log's cellulose is completely consumed.  Aspen, Ash, Poplar, last for years, the harder woods longer.  Of course, some trees have very persistent immune defenses, so check just what the correct timing is before you waste you time and money on spore. That first order to get a new site infiltrated for generations can be expensive, so be smart about it.

For real production, folks don't wait for the seasonal time, but force the fruiting artificially with cold water dips to fool the mycelium into acting like it's time... waste of time and energy if you've time on your side and the scale of your venture is more natural.

Check out http://fungiperfecti.com/

WRT to what to do with all that slash...

Creative stacking can create:

Deer proof island barriers for fresh tree plantings, stack 'em high, surround an area after planting and putting irrigation in place.  Whittle away at the pile over the years till the trees are old enough to be deer safe.

Chicken habitat for young birds not laying yet. (no one wants to dig through a pile of brush for eggs...)

Hog bedrooms

Rabbit warrens

primitive short term bio degradable gabions

raised bed walls, planter walkways

or you can make char with it... that would also be a way to sterilize zones with real bad perennial weeds.  The char burn will sterilize underneath it for a foot deep.

or you could pile it up, run a D9 (geesus big bulldozer) over it to bring it down to size and bury it with a layer of soil or invasive blackberry topsoil scrappings.  Keep it wet and in a few years you'll have a water and nutrient tank that will explode growth like you've never seen before. Or turn it all into char by waiting till after it's all dried out before you bring in the D9.

The short version... smile from ear to ear!, you've got a gold mine of life packed into nice neat concentrated packages, you just have to look at it that way for awhile.... till you've cracked the code and can copy nature's way without even considering 'status quo'.  With time and creative placement, the forest feeds it's furry footed friends forever....

paul wheaton wrote:
Interesting.  So the strategy that most homes have to keep heat in (lots of insulation) could work provided that they are insulated from a layer below that has complete ventilation.

Something like an umbrella / PSP home could work since a lot of their heat is in thermal mass - as long as they do an air exchange.

Right?

Yes, if the insulation envelope carries to grade, then you are capping the radon and breathing it.  The real problem comes when the captured gas leaks up through only one or two openings, creating deadly concentrations in closed in areas above (bedrooms etc...) If the home is earth coupled and you are walking on the ground on the ground floor, then ventilation is your only option.  Sealing the ground off is done, but all it takes is one pin hole in the seal and you have concentrated radon leaking up.  If it enters a bathroom or bedroom, you'd be breathing all of the gas from under the entire footprint of the house in just one small area.  Not a good plan... better to keep the gas dilute and ventilate. 

Generally, in a framed building you must SEAL off the basement/crawl space from living quarters and ventilate it.  Insulate the separation zone too if you want warm floors.  Standard practice is to just seal off the ground under the house with poly and ventilate above that seal.  You should do both if you know you're on a radon burp zone. 

PSP?

And yes, any style home will work if there is plenty of ventilation.  Otherwise, they are coffins with a view.

paul,

You are exactly right... re: ventilation.  Unventilated Home = Coffin with Windows and a View. Enjoy?

It's incredible how engrained we get with energy savings, thinking that a perfect way to save on the heating bill is to live in a sealed container, not letting out our precious little bit of heat.  The fact of the matter, it's always been the house that keeps us warm, not the air in it.  Why get so bent out of shape trying to capture old, stale hot air?  The trick is to build a house that is insulated on the outside and sufficiently massive that as the temperatures outdoor change, it simple sits there resisting the change.  Then you can let the air move in and out at the maximum rate that  maintains life and supports that stability.  BTW, 5 air exchanges an hour is a MINIMUM in some scenarios.  And your heat source?  The core of the Earth is source one, it's molten iron, should do the trick  up to 50 deg F anywhere. If you use that temperature as the primary starting point, not the outdoor air temp, then you can see you've only got a wee bit more to go to get to comfort.

To get that extra bit of 'clothing optional' comfort we enjoy, use the sun to get that 20-30 deg boost. No sun in cold weather where you live? Move. Or use summer sun to grow trees, and use that as your solar heat source.  Designed right, a home can become a living, breathing expression of you, your third skin and a comfort to you and yours for millenia.  Radon?  no more deadly than breathing your own stink over and over... that alone would kill most of the honest hobbits I know....

Want to get into house design?  Start with an exploration on how we did it the last 100,000 years or so, starting from about 200 years ago.  Not a bar code in site then, and we were doing just fine...  Mass, insulation, solar gain, done. Having a building official tell you how?  NOT priceless.

I see how to use the emoticons now... it's not WYSIWYG, duhhhh... just code.