Kathleen Sanderson

I don't know where you are, but we have a sinkhole in our back yard - not quite bottomless, but close, LOL! My nephew dropped one of my old galvanized feed cans (30 gallon garbage can) down the hole to stop it up somewhat because we had young critters in the yard (puppies, goats, calves at the time). Unfortunately, he put the can in the hole right side up, it then filled up with water, and can't be removed. So that's one way NOT to do it!

What you have planned sounds like it should work, as long as your hole isn't the bottomless kind.

The only thing I have to add to this discussion (well, two things) is 1. I've read that if you put the (presumably ripe) nuts in a bucket of water, the full ones will sink and the empty ones will float. Worth a try, anyway.  And 2. There are huge commercial orchards raising filberts/hazelnuts. There must be a website or forum somewhere with the information you all are looking for? If nothing else, maybe Burnt Ridge Nursery has a website where people can ask questions? Or maybe someone lives close enough to the nursery to go and ask in person? Because I know they sell filbert/hazelnut trees.

Jamie Chevalier wrote:Often with canned veg, it's reheating them that makes them so nasty.

Try turning them out of the jar, draining them, and marinating in vinaigrette. Or just drain the liquid from the jar as best you can, add marinade, salad dressing, or pickling liquid, and put the jar in the fridge for a day. I bet the kids will be sneaking the "pickled" ones pretty quick

Or add to a salad--either the standard tossed green or something like tabouleh or pasta salad. Serving chilled firms them up, as does a  salty dressing.

Those do sound good. We have to cook the few veggies my daughter can eat (she has IBS, possibly Crohns, and fiber absolutely kills her gut - veggies have to be very thoroughly cooked for her to be able to eat them at all). Otherwise, I'd try those.

I've spent quite a few years on the Oregon Coast (was born there, raised partly in Alaska), and I've seen the effects of constant high winds on trees, and even on the ubiquitous Scotch Broom that infests the coast. We lived about three miles inland, with a stretch of hill between us and the coast, so weren't as affected, as far as gardening and such was concerned. If we'd been closer to the beach, we would have needed a windbreak - fence or wall or hedge - around our garden.

We also spent several years living on a south-facing hillside in Eastern Oregon that got a LOT of high winds. The effect is a bit different there - the wind dries everything out. Remedies are still the same, though - windbreaks, and adapted species. Microclimates.

I looked up the triangular stock tanks, because they might work for something I need, and the 1' tall 30 gallon one appears to cost $170. Which may seem like a lot for a shower pan, but before you give up on the idea, I'd check shower pan prices on Amazon (or elsewhere). Plastic ones are cheap, but anything of decent quality is going to cost around that or more, I think.

I get requests to bring these to church dinners: canned green beans, bacon, onion. Fry up the bacon and crumble, saute chopped onion in the bacon grease. Add the bacon, the bacon grease, and the onion to the green beans and simmer for a while.

LOL! Yes, I know - that was all very imprecise. Sorry, not sorry. If you have a quart jar of green beans, use one onion and several slices of bacon. More bacon is always good, unless you get to where it's mostly bacon and the green beans are just a garnish! (And you can do that, too, if you choose.)

The real key is simmering this until the beans are Very Well Done. They should be practically falling apart, and will have taken on flavor from the bacon and onion.

I do also add green beans to other dishes, but if we are having them as a side, this is the only way I fix them.

I haven't done it, and - given the state of my back - I'm not going to do it. But if you want to see someone doing it with just hand tools, look on YouTube for some of the primitive skills videos done by people in SE Asia (I suspect mostly in Vietnam). It's rather amazing what some of them accomplish with just one or two tools and a lot of energy. I think there is a lot to learn from watching those videos, at least most of them, where they basically teach skills without talking at all.

While medieval people might have kept a little bit of oil handy to wipe on their seal, I wonder if they might also have just rubbed it on an oily part of their body (hair or forehead?)?

Just in case it might help someone, I've heard a number people on keto/carnivore diets say that it fixed their sleep apnea so they no longer need a CPAP machine.

The tips on making your property fire-resistant are good; some could be made into a permanent part of the property, and others might be done in case of need (like removing curtains from the windows). I've lived in a couple of environments where wildfires were common, and where we were threatened by them several times. It's important to keep in mind that even if you've taken all of the precautions, if fire is heading in your direction, buckle the house up and GET OUT OF THERE! Do it well ahead of time, just like leaving coastal property ahead of time if it looks like a hurricane may hit your area. Don't wait until the flames are at your property line - a wildfire in a dry environment, especially if you have high winds, can move extremely fast, and you could be trapped. People have died because they delayed too long and either couldn't get out (blocked roads), or couldn't even leave their house. Even if your house survives the fire, if it's surrounded by flames, you may not survive inside of it, because of the hot air, smoke, and because the fire can burn up all the oxygen in the middle of itself.

If you have wildfires in the area, keep VERY close track of them. Here, we have websites that track wildfires (especially in the western states most prone to fires), and are updated twice or three times every day during active fires. If you don't have access to that for your area, one of the satellite weather apps may be helpful.

Any time you have a wildfire within several miles of your home, keep your vehicle loaded and ready to go at five seconds notice, because you may not get much more warning than that. And figure out - well ahead of time - as many different alternate escape routes as you can possibly find. (Don't plan on using a 4WD route, though, unless your vehicle has 4WD, or you may get yourself into even worse trouble.) Have some place that you can go to already arranged in advance. Keep your children or anyone else who will be riding with you close, so you can grab them quickly. Keep your pets (or any animals you may need to evacuate with you) up close where you can get them quickly, too, and have a means to haul them. I can think of at least three times that my vehicle sat, loaded for evacuation, for three or four days before we knew for sure we weren't going to get burned out (this is extremely stressful - can give you PTSD). I actually bought an old horse trailer that wasn't even registered, just so I'd have a way to get my goats out if we had to leave because of a fire. (I sold that place to my next-door neighbor eight years ago - we've stayed in touch, and twice since we left, wildfires have burned right up to the property line. I am so glad we weren't still there.)

To repeat, do everything you can to safeguard your property. But you still need to be prepared to evacuate if a fire is coming at you.

Editing to add: it doesn't matter what direction the wind is blowing when you find out about the fire. The wind can blow steady in one direction for several days, and then all of a sudden, with no warning, switch around and blow in a different direction. I have seen it happen. In one case, that was to our benefit, because wind had been pushing a large fire towards us for several days, then suddenly stopped and started blowing the fire back into the burned area, which saved an entire town (in Alaska) and allowed the firefighters to finally get control of it. But it could be blowing the fire off to one side of you, then suddenly switch and start blowing it right at you. Hurricanes are prone to this kind of behavior, too. Pay attention, and be more cautious than you think you need to be!