C. Letellier

What we looked at was a food hub cooperative that the goal was selling direct from the seller to the buyer but the cooperative acted as the delivery service to drop off points in each community.  Because our communities are small and fairly widely separated the goal was for the seller to list what they had available on the common website.  Buyers ordered from the website. Then maybe 2 times per week the food hub delivered to the business in each town that agreed to act as a drop off point.  We never got it implemented but it did look hopeful.  We had a farm that did produce as a shares thing that already delivered to the communities.  They would have let us piggy back on their deliveries.  Because of motor carrier laws they couldn't have charged us without moving themselves into a way more regulated and taxed position.  For a short term experiment they had agreed to do this free anyway.  Longer term we would have needed to find a way to benefit them back without payment.  What killed this project back then was getting the software to run the website.  Guessing AI could be used to create it now.  We had found businesses or chamber of commerce offices in each community that would have been willing to be the drops in each community.  Because of Wyomings food laws most of the regulations were bypassed provided the seller was working directly with the buyer and then we would have been simply a delivery service.  Then since we were dealing with rapidly perishable items the plan was if they were not picked up within a set time period agreed by the buyer and seller the food would go to the local food bank or if not good enough for that to compost in the community garden and how such loss was paid was part of the buy/sell agreement.  Because most of those businesses didn't have large scale refrigeration the plan was a bunch of similar sized coolers with ice and labels for drop location and buyer pickup labels straight from the seller on sealed packages.

Rough environment for pants. Farm equipment mechanic so around lots of sharp corners, lots of dirt and grease, welding, chemicals etc.  Typically 6 months to a year from brand new to not reasonably salvageable.  Also depends on how many pairs in the rotation.  If it is down to 3 they die faster.  If it is 6 or more then they run longer.  A washer load of work clothes is 6 pieces so normal answer is 2 loads a week.

Need more information as to goals.  Wood, rock?  Other?  Since you are in the natural building forum I assume you are not interested in answers with concrete etc?

I live in an earth berm passive solar home.  Far beyond a cabin though.  60'x16' with full basement.  And of course modern materials so guessing I may as well stop here?

Lets start with the down side and work up.  Pick what ever your worst case is double the cost and double the time.  It is rough.  Then ask what you haven't thought of (especially those that will cost you money).  Power, water, sewer, internet(being someone to rural to have cell service that is noticed here) soil conditions, frost line for depth of bury, access roads and do they need to be gravel, water rights, mineral rights, right of ways for (road, water line, sewer etc).  Build that list.  I would include must haves, things you can work around every where, things you can work around in some jurisdictions etc.  Know the costs of each too.  For example power pole and line here are basically $10k per pole.  2 poles worth and you have almost fully paid for an off grid system.

Now lets look at your dreams list.  Timbered?  New Mexico certainly has some but guessing you will be disappointed in that most will be slightly better than scrub brush like pinion pine etc and most of the truly tall tree areas will private rich people preserves, federal lands etc.  Cheaper land will likely not have much of that and if it does it will likely not be close to town.  Figure out now order of compromises you are willing to make.  Is close to town more important, timber more important etc.  Remember also as you age close to town goes up in importance, not being snowed in matters etc.  Study and be sure your dreams are reasonable.  Once you have a concrete list of priorities you can always do a little shopping by email and phone and figure out that at least for today what you need to save to make your dream possible.  

Now positive side.  If you are roughing it everything will take 4 times as long.  But if you plan ahead most of roughing it can be eliminated.  You would like to be able to live there for a while before building the permanent home.  You want power, water etc immediately.  Well you have RV's, travel trailer, tiny homes etc that can give you that.  Might want to check what the common rules on those for NM are for all of those.  One might be better than the others legally.  Then lets look at a traveling non-habitable skid to put with any one of these.  Composting toilet so no black water and no need for water.  Probably 2 big water storage tanks.  One as a cistern with say 500 to 1500 gallons of storage but insulated and protected from the sun. (probably want 1500)  That would give you 2 to 3 weeks of storage with careful but semi normal modern living.  Second hot water tank probably about 1000 gallons for hot water storage design to be heated with solar thermal and heavily insulated.  Don't get stuck on the word tank on this one.  Big wood box built like a concrete form with walers, plywood liner.  Insulation liner, secondary water seal plastic, inner insulation and then lined with a EDPM liner.  Goal is to get ride of the need for heating systems and for hot water heater long term.  No trips to town for fuel and not needing a big propane tank for those things.  On the roof PVT panels probably need to fold up so transport is more reasonable. T heating the water tank and PV doing other stuff. Probably want a big air tank  on this too so you have stored air for construction and emergenices.  Small air pump filling it steadily off the solar.   And the batteries to take you mostly off grid.  Large tool battery charging station too so it can keep you in batteries to build the home.  Then a condensing washer drier combo in one or the other because you want to keep as much water as possible because there is a good chance you will want to save every drop of water possible.  Possibly a gray water treatment system so you can better reuse your gray water.  You will want a gutters system on this to collect the rain water to more storage tanks on site.  Probably want some sort of gutter system and solar panels built on to the roof of the RV / trailer for more energy and more water gathering capacity.  Now remember you want your living site as close as possible to your work site.   The whole goal is when you are on site you want to maximize your ability to work without the distractions of life where possible.  Minimize trips to town.  

What else can you do from far away to take in?  You will likely need a materials storage shed while building.  Can you build it at home in 8 foot panels and simply haul in and erect maybe.  You will want trees and plants so maybe an early trip after you know where you should be is gathering seed from local varieties you want so you can grow more to bring in?  What else?

If you mean a member here Nov 2013.(just looked)  I started reading here about a year before that.  Now if you mean part of permie values(not all) most of my life so say 50+ years.

Interesting video on enhancing wood durability naturally.  Posted here because it probably is most needed here.

enhancing wood durability.

Looking at the cloths pins and seeing the deterioration in the wood it has me wondering about other materials.  Most years I have taken them in after every use but got lazy this year. These I inherieted from my mother and are really good quality.  Went and looked and the cheapest good ones I found was $22 for 10.  With freight they would be nearly $3 a pin.  Which brings me to the thinking.  Material that won't stain clothing, degrade in the weather or UV, etc.  First 3 thoughts were ceramic, stainless and glass.  

Ceramic I could certainly do.  Fairly easy to build molds to mass produce.  Shape the mold to roll out say 10 halves at a time in the mold.  Cut into individual pins and fire.  Guessing a little too fragile though even with a tougher glaze although it might surprise me.  Would have to plan for the shrink from firing the clay.

Stainless ideal other than cost.

Now glass got my attention.  Cheap material if recycling.  Love color of some of the blue and some of the green beer bottles so I think material is available.

I am familar with tempering, prince rupert drops and the nearly unbreakable beer glass out of east germany so I know it is possible to make really tough glass.  Can probably make molds by carefully welding various long pieces together so if can cut into individual halves with a knife while still hot after molding should be doable.  I know glass molds are supposed to be a bit hot but well within what can be done with common steel or possible even cast brass giving another possible method to build molds.(clay positive to brass negative to glass positive.)

Good springs good stainless cloths pin springs

Tempered glass is just fast cooling the glass at the right rate.  Tough and shatters into small pieces that are mostly harmless if broken.  Sort of the ultimate version is below.

Prince Rupert drops.  Notice if you avoid the tail you can hit it with a hammer and not hurt it. ( it will actually dent the steel hammer)  Here is a good video on them.

prince rupert drop.

That brings us to the unbreakable beer glasses.  Brand name Superfest.
unbreakable beer glass.

The process is to heat the glass near molten and soak it in a potassium solution so the sodium in the glass exchanges ions with the potassium for chemically strengthened glass that is very hard to break.  Adds another question in colored glass would it change the color?  Brings up one other thought about being able to find them in the dark.  Uranium glass and UV?

Has me toying with trying at the personal level and mildly thinking at the business level.  So if good quality wood cloths pins are at least $2 each and probably $3 each would you be interested in a glass version if durable and if so what price point?  Assume nearly unbreakable some direction or combination of directions.  First generation would probably be common beer bottle colors.  

With radiator shop tools I have, I am fairly sure I can melt the glass.  Quick google says propane / air will melt lime/soda glass and the big bell torch does 150,000 BTU's.  Welding the molds up would be a pain but I think is doable.  A bunch of pieces of small shafting, key stock and bar stock welded together to shape the mold.  A series of cross cuts in it for a knife to follow to cut individual halves out of the molded long half blank.  What am I missing?

William Bagwell wrote:

Tess Misch wrote:I found this at a 2nd hand shop and thought "how cool is that!!" with no idea what it is. It is bowl-shaped, but it is HEAVY and solid metal.  Could be very old. But a curiosity to me regardless!  Any thoughts?  Thanks!  --Tess

My guess: bottom of a gas cylinder such as oxygen or other high pressure gas. Correct shape, approximately the right thickness, etc. Has been flame cut from a larger object. Not sure what the round dimples are, but in the fourth picture they look like weld beads so may have been added later.  

I will second the end out of a pressure tank guess.  Likely the left over scrap from someone building an oil burning stove.

Also a good source for making pectin for other processes.

As for breeding true in mixed orchards mentioned above the answer is NO.  If you get seeds from an apple orchard partially pollinated with crab apples,  Some of the trees will be from other apples,  some will have crab apple traits when fully mature but you can not otherwise tell them from normal apples and finally some will look and taste like crab apples.  Early you can often tell the last batch by leaf color in the spring if you have a crab apple with the purplish leaves as pollination source.  Some of your cross breed apple trees will show the purplish leaves in the spring while others have true green leaves only.  My lesson in this came from a decade ago when I got Gala apples from the grocery store.  Was slow making apple sauce with them and found many the seed were sprouting inside the fruit.  So I planted all the seeds and got over 50 trees from it.  Gave most away.  If they looked like a crab tree leaf they are producing crab apples.  Others are a mixture of great apples and garbage depending on the tree.