Cécile Stelzer Johnson

My daily ritual starts in the evening: I go to sleep thinking of my next project. I have found that if I didn't have the solution when I went to sleep, I often thinking of a new idea that I can use while I'm sleeping. When I wake up, I'll often have the idea I didn't have when I went to sleep.
I get up around 5 am and right now, I'm on crutches, so no bath or shower.
I strip naked in front of the sink  and reach what I can reach with a wet cloth. (right now, no soap because I could not rinse properly). Then I print my SUDOKU, weigh myself before I dress and fix myself a cup of coffee, fix a no cook breakfast (yogurt & fruit sauce) read the digital edition of my paper while doing my SUDOKU. (That's my little lump of sugar high, my little reward, before I tackle work.)
Now, I'm ready!

Before I can preserve it, I'd have to grow it, and unfortunately, I do not have a machine that could harvest any amount of grain. I'm thinking of fabricating one with an electric hedge cutter (battery powered Ryobi) to which I would add wheels. I'm still thinking about that one, but I figured I could cut a couple of day's worth easily.
I don't have a thresher either, but since it is for chickens, they could get the whole plant, clipped at the base, especially for buckwheat, as this is a bugger to separate from the chaff.
I'd like to grow rye too, for ryegrass to bale and sink in the pond. (Great mosquito killer!)
Right now, I just buy grain as I go and store it in homer pails in the shed, near the coop. The homer pails with a good fitting lid are perfect: Mice can't get at them and they are not so heavy that I have a tough time taking them to the coop. In the winter, I have a rugged sled, like hunters use to bring home a big deer.
My discovery is that even when you don't have much snow at all, the sled will glide on grass... for a while.
Next, I switch to the little metal, hand pulled, trailer.

We live in flat country in central Wisconsin. In winter, the wind can howl and chill anyone.
Adding windbreaks is the best way I can help wildlife here: We have lots of oaks dying from the wilt, so for years now, I keep piling dead branches between 2 rows of timber.
The pile is about 200 ft and all of it is at least 4 ft high, with spots almost 6 ft. I have started a second pile, parallel to the first one but on the sheltered side. When a tree gets downed by a storm and still has leaves I keep the leaves on the branches.
The original pile is now growing flowers like false indigo, and brambles. The brambles are not making good fruit for us anyway, but while they eat those, they don't go after my prized raspberries!
A little trick, also is that if at the end of the planting season you still have seeds that you didn't plant, that hedge is a good place for those seeds, before they become too old to sprout. Some will be eaten outright, others will grow, adding to the pile and the protection.
We also have a big deck on the south and east sides of the house. So the house is cutting the dominant winds. I'm keeping it accessible to critters. Right now, we have rabbits living under there. When the snow falls off the roof and on the deck, it makes a huge area that's snow covered. We see tracks of all sorts going in and out of that shelter.

That's quantitatively difficult to assess in most situations: I live in sand, so most of these "imports", that get distributed over my land without cost or any effort on my part, is welcome.
Some poo, I don't mind at all: Deer, wild birds, racoons (if they don't steal from my garden!)
But I do make a couple of exceptions:
My neighbors have cats and dogs that visit regularly, at night, and leave their hmm... "visiting cards" (and lots of them) on my lawn where I have to be careful when I step barefoot. (I love walking barefoot: It's healthier than keeping my feet confined 24/7).
I do not have cats or dogs. Not because I do not like them, I do. I could pet them all day. But there is a huge cost in maintaining them in good health, housing them, and vet bills are just not something I can afford. Winters here are cold, so I'd have to keep them in my house, and as is, I have trouble keeping things clean. some folks here keep their pets confined outside, in small kennels, and I can't see myself doing that to them either. I think it's cruel.
Since they love their pets, I think they should want to keep the whole experience for themselves, fleas, bird killing, snarls and poop included.
We invite lots of birds, squirrels and the like to our bird feeders, and even without their daily deposits, they are most welcome.

J Youngman wrote:Not sure if this is the best section to post this...
Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical, Russia
I found this very interesting. I never realized this was done on such a large scale so long ago. I've wanted to build a similar style "greenhouse" for a long time. I would love to know how they handled drainage in their trenches.

Society has seen a lot of changes since then. The important work of tending to plants/trees was more valued than it is now: a worker with a full time job was getting enough money to sustain a whole family. A woman would to bake bread every other day, do some sewing. These jobs took a lot longer, being done piecemeal. A shoemaker would work for several days to make a pair of shoes. Same thing for the barrel maker, a seamstress...
When everything is mechanized and automatic, it becomes too expensive to pay someone to build large trenches and walls and espaliers: Human workers have to be paid whereas machines don't and they can work 24/7.
We've seen so many artisanal jobs disappear.
As far as draining the trenches, I'd like to know that too. Since they built these trenches even on gentle slopes, there might have been enough of a slope to divert the worst of the rain around the trenches? (like when you are camping and rain threatens you can make a shallow trench to divert rainwater away from your tent and stay dry) the trenches themselves could have a gentle slope with one end higher than the other, so the water would accumulate at one end of the trench??
Pre-1800, these were the options for lifting water out of where it was not wanted:
Ancient & Early Methods (Pre-1800s)
Shaduf (c. 2000 BC): An early lever system with a bucket on one end and a counterweight on the other, used by Egyptians to lift water from rivers.
Archimedes' Screw (c. 3rd Century BC): A rotating screw within a tube, often powered by hand or animal, that lifts water as it turns, ideal for low-lift drainage.
Chain Pump (c. 200 BC): An endless chain with discs or pots that scoops water up a tube, powered by a waterwheel or hand crank.
The Archimedes screw or the chain pump sound like the most promising, but I'm guessing.

There are many good ideas in this thread. All I can think of is mosaic. Embedded in plaster. You use cutting pliers to cut the glass to your liking then lay it in soft plaster. When it dries, it's really pretty. You don't reuse a lot of it that way, I'm afraid.
I very much like the idea of embedding bottles in a wall to add a lot of light to a wall but I fear that in a wall that was mostly composed of complete bottles, the walls might be quite weak. (The air in the bottle, perhaps the condensation hot/cold and perhaps there would have to be so much material between the bottles to make the wall solid enough that it may not be worth it? The only way I have seen them is with bottles lying on their side. I guess standing them up would not work as the wall would be too thin?
It's intriguing, though.

The fact that there are so many remedies volunteered by our permies indicate that the problem is more complex perhaps, than taking this or that. Our permies are telling us stuff that worked for them at one time or another, and all these remedies will have their supporters and detractors.
First, it's important to react immediately a the first sign that something isn't right. Stuffy nose, scratchy throat, congestion can be symptoms of quite a few different problems, so our dedicated permies may well be reacting to different burgeoning illnesses.
There are simple actions that one can take at the first sign that you are not well. I tend to isolate (staying away from further sources of infection) rest, check my water intake, and double check my personal behavior:
Stay away from all food that you know my be "comfort food", but that your mind knows is just adding yuck and calories without helping (alcohol, coffee, cookies, candies) fall in that category. Any chemicals, even not ingested, I try do do without. I go poo-less and stop using soap: I just use warm water for washing myself
Beyond that, like everyone else, I'll just try stuff. I have elderberries from which I have made a nice syrup. (I don't know if it cures me, but if nothing else, it's a nice placebo and it's good for me: Lots of anthocyanins).
For all respiratory problems, it is thyme tea and a high dosage of vitamin C, like 1500mg..
Thyme tea is known to be an expectorant, an antispasmodic (it was a go to for whooping cough in infants), It contains compounds like thymol that have antibacterial properties, helping fight infections in the throat and lungs, it is also an anti-inflammatory.
Listerine contains thymol, so if my throat is scratchy, I'll gargle with that too.
I will humbly confess that I do not know which ailment I'm curing, maybe the flu, maybe a cold, maybe bronchitis or pneumonia, but hey, if it works to stop that darn thing cold, does it matter?
Thank you to all the permies giving us the benefit of their attempts.
I made a compendium of all these ideas. This fire cider sounds really interesting and I'm going to make it, just in case...

Remi Gall wrote:
The problem is with the paths that are always full of weeds. I've tried mulch like newspaper and cardboard covered with leaves but in time the leafs are blown away and seeing newspaper and cardboard in the garden is not very pleasant.
Thanks !

Wood chips and saw dust is the best. If you can find them chopped fairly small, it's better. Here, when there are strong winds and some trees fall, the County is in charge of removing and disposing of them and I always ask them to bring me some. You can pack a quantity of these green and brown chips in the alleys. That prevents the weeds for 3-4 years depending on the depth while they are decomposing.
When weeds start popping through, you can flip the chips inside the bed: new soil for free!
When I didn't have enough and the weeds got aggressive, I used my weed-eater to chop and drop in the paths. I raked that and gave that to my chickens. (I have some very happy chickens!) This little electric contraption easily gets between the beds and make short work of that,
I can also use new or fairly clean litter from my chickens if I need to. (Of course, that's more expensive but since I use the smallest chips from Tractor Supply, they pack nicely for a dry footpath!)