Phil Stevens

If water is percolating too quickly, you could use an olla.

Two-year-old vines climbing through other vegetation and putting on what looks like a bumper crop. I found a small one on the ground just now but I don't expect them to really start dropping on their own until late May. Last year I was still finding them in early July.

Since the new growth looks healthy, I don't think it's disease. My suspicions would be some sort of chewing or boring critter. Lots of gourds get attacked by vine borers...when I lived in Arizona it was a constant battle to try to get them out of the squash and pumpkin plants before they did too much damage. Look at the stem close to ground level and see if you can spot anything obvious. They will often have a hole with lots of droppings (frass) coming out.

if it wasn't an insect, it may be snails or slugs, or something bigger like a rodent.

Fred Beken wrote:The only advantage I see for a 2nd barrel would be the annual cleaning: a clamp is easy to remove. With the bricks, I'd need to "destroy" the clay seal and apply new slip afterwards. Not to difficult either.

For my RMH, I made a lip at the bottom by pressing the barrel rim into the wet clay, rotating it back and forth, and scooped it out enough that a length of fire rope sits in it. The barrel just goes on top of the fire rope and its weight holds it in place.

The NZ cabbage tree (Cordyline australis) has long, straplike leaves that hang off the trunk and dry out sheltered by the crown, all the better to pull off by the handful in the dead of winter. They're loaded with resin and make the best tinder around. Our native "flax" harakeke is also good when the leaves have dried. Since the free regional newspapers folded, these are my go-to firestarters.

Of course, fish and chip paper is unbleached newsprint and has the added bonus of grease.

Yeah, too many unknowns. Not worth the hassle in my opinion. Better to start with clean biomass for peace of mind.

Benedict Bosco wrote:A few of things I've learned:
- it's a good idea to exercise all shutoff valves (open and close them), both the whole house and at individual fixtures, on a regular basis, probably at least once a year. If they don't move, they tend to corrode internally and stick, and may not work when you need them. I had a valve handle I was trying to close break off because it was too badly stuck - thankfully it wasn't something I needed off urgently, but would have been bad otherwise.
- have shutoff valves at each fixture. This isn't necessarily an emergency thing, but if you're trying to fix or replace a faucet or appliance and you can't shut off the water there and have to shut off the main, it's a bigger production that has to be done now, instead of being able to take your time with the fix. Exterior faucets especially should have their own independent shutoffs.
- if you shut off the main for any reason, you probably want to go through the house and remove aerators and run the faucets until they run smooth (i.e. once the air is out, run a bit longer). The pressure drop/rebuild tends to knock sediment loose in the pipes, which clogs up the aerators and makes them flow poorly.

I learned a trick from a veteran plumber years ago: Most shutoff valves are the "gate" type with the handle that you turn to open and close. Since they spend years, even decades, in the open position, it's very common for them to corrode in place...then when you really need to turn them off RIGHT NOW you can't. His trick is to open it all the way, then back off about half a turn from the fully open position. This keeps the surfaces from mating and gives you some wiggle room when you need to free things up quickly.

You can also replace a gate shutoff with a high quality ball valve. These are very resistant to seizing up, but more costly.

Anywhere we harvest runoff from roadways we need to have a way to filter out some of the nasties that motor vehicles leave behind. The main things we don't want getting into our food-growing systems are the petroleum products, like motor oil and hydraulic fluid, and the particles that result from tyre wear, especially the anti-degradants that are mixed in to prevent rubber deterioration and have some really toxic effects on aquatic life.

I'm a fan of biochar bunds or sediment traps placed in the path of the water flow, periodically replaced so that the "used" biochar can be dealt with safely. Unless heavy metals are in the picture, this treatment can be as simple as re-pyrolysis of the used biochar at high enough temperatures to destroy the bad stuff, after which the biochar can go back into the sediment trap or some other beneficial setting.

Or you could exit from the bottom, with a short riser to get above the inevitable sediment layer. Then you're not disrupting the coil of tubing.

If you get a really good population of fungi in there, the mycelium also have a tremendous capacity to hold and move water.