Phil Stevens

HI Katie, and welcome. I used wool insulation in the ceiling on the sleepout project I'm working on. It's from a commercial supplier and they treat it with boron. Supposedly this deters rodents as well as insects, but I'm making sure that the entire crawlspace is as well sealed off as I can make it. We do have problems with rats and mice occasionally getting into parts of the house, so I might use steel mesh across the likely entry points.

I have a public walkway along the northern boundary of the property. At the eastern end, where it connects to a sporting reserve, it crosses a low area and when we get lots of rain it was prone to flooding ankle deep. A few years ago my arborist mate was sending me truckloads of stump grindings and I was running out of places to put them, so I asked the council groundskeeper if we could dump some to raise the grade of the footpath. He was a little dubious but agreed (he didn't have to do the work) and we put about 15 cubic meters of material across about 30 m of walkway.

I put a piece of drainage pipe across the middle to keep the neighbours' paddock from ponding and instead direct the runoff to a swale I had dug, then the truck showed up. I raked it out to level and immediately got some great feedback. The grindings had a lot of soil mixed in, so even as the wood fibre broke down the grade is still higher than it was before. I've topped up the lowest point with wood chips once or twice, but for the most part the problem is gone (and the horse paddock next door stays a lot drier as a bonus).

I like the scenes and main character a lot, Ben. Is that photo from the northern end of the Lukachukai? I recognise that view from a trip I took 25 years ago on the way to the San Juans. I really hope I can get back to the mesas someday.

I grow a variety that has deep red skins...I haven't tried them for flavour because I wasn't a fan of the tan ones. Maybe I should do a taste test. Skin removal is a lot of work!

Census off the top of my head:

16 apple
5 pear
8 plum (does not include wildings)
8 peach
6 cherry
1 apricot
15 feijoa
1 lemon
1 grapefruit
1 persimmon
3 fig
1 quince
2 tamarillo
1 satsuma
4 avocado
1 banana

75 total (I'm sure I missed at least one or two)

The above are all in the ground. If I include potted ones that are earmarked for future planting there's another couple dozen waiting in the wings. And this list excludes things like berries, grapes, kiwifruit, and guavas (except feijoas, because they really are trees). Should I go for 100? Then we've got nuts...30-40 hazels, a dozen chestnuts, two walnuts, two macadamias, four almonds, a Torrey pine and a few oaks.

We like the immature pods. Get them young and tender and it's like having green beans out of season. I just tried making falafel for the first time with some dried favas. Thanks to a combination of impatience and not thinking it all the way through, I decided to parboil them for about an hour instead of soaking overnight. Big mistake. They wound up mostly cooked and the texture was all wrong...my first batch of falafel nuggets exploded in the oil and turned straight into foamy sludge. I salvaged the remainder by adding some flour and an egg to bind it all together. Still tasty, but next time I will follow the damn recipe and soak the beans.

Hi Ron, and welcome. It sounds like you've got a good plan to try and correct the issue. Another thing that may help is if you can get some soil from underneath a mature, thriving blueberry bush. This will be more likely to have the specific mycorrhizae that your propagated plants are probably lacking.

Blake Lenoir wrote: I mean blenders, mortar and pestle and that type of stuff to hammer corn, beans and stuff to flour to create mush, bread, soup and stuff for recipes, etc. Trying to make some better cornmeal, nachos, taco shells, all for greater taste. Is there some simple material to create mortar and pestle the way ancient people have?

If it's the quest for taste that's driving you, then definitely try nixtamalising some corn. It is a game changer in the way it softens the kernels, changes the flavour, improves the nutrient availability, and gives you something that you can process by hand with a range of utensils. All you need is some hydrated lime. It's sold as cal or pickling lime in a lot of places. If you can't get your hands on any, wood ash (especially from hardwoods) works but won't give you the same taste as lime...still good though.

I just did an interior wall using a light earth mixture with wood shavings instead of straw. There's also chunks of biochar in the mass. You do have to be careful about how wet and clay-rich the mix is as you put it into the forms, and gentle tamping is a must. it's been four weeks since we did the work and it still has more drying to do (100 mm thickness, and we've had weeks of unusually cool and wet weather), but the infill is very firm even in the sections where we "got it right" and there are lots of air pockets.

Here is what crimp looks like out in the paddock. Test subject J loves having her photo taken.



16-month-old hogget (young ewe) showing spiral twists at tips of fleece.



Closeup showing how the spiral strands form a wavy pattern...the crimp. Wool with a strong crimp has more natural loft than straighter fleeces.