Thyri Gullinvargr

Jessica Jueckstock wrote:

Elly Butterwitch wrote: and a small flock of sheep.

How are you managing sheep in your small space? Do you have to mostly bring in their feed or do you have enough grass for them to eat once you account for the space for everything else you're doing?

I'd like to know too

Then there's this robot snowblower/lawnmower https://www.yarbo.com/. My nerdy side wants this soooo bad, but I really can't justify it. I realize it's not very permaculture aligned, but just because my inner geek is tempted doesn't mean I'll give in. 🤓

Emmett Ray wrote:
Here's what I learned about snow removal:  If you live somewhere where it's prone to a lot of snow, then have a heated driveway and heated roof installed.  Expensive?  Yes.  Worth it?  Absolutely.  If I weren't relocating to the south, I'd be installing these things so fast it wouldn't be funny.  Everyone says how it's not worth the expense until it's time for them to have to shovel out of a storm themselves.  

I don't think my landlord would agree to that (or my neighbor that shares the driveway). 🤔😉😁

John Hume wrote:Go get a Wovel (https://www.thegreenhead.com/2006/01/wovel-ultimate-snow-shovel.php).  In 2010 we had 50" of snow in 8 days.  Delightful!  Shovel a while. Come in and eat homemade bread and soup. Go out and shovel a while longer.

With the Wovel your lower back is not affected.  However, when you push the snow up and away your arms and shoulders get a good workout.  How good?  The next morning when I brushed my teeth, I put the toothbrush on the sink and held it down with a hand while I moved my teeth back-and-forth on the brush.

I also have a Wovel (https://wovel.com/) and recommend it. By the way, it stands for "wheeled shovel". I live in town and when I got it the duplex I live in took up one side of the driveway and the neighbor's fence took up most of the other side (fence has since been taken down). That was 50 feet or more of nowhere to put snow. The Wovel makes a decent push shovel, then the wheel is used as a pivot point to throw the snow. You can also "wheelbarrow" snow. One factor is to have the bolt that puts the handle together with the head down and end up. I ripped up my pants and leg before I switched it as you'll probably bonk your leg on the throws until you get used to the motion.

Burra Maluca wrote:
I don't have the energy for any more experiments at the moment, especially before the downstairs area is usable. When I am able to be down there for longer periods of time with somewhere comfortable to rest up while I'm down there I should be able to do more. But for now I'm totally up to capacity!

Fair enough. 🙂

Burra Maluca wrote:
Even my little dragons have noticed I don't have the energy to go outside much and have bought me a little vase which they are putting flowers from the garden in to keep me in touch with what's happening outside of my room...

Lucky you. It's been below 0° F (-18° C) where I'm at lately. Flowers are but a memory at the moment. 🥶

Burra Maluca wrote:

Thyri Gullinvargr wrote:...the Walker stoves are built such that different areas of the cooktop are different temperatures. If so, perhaps you could put a huge pot of water (large canning or stock pot maybe?) with a lid on one of the cooler burners as additional mass. ... Heck, if there's a spot that's the right temperature you might even be able to make something that takes long simmering, like bone broth, some days.

That is exactly how the walker cooktop works, and when the downstairs area is ready to use as a kitchen we will indeed be doing that kind of thing. Hopefully next winter the bench will be in place and enough work done down there that we can experiment and report. I'm looking forward to it!  

Burra, I was thinking more in terms of doing this before you're doing more generic cooking as a way to increase mass quickly now, but in a way that is easy to "put away" later once you have the bench. 😉

Willy Kerlang wrote:There is a natural phenomenon by which a mixture of particles, when agitated, will naturally settle out according to size, with the largest at the top and the smallest at the bottom.  You can demonstrate this yourself, or at the very least you can do this experiment in your head. 

If you get a large container of some sort and add a bucketful of BBs, a bucketful of marbles, and a bucketfull of baseballs in no particular order, and then shake it back and forth, the baseballs will eventually rise to the top, the marbles will settle in the middle, and the BBs will form a discrete layer at the bottom.  Soil does the same thing, except instead of you shaking it back and forth the pigs are churning everything up.  When the smallest particles, which are clay, form their layer at the bottom, it's tight enough to keep water in.

Just saw this SciShow video on YouTube and thought folks might be interested.  
How Shaking Unmixes Your Breakfast Cereal 😁
Spoiler, the information quoted above is only part of the answer

Jay Angler wrote:I had a possibly crazy thought - if you aren't using the oven right now, could you put slabs of marble with gaps for air flow in the oven section to add a little extra thermal mass until you are ready to build the bench? I'm not sure what the cubage is in the oven, so how much difference it would make?

I had a different but similar thought. If I remember correctly, and it's been a while so I might be mixing them up with something else, the Walker stoves are built such that different areas of the cooktop are different temperatures. If so, perhaps you could put a huge pot of water (large canning or stock pot maybe?) with a lid on one of the cooler burners as additional mass. Basically, the idea would be to heat it up, but not to a rolling boil. Similar thing could probably be done with the oven. My thought it that when you don't need it you can use the water and store the pots. Heck, if there's a spot that's the right temperature you might even be able to make something that takes long simmering, like bone broth, some days.

Because it took me several minutes to spot the link on my phone and it's currently a freebie to folks who are subscribed, this is what you're looking for to download the document. I just logged on to my laptop to download it there too and it's much easier to find in a full browser.

NASA is apparently experimenting with doing this on the moon. https://pressnewsagency.org/nasa-wants-to-grow-houses-made-of-mushrooms-on-the-moon/