Tereza Okava

Nina Surya wrote:I've also used plastic feedbags (doggy food) to store sawdust in. Would work for sand and wood chips alike!

I also use repurposed sacks for sawdust (woven feed sack type thing). I often go to a sawmill and get sawdust and need to transport it home in my car, so whatever large feed/whatever sacks I can get help a lot. Then just store that somewhere out of the rain.
Sand, inevitably it ends up in a pile somewhere in the yard. I try to put it somewhere that later will be planted with something that likes sand.

I would venture that when we are talking about "investing", right now investing in a place to live to not have to pay rent is a big deal.
whether you're rural or urban, renting is rough, even more so when the job market is shaky.

when I was young and questioned college (maybe age 11), my father said he would give me choice: he'd buy me the Porsche I coveted, or I could go to college, saying it would be so much cheaper to buy the car. [in my family such offers were traps, and in any case by the time i understood the economics of this trap i was 'in the chute' to get myself into college].

The smart investment now would probably be an opportunity to buy into a place to live, and I'm always impressed with young people who own. I hope some alternatives open up in terms of access to ownership, because I remember the horror that was renting, being at the mercy of a landlord, and not being able to afford to buy anything. And having the rent/mortgage payment disappear is what changed our financial position significantly.

Maybe that opens up more possibilities for gardener type situations. As it is, I can't believe people aren't beating a path to Wheaton Labs for the chance to have a place to live AND learn stuff.

Tuesday a client gave my husband a huge head of lettuce and an enormous bag of NZ spinach (tetragonia) from his garden.
Neither of these are things we normally eat, so I did some planning and last night we had a Korean feast- pork bulgogi wrapped in lettuce (and perilla/shiso, for me at least) and a whole load of banchan type dishes- spinach with sesame oil and garlic, cabbage charred in lard with sweet soy sauce and red pepper, some sad zucchini stirfried with onions, garlic and chinese bean sauce.... and the new batch of kimchi, of course. I had 7 types of homegrown greens on the table, which was impressive!

Tonight we'll be having Korean chicken wings in the air fryer with either yakisoba or chinese noodles with cabbage (not sure yet)- I scored 4 enormous cabbages (4kg+) for 99 cents each, so cabbage is in our future....

Also Timothy--- if you buy it, cook it immediately or... I dunno, keep it in the garage?
Here in Brazil the Portuguese legacy is strong and lots of places sell it. Suffice to say, you can tell right away whether a store sells salt cod or not, often as soon as you set foot in the door.

Important question:
which is cheerful? the potatoes, the mountain, or the farm?
I feel this would be a deciding factor in my decision. I don't know if I can deal with cheerful potatoes.

Welcome Craig!!
If you're into the soil, and the soil biota, and the big picture, you are definitely in the right place!! This is our bread and butter (dirt and worms?). I look forward to learning more about your gardens and seeing what you're doing.

so i moved to New England in an area full of Portuguese and Azorean immigrants and came up against salt cod (bacalhau, bacalla). It takes some crazy prep (days of soaking, sometimes even in milk) and stinks up your house. I prefer fresh fish, but that's just me.
That said, it had to be on the table at Easter where I lived, and one time I made a dip with it and potatoes that was absolutely fabulous. This is not the recipe (I didn't bother whipping the potatoes, i left them chunky) but otherwise it is pretty similar, and has a great explanation of how to prep the fish. https://www.seriouseats.com/brandade-salt-cod-spread-recipe

paul wheaton wrote:Of course I have no clue what will actually happen. Speculations on top of speculations.  
At the same time, the changes are starting now.  

Indeed.

I've written and dumped this response about 3 times already.
What is going to happen? Nobody knows.
what I do know is that right now very few people are happy or hopeful about where things are going.

it all comes down to human needs- we need to eat, we need a place to sleep, we need some sort of joy/satisfaction/love. (the Raffi song, for those parents who suffered through it: "a song in my heart, food in my belly, love in my family").
If you can combine these basic needs, which many of us who love homesteading do, how can you go wrong? (and i'm being super inclusive with homesteading here-- I homestead in a city, in a tiny yard). Producing food, supplying our own basic needs, developing the skills one needs for an uncertain future... while also being able to derive joy and satisfaction and community in the process, how can you go wrong?

(and just as an aside--- when online content is all slop and almost entirely unbelievable [yesterday one of my favorite online talking heads, who specializes in AI, got taken in by a fake AI story-- nothing can be trusted anymore], and attention spans are destroyed, the "real" takes on a lot more value. What is more real than dirt? Livestock? Processing herbs? Sanding wood? Making things? I'm surprised at how often people ask me questions about crafts or herbs or cooking now..... I personally think we're on the cusp of a big pendulum swing, when people start to take more interest in real life than online, for the sake of mental health and just plain happiness, if not skynet/AGI/bots taking over all jobs. I guess we shall see!)

oh Eric, again?? i'm so sorry. i don't know if it's better to know what you're in for (you know it eventually passes) or worse (you know how bad it's going to be).
For a while there I had them regularly, and it was horrible. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say I lived in fear for a while there in anticipation of every twinge.

The bright side is... the dentist is cake in comparison (I used to be that person who was afraid of the dentist). In fact, most things are cake in comparison.

I had one largish (1.4cm) one that never made its way out after my last crisis about 8 years ago. I took some citric acid meds that caused a stomach ulcer that was even worse than the kidney stone, so abandoned that pretty quickly. In doing the imaging for that, I was told that it wasn't harming me, but probably wouldn't budge unless I had some sort of intervention-- too big, in a place where they don't usually flush out on their own.
Every time I did some sort of imaging it would always be there waving hi at me (and the tech would be like "do you know about this?"). I keep an eye on my kidney function, which has always been fine, so I decided not to worry about it until it became a problem.

Last week I had a full abdominal echo (routine "getting old" type exam) and apparently it decided to seek greener pastures, because it wasn't there any more. Go figure!

Edited to add: want a story? it happened to a friend of mine ON AN INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT. Talk about a nightmare!

Welcome to Permies, Craig!

I love what you wrote. It is a wonderful luxury to be able to get so familiar with a place that you know what to find and what the expect.
This year we are definitely there-- yesterday we went hunting for bamboo shoots, and earlier this spring we harvested huge quantities of mulberries from places we noticed in previous years. Last year when the price of lemons was through the roof, I remembered a park that had some lemon trees and we went hunting.... This week, I know there are blackberries in a place I take the dog for training, and I'll be snagging them as well..... it is great to know what's out there and to be able to make it part of your life.