J Garlits

Wow, that is so much simpler than the way I've been doing it. And no waste.  I'm gonna try this. Thanks, Sandy!

Sandy Kemp wrote:I do it this way. Discard is available for cooking, but no waste.

https://youtu.be/hNCL6jwRJTo?si=DuW1RYPgPnShjtuz

I have been making sourdough bread quite often, so I almost always have healthy active starter ready to go. I rarely refrigerate it. After I make a loaf, I take what is left and add more King Arthur bread flour and filtered water until it is the consistency I prefer and put the Mason jar on top of my Bunn Pour-O-Matic coffee maker where it is nice and warm. Within a couple of hours it's nice and bubbly and then goes back down. I feed it once a day, so it is always ready to go. I keep enough in my jar so that if I want to use "discard" I have plenty to do that, too. My method won't work for everyone, because I go through quite a bit of flour, but I never have to wait several feedings from 'fridge to oven.

I haven't gone beyond the basic beginner's bread recipe because it is super simple and we all love the results. Here's my method:

I proof my starter. It's always super active so this normally only takes a couple of hours. I pour 100 g of starter into a bowl and add 325 g of filtered water and stir it up with a whisk. Then I add 475 g of flour and 10 g of sea salt, mix it all together and let it autolyze for an hour covered with a damp kitchen towel. It sits on the kitchen counter so I see it as I'm puttering around during the day and I'll shape it two or three times. To do this, I wash my hands and rinse them off. leaving them wet. Then I'll scrape the dough off the sided of the bowl, picking it up and kneading it in on itself, retaining the ball shape. This presses out big air pockets and I've had good success with it, and it keeps up a nice surface tension. After repeating this shaping a couple times, I cut off a big piece of parchment paper and put the loaf on top of it while I rinse out the bowl, then place the dough on the parchment paper back into the bowl. This makes it super easy to move the dough into my dutch oven when I make the bread the next morning. After that final shaping, I monitor it until it has about doubled in size.

Once it has, I place the bowl in the refrigerator overnight with the towel on top of it, and when I get up, I put the dutch oven in the oven, turn it on to 450 degrees and let the dutch oven come up to temperature. Once it has, I pick up the dough and parchment paper and put it in the dutch oven, replace the lid, put it in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. I set a timer. After 20 minutes I take the lid off the dutch oven and bake it for another 20 minutes.

Voila, sourdough bread.

Again. my starter is always super active, so when I decide whether I want a loaf of sourdough the next morning, it's always ready to go. I'm never more than one day from a fresh loaf from start to finish.

j

I use greensand as a soil amendment in my liquid garden fertilizer, which I also use to inoculate biochar.

Sorry I'm late to the party, and forgive me if someone already mentioned it... I scrolled through the posts and didn't see it mentioned, though someone did bring up free audiobooks.

This seems to be forgotten knowledge, (and no, you don't seem a bit materialistic to me) but for the price of a library card, which is usually free, you can go to your local library and use this awesome service called Inter-Library Loan (ILL). Your library locates a copy of the book you want to read, and requests that the library holding the copy send it to them so they can loan it to you just like one of their own books. ILL is free for the user. Libraries send books back and forth via USPS Media Mail so costs are minimal. I hope this helps you out if you really want to hold a copy in your hands for a few weeks.

j

Faeryn Savage wrote:

So here's the problem, or challenge: I finally found a copy of Bill Mollison's Introduction to Permaculture that is not only well under a hundred dollars, but is a beautiful, ready-to-be-loved copy. (It's only $40 plus the shipping fee!) But things are simply too tight, as they are most surely to always be, for me to be able to buy it. And I find it sad.

So, I'm wondering... Am I being too materialistic? I also wonder what folks have paid for their copy and if my hope to obtain a copy for less than $100-150 is unrealistic. Maybe someone would weigh in for me let me know their thoughts? Again, I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place or not allowed altogether. I just don't know that I've got anybody in my immediate reach to discuss this with that would have any level of understanding that I think folks around here have.

Love and Respect,
Faeryn

they’re only for winter… I’d have the same reservations, the other three seasons. They’ve done extensive testing over the last three years. I’ll still do more research. Thanks for your input! Yes, I’ve been looking at Layens hives, too. If I get up the gumption, I may build an insulated one and test it out. For now, I’m just awaiting the arrival of my bee package at the end of the month. That is, if I don’t get a swarm first. Everything is set up, and I put Swarm Commander near the entrance and on the back of one of the frames. If I get a swarm first, I’ll just get another hive for the package. I’ve already got some built-up frames from a beekeeper in my local club. I’m also looking at Bluetooth thermometer/hygrometers to monitor winter temps inside the hive.

There's a company on Indiegogo who patented a basic passive solar window heater adapted to a Langstroth beehive. Genius!

Watch the video here... HiveHeater Video

I've been intrigued with the thought of passive solar heat since the back of my house gets some nice southern exposure in the winter time. I'm also getting into beekeeping this year, and thinking that since our northern Indiana winters can be harsh, having a passive solar hive warmer might bee a good idea if I don't want my bees to die when it gets -10 F outside.

Light me up with comments if you like. I'm posting this mostly to spread the word, because combining two ideas for a new outcome excites me. For the price of some wood scraps, black paint, wire screen, and a piece of glass or plexi, overwintering your bees could become a lot easier!

j

p.s. I'm not involved with Honey Haven Supply or the HiveHeater in any way. I don't get kickbacks or pay for affiliate links. I posted the URL simply so you can see how the heater works. Any action you take on their site is your bees-ness. ;)

Thank you! Moosage me and I will complete the transaction.

Trace Oswald wrote:

J Garlits wrote:I killed my B14 comfrey last year. It got stuffed into an out of the way corner of my yard and completely dried out, then over the winter, in trying to rehydrate it, I ended up with a gooey mess. Anyone got any deals going on to get me some more root cuttings?

I'll explain my prolonged absence and my path forward in another post!

It's good to be back...

Jim

I have Bocking #4 if you want some.  I'll sell you all you want for $1 a root + shipping.  If you want a lot, we can work out a bulk discount.

It’s dead, I killed it. It’s waterlogged all the way through and gooey.

I killed my B14 comfrey last year. It got stuffed into an out of the way corner of my yard and completely dried out, then over the winter, in trying to rehydrate it, I ended up with a gooey mess. Anyone got any deals going on to get me some more root cuttings?

I'll explain my prolonged absence and my path forward in another post!

It's good to be back...

Jim

I've never experienced anything like that, but I'm sorry you're going through it.

There could be quite a bit of things in there that would cause problems for a susceptible person. Since it is a known occurrence for you, you might consider wearing a mask from now on when messing with the chips. If it keeps up, I'd at least do a video appointment with a nurse practitioner if that is available to you, or ask your PC if he or she wants to see you.

j

Jae Gruenke wrote:I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm feeling ill from mold toxins or something like that after spending a couple of hours last night shoveling wood chips out onto my land. I always sneeze and cough a bit when moving wood chips around, but this is another level.

The chips are from a linden tree my neighbor took out of his back yard. The pile has been sitting around on our patio for a couple of weeks, and the wood may have been sitting around a couple of weeks before being chipped.

Here's what happened: I shoveled, wheelbarrowed, and crawled around on hands and knees spreading the stuff until well after dark. When I came in, I blew my nose a couple of times and the snot was brown, and I ended up wiping my nose out for surprisingly long until the tissues were no longer brown. (Sorry for the gorey detail.) I could tell I had it in my lungs too, and I was coughing a bit and figured it would probably take a couple of days to work itself out. Otherwise I felt 100% fine.

But then during the night I woke up with a high fever--not sure exactly what it was, but I felt hot and freezing at the same time and was shaking, so I knew it was bad. It gradually improved but now, in early afternoon the following day, I'm still feverish and crushingly exhausted.

I would think I had just come down with something, but this same exact thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and although I can't be 100% sure, I think it was the night after shoveling the wood chips from the trailer to the patio. I recovered pretty quickly--much better the following day, though it took a few days to get back to normal.

So I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced anything like this. Am I crazy or could this be a toxin issue rather than a bug? Unfortunately we still have more wood chips piled on the patio, so if that's what made me ill, I'm going to have to work out how to deal with them safely.