jason holdstock

Many say they would love a bit more land to be more self sufficient, maybe 5 acres and up?

If you lived in an area where everyone had 5 acres, would walking and cycling everywhere be possible since everything would have to be spread out?

So does individual land ownership push you towards vehicle ownership?

I bought a land cruiser for work in about 2007. 4cyl diesel in the UK. At the time I found a survey produced by maybe the Thai government. (?) that ranked my car at about 76th most whole life cost cheapest in their list. I was surprised to see a Prius at about 73rd. The winner was a basic 4.0l Jeep Wrangler, because although not the most fuel efficient, it was simple to make from relatively few materials, so recycling was more possible too.
If I bought a new car in Europe today it is loaded with electric stuff I do not want or need, lights and beeps to distract, all adding complexity, weight and cost. A warning light will be a fail at the annual inspection, Dealer required, simple cheap fixes are not in their vocabulary.

Why aren't there small efficient light simple cheap vehicles being made?

More recently I had another landcruiser so I could tow stuff from town, and to not be stranded in the winter in Scotland as the roads didn't exactly get maintained. The 4x4 was essential, but it turned out that most shops would deliver for pretty much free. Now in France, we have a Jazz, we're trying to see if we can get by with something so small (although for the size of it the inside is huge!). Big stuff again seems to be delivered for free if you shop around, or hiring a van for a few hours from that same sort of shop is easy and cheap.

If a CRV had been available near me I would have bought it, but went with a Honda Jazz/Fit instead. Maybe a 4x4, or 2CV, will follow later.

Be aware that the all wheel drive system of Crvs varies with year, so some engage an electric drive once the wheels have started spinning, all as far as I remember. A Toyota Rav 4 has a more "proper" 4x4 system, tho older crvs may too?

You don't need to look far to discover folks looking for a replacement battery for their eV realising the manufacturer just isn't interested and theyre stuck. The Prius maybe an exception to that because of how many there are and how long they've been sold for. Personally I aim to be EV free.

Thank you for the replies.

If I leave the paths as just bark chip mulch then for any given rainfall the area closest to the inlet will always benefit first, maybe sucking up all the water delivered from the nearby roof.

A third of an acre would perhaps have twelve raised beds 50m long, (maybe subdivided).

I think I would need french drains laid to zero fall to try to get the water from the one or two delivery points to make its way as evenly and equally around the whole system as possible. I want it to stay under the beds, not get stuck at the beginning or pool at the outlet.

A filter at the outlet was in place in the examples I saw here a while back, but that got blocked with the chip, needed clearing, and then all that material needed putting back where it washed away from.

You could think of what I'm trying to do as put swales between the raised beds, I'm just putting a lid on them, topped with wood chip to keep the path usable when soaked and not too far below the working surface of the raised bed.

Shallow paths of woody debris have no means of storing a lot of excess water, and if there is excess the debris floats off and blocks outlets etc as other folks here have documented. If there is a small amount of surface water on the path then it becomes less useful as a path. I could build the paths to a fall but then even less will soak in where I want it.

I may be being daft but I like the idea of storing rainwater where it's needed and then used passively, with minimal evaporation, but I'd have to build the french drains before forming the raised beds.

Paving slab cost would be huge unless I find some super cheap or free so that's a no no.

Maybe I could bury scaffold boards over a small ditch under the bark mulch though? How long does treated timber last if you bury it I wonder?

I used to live next to a field in SE UK which had wood filled drainage from many many years ago which gave a lovely undulation to the grazing. Maybe a 6' wide 1' dip every 18' running one side to the other.

I would rather not use plastic but I don't think putting branches in a relatively shallow trench and then stone or wood chip on top would give a good and safe path? It the trench was much deeper, much more depth of compacted branches with much more fill on top then maybe, but I'm not trying to drain, I'm trying to store where it's directly within reach, and undercover from the sun. A shallow fill would work away from a path, but I don't think directly under it would.

Unless I covered it with something solid like paving slabs but the cost of that would be silly. Although then they could be just covering a ditch with no plastic, no stone, no branches so maybe overall cost might not be silly, I'll have to look into that :)

Further away than the outbuilding is another building and a pond fed from next doors roof, so piping all that lot into the system might be on the cards too. The pond has no overflow, doesn't overflow but is 100% full at one point in the year normally I'm told, but almost dry about now so some work needed there as well. There's quite a bit of excess water soaking away somewhere I could make use of.

Mine spun items are from Netherton Foundry in the UK and are well made.

The frying pan has wooden handles that I unscrewed early on and have not put back. Not needed so far.

It does heat up more quickly but my heavier normal thick old pan might take twice as long, can take more energy more easily to do so (getting heat up the sides of both takes patience) but that's fine.

Bacon and eggs in the spun works well. Steak is always done on the heavier one, which also gets chillis, curries, stews maybe, partly just because it's my bigger pan, partly for the better heat retention.

I think that if you are used to and like heavy cast iron you may not like spun apart from the lightness, they don't work the same but I think still better than non-stick etc. That's why I started off with one small pan to see how I got on.

My spun pan at 8" is 850g 30oz with no lid or wooden handle sections. Netherton said their 8" lid is half that again, the 10" is 1.2kg 42oz alone and 2.02kg 71oz with lid. The 2lb loaf tin works as well as any I've had before, though a bit wider, and is 1200g 42 oz. All weights approx.

I also got a small saucepan with lid from them but found using and cleaning it a pain. I need to make more effort to learn how to!

Cleaning the fry pan is with hot water and a piece of chainmail, reseasoning is usually butter, sometimes stove top sometimes in the oven.

I maybe should have bought an 8" lid too.

Thank you for the replies :)

I have some lazy beds here with ditches that I cleared out and the ground is now much firmer. I now sink 2" not 2' ;)

I was thinking that my proposed raised beds would actually not be very raised if I filled with bark almost up to the growing bed level. So although the water level may be a long way down compared to root depth, the moisture in the growing bed would be maintained to a greater height? And the path stays firm underfoot, not a stream.

It is possible I could put a water catchment tank inside the outbuilding even, and I do have some drip line already. I was thinking my french drain idea would be working all the time with no input. Then I could use drip line on newly planted growth or as required, rather than a full time daily maintained system.

Currently rainwater is just lost into the ground around this particular outbuilding, and the 1/3rd of an acre next to it I could use for veggies on raised beds gets a bit dry.

So I thought I could use the pathways between the beds as a covered water store, with the french drain pipework to help the rainwater get from the end with the building to flow more evenly around the whole area, rather than just the building end getting most of it.

If I dig the paths out to the same level first then I think the water should spread fairly evenly around the pipe network.

The lowest corner can have a sump with an overflow.

What it might end up doing though is to lower the water table within the raised beds.

I could instead source a big catchment tank placed at the building and run that into drip feeder hose, but that's a big ugly lump of plastic most likely.