Mark Reed

I sometimes sell black locust bark on eBay. It's useful in various crafts like making natural looking bird houses. It is excellent for growing mounted orchids as the rough surface is perfect for their roots to hold on to, and it lasts or years.  When I cut a big tree I run the saw lengthwise, just through the bark before chunking it up. By time it seasons good, the bark easily removes in a solid piece. Other types of bark just get composted, used in paths or burned.  

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:

...but we do get lots of tasty leaves, bloom stems and stalks. Harvested at the right time the stalks are very good.

Can you please describe when is the right time? How do they look?

I think it's mostly weather/maturity related. Large stalks stay good as long as the weather is cooler and there is plenty of moisture. By July seeds are starting to mature, and the stalks start getting tough and don't taste as good. The smaller branches of the seed stalks are a bit like asparagus in that if you just bend them, they break at just the right spot. Bigger stalks are good sliced into coins about 1/2 inch thick, sauteed in butter or olive oil. As they mature more the skin starts getting tough and stringy, but they aren't hard to peel.  You can harvest a lot and over a several weeks just make sure to leave enough for seed.

If you ever enjoyed eating the core of a cabbage head, you would probably like the big stalks. They are fantastic grilled.

Sometimes a plant grows lots little brussel sprout like things except they are very loose but they sure are good. Same when one grows what looks like a head of cabbage but also very loose. You can harvest the cabbage looking ones and the plant blooms anyway, you can harvest as many of the brussel sprout ones as you want and it just grows more. The all grow flower clusters, like very loose broccoli.

I don't remember how many kinds I originally planted but I'm pretty sure most all that survived the first winter were cabbage and brussels sprouts and maybe some broccoli. No collards or cauliflowers lived. O' and kale, lots of it lived but I don't let bloom much. Kale was already plenty hardy here and we don't like it as much and I don't what my new vegetable to be overwhelmed with it.

I originally thought I would like the seed pods, but they are not good as they are usually tough and stringy. Mustard, turnip and especially radish pods are very good.

I quit growing cabbage, broccoli and similar crops in a traditional way. I got seed of as many different things as possible and planted them in fall. Got some little harvest of leaves before winter and those that survived winter grew very well early the next season, before the bugs arrived. I kept at it, letting them all cross and replanting each fall until they just went kind of wild. I don't get cabbage heads or broccoli or Brussels sprouts, but we do get lots of tasty leaves, bloom stems and stalks. Harvested at the right time the stalks are very good.
The cabbage flies and worms don't arrive until later in the season and by then the temperatures are hotter and the flavor and tenderness of the stalks and leaves is declining anyway. At that point as long as the worms don't completely kill the pants and prevent seeds, I'm ok withe them eating the leaves. Swarms of the little butterflies are quite pretty and great pollinators of any anything else in bloom.

I select mostly for flavorful, tender stalks. I call it broccolish.

Sounds like you did a pretty good job collecting and drying them. It is fine to seal them up in something once they are dry. Glass is great but I often use hard plastic bottles of various types saved from the trash. My favorite for long storage is those stainless-steel water bottles or canisters often seen on shelves at flea markets, get the ones without the sipping spout and with a rubber O-ring intact if possible. They are lighter and more durable than glass.

20 F as a morning low isn't much of a concern for me but this storm has potential for a few days of 20 F or lower as the daytime high and that does get my attention because it may come with sub-zero lows.  I may be blocking off the upstairs from the heat entirely; I don't mind sleeping in the cold and better to keep the living area comfortable. Already brought in more than the normal amount of firewood and completely restocked the supply under cover on the porch so I don't have to go out to the big stack in the snow.  

I actually like winter, but I have limits. Our forecast is calling for some days with highs in the low teens. That could mean lows in the minus teens and that is outside my limits of what's enjoyable. The bad ice and power outages are projected to stay south of us, I hope so, but you never know.

I'm definitely not the one judge a permaculture project but do I have a couple of questions. Curious because I'm all about water and growing stuff in water and things that live in water and playing in water.  

Pool conversion? Do you mean you are converting the existing pool into a more natural one? As in plants and fish living in it as well as recreation? Went back and watched closer, it is going to be a natural pool! You mentioned wildlife quite a bit. Do that with that pool and I imagine you'll have lots of wildlife moving in.

What exactly is the aquaculture shed and why does it cost so much? In my mind it would be something mostly to protect from freezing in winter but sounds like that may not be an issue for you.

We are interested, not so much in the work for hire offer, although it seems, on a temporary basis to fit nicely with our hobby of cultural exchange. Importantly however before we can commit, does your location offer docking facilities for a small craft? Specifically, a circular area by your measure of approximately ten square miles and that can tolerate full suspension of planetary gravity for the duration of our visit. Objects and entities not firmly attached including atmosphere may drift unpredictably and at extreme velocity or even, if an upward force is applied, ejected into space. It is strongly advised that entities of any sort not enter the area without proper tethering, which we will provide on request and free of commercial contract.  Alternately it is possible to reduce the suspension of gravity to intervals of .000000008772 of your minutes but just on arrival and departure.  In this second option a smaller area of 1.00082 of your miles square will be significantly heated and compressed with all life extinguished. Some entities we visit prefer the second option, despite its setbacks, because and if the proper chemical components exist the area is converted on departure to solid diamond which they seem to regard as pretty. We plan to be sightseeing in your area for a while longer. If you would like to discuss further and if we have moved out of range of your communication devise, just give us a holler with your magic thumb.

Here, in the 1960s and I guess before, everybody had lots of chickens. They were not penned up at all. They were not fed much at all except in winter when they got some cracked corn in the morning and maybe a little more as they came back to the coop at night. Coyotes, foxes and bobcats were almost totally absent back then because they were shot or trapped to near regional extinction.  If one was spotted, every boy much over 8 years old was handed a rifle and put on patrol. Owls and hawks were very rare for the same reason and more so because of DDT. The coop was closed up at night against minks and weasels, which I guess were harder to eliminate.

I do mean lots of chickens. Baked chicken, fried chicken, stewed chicken was on the table at least once a week, all year along with the occasional turkey or goose. When mom said, you kids go get me a chicken for supper she did not mean, go the store.  Eggs were on the menu one way or another almost every day. I don't remember what happened to excess eggs, maybe some were sold or given away or traded.

I don't remember much worry over breeds, but I do remember some breed names.  Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds and bantams just lived together.  They were just identified by body type. A big fat chicken to bake, a skinny one or an extra rooster to fry, an old fat one to stew.  Roosters were commonly traded between families or farms. Broody hens were identified each spring and locked in their own little coops with a bunch of eggs, she and her brood were fed until they were big enough to be turned loose with the others, but I don't remember what. I think the type of chicken that dominated a flock was controlled by what roosters were chosen to keep living but there was always a big variety.

I think what I remember was about the last of it. DDT was banned and by the 1970s many farms were abandoned and especially in more hilly areas land was left to begin reforestation. I guess people didn't need their chickens anymore or their vegetable gardens, it was easier and more stylish to work in a factory. All the predators began to rebound.  Now, if you tried to keep chickens that way, you would soon have no chickens.

A couple of years ago it dropped from 65 degrees in early afternoon to - 14 degrees the next morning. Freaked me out. The last one a couple days ago was from about 50 degrees to zero in about the same time. Similar but less extreme things have been happening over the last several years, its spooky.