Austin Durant

Hey Ben,
Inspiring and well written intro!

I'm intrigued and have been pondering a trip to explore "up north". On my list so far is Wanosh forest gardens in Mendo and Mt Shasta.  I would love to see what you've got started too. Possibly 3rd/4th week of August for a few day visit.

Let me know if that timing works, we can exchange info by PM.

Thanks!
Austin

Neat! Thanks for taking us through the process! I tried a nuka pot once, didn't have instant success, so I gave up. I also don't have a ready source of rice bran as someone else's "waste" so I haven't dabbled since. With so many other ways to ferment, it's hard for me to justify this (other than the sheer love of the craft/novelty).  

Christopher Weeks wrote:Each time I start a new pot of nukadoku (so far, at least), I religiously put in the work to keep it living for 6-36 months and then let it die due to inattention. We'll see how this one goes. Keeping an active nuka-pot requires mixing it with your hand daily  -- twice is better and more or less required if you live somewhere hot. I don't, but I do have two reminders each day set to help me stir it. And you also have to keep cycling produce through the nukadoku to keep stimulating the mix of microbes with fresh colonists. And you have to manage the moisture and salt level -- adding rags or dried beans to take up too much water, adding water when it gets too dry, adding salt when your pickles start to seem not salty. And you have to consider the putrifaction impulse. As long as you're mixing it daily and moving produce through the matrix, this isn't much of a problem.

Sounds like it's more work than a sourdough starter!

I'd love if you'd be interested in writing a guest post on nukazuke on my website, fermentersclub.com, as I haven't covered this there yet.

Thanks!

Love the documentation of your journey, Ulla! I'd love to come check out your homestead to help inspire me for growing more in my tiny urban (North Park) yard!

I'm working on this very problem! However, I am coming at it from a different perspective. I am developing a prototype "full squat" composting toilet that leverages the Lovable Loo design.

The dimensions of such a toilet are ellipsoid (not circular). Here's a typical squat toilet model:



A hole of this shape would necessitate an elongated toilet seat and based on my rough calculations, an off-the-shelf seat would work.

I discovered that there are such things as oval plastic buckets with tight-fitting lids:

source
The catch is that I can't find anyone in the U.S. who carries them, so they would need to be ordered from overseas (unless and until someone manufactures them here and/or they otherwise become more widely available.)

With the oval bucket, an elongated toilet seat box would just need to be a few inches longer to Jenkins' Lovable Loo round bucket model.

I've got some design issues that still need to be worked out with the squatting part, but the other pieces fit together.

After prototyping, if I like how it works, I'd be willing to order a large amount of those buckets (5000 e.g.) A given family would only need say 4 of them and they look to be as durable as the round ones.

I have a small backyard flock (3 or 4 hens). I wanted to create something standard (non-proprietary) that uses the least amount of plastic but is larger than a quart jar, because I have to change that quite frequently.

I found a CAD design for 3D printers for a chicken waterer that uses a wide mouth jar (which can accomodate a half-gallon jar, moving in the right direction). I asked that designer to create one that could accommodate a gallon-sized jar with 110-400 threads. He generously did it! His open-source designs are here.

As I was test printing a prototype, I printed only the "collar" portion of the design that attaches to the jar rather than the whole integrated collar/tray. Eureka! The collar by itself is thick and sturdy enough to hold an inverted glass jar without the plastic tray, and I just set it on a terra cotta planter tray. Less plastic, water touches mostly safer materials (clay and glass!) And you can use off the shelf parts (i.e. a standard mason jar or gallon jar, plus planter tray).

Some usability concerns:
- Jar only sits on the tray through its own weight, so if you have ornery chickens, they could knock it over and cause a mess.
- Weight of a gallon of water in a glass jar plus a clay saucer is around 12 lbs. which requires some muscle, and can be tricky to hold and invert (a minimal amount will spill). The Half gallon is probably around 6-7 lbs.

Perhaps I will add tabs to the collar to make it more sturdy.

Thoughts/feedback on the design? Would you use this setup?

OMG plasmoid tech, yes! Who have you been studying here-- Bendall & Alchemical Science? Dan Winter? Clif High? Joe Cell? Others? Always looking to learn more here. It's definitely high on my list to get some land where I can tinker with this in relative privacy!

I attended this lecture about the commercial truffle industry.
Good introduction to the various culinary truffles, false truffles, which tree species are good to grow truffles under, basic cultivation techniques, etc.

Also, there's an organization called North American truffle Growers Association if you wanna really get into it! (https://trufflegrowers.com/)

I attended this lecture yesterday, where the researcher advises using electroculture when raising truffles. No explanation as to why in this video, but it got me thinking about a possible connection between lightning and electroculture, that maybe the fungi have an affinity for electrical charge.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BojHVGVB7uk&t=3616

Looking good! Happy to see you keeping the fermentation tradition alive! Sexy jar, too!

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:Paul apparently hates sauerkraut, but he thinks my fermented cabbage is delicious...! Well, so do I.

That's what they all say, until they try the real stuff.

That animated gif of the step by step RMH build is brilliant and utterly mesmerizing. I could watch it for hours. Great job!