tuffy monteverdi

carla murphy wrote:Really like soda cans cut into 3/4" strips for my plant markers.  Tried the 'embossed' method using ball point pen to emboss the name.  Great for longevity, not so great for being able to read it from standing height.  Now I use a grease pencil/china marker/wax pencil.  Lasts many seasons....I'm on 5 or 6 years? without fading.  Score!  Since I tend to plant the same things year after year, I save the plant markers and use them again and again.  I keep them stored in a 6pack starter tray.  Alliums, Greens, Brassicas, Herbs, Peas & Beans, Peppers & Eggplant...you get the idea.  I can write the specific variety on each marker and find it again next year.

Really?! Does the regular China marker (any color?) last through both heavy rains and high heat?

Brenda Groth wrote:i bought zinc labels from wayside garden in the spring, i got several packages and they are going to be enough to last me a very long time..they are permanent..they come with a oil based pencil but i bought a paint marker..

they are a long double looped wire with two holes in the labels that slide down the wires..

go to  www.waysidegardens.com

That is very cool! Thank you!
Now to find something to mark them that won’t fade! Sharpies are out, even black ones. They fade.

Embossing would be great. Especially if it could be melted over a bit when I need to change the info!

The Berkeley Method - Buy a used booklet on it or google it. Geoff Lawton has a great video along with visuals too.  

Done well, it’s great compost in 18-21 days, with pretty much *zero loss of volume*. (I’ve never done one in 18, personally, but folks who are more experts than I, have).

That’s the ‘ultimate method’ for fast compost, in my experience.
Nuff said.

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:>Who can help explain the differences an similarities of soap to this poor fool?

There is no difference between liquid and bar soap chemically - you can dry liquid soap to get a bar of the same material.  The difference is the water content.

That said, if you make your own soap, do not use it for a month.  It should be left to continue its saponification reaction.  If you have the ingredients balanced (caustic soda and fat or oil - it will be pH neutral.  I have made cold process soap using several different vegetable oils: corn oil, coconut oil, sunflower cooking oil - anything will do.

Hot process (like lye soap made in pioneer days) uses less total lye and the heat and stirring is the reason.  Essentially it causes the reaction to happen more completely in a shorter time.  The soap produced still has to be dried for a long time, like a month. During this time, the bar will become harder and harder.  After a certain wait, you can place the bar in a soap press of any shape to impress a name or picture on it. That pressing is not done on day 1.  It has to dry a bit first. An example of this is Palmolive soap which has a well rounded shape and the name impressed into it. This is done after a period of drying. At the same time the smooth shiny surface is produced.

Missionaries to Nigeria taught people to use wood ash directly in the soap making process.   They did not attempt to collect a concentrate as in pioneer days. This is still produced to this day and it is called (in West Africa) "Nigerian Soap".  It is sold in balls or bars and it is black!  The oil is heated and the wood ash dumped in directly.  Then it is cooked for a while. The amount of ash to add depends on the alkalinity produced by the input materials.  The result is ash-y, black and works well enough.  In Ghana they make a local soap sold in grapefruit sized balls called "Don't touch me".  It is make with deliberately high caustic soda content.  It will remove any stain including the cloth if you really want.  It cannot be used without gloves.  If you have some, you can melt it in a pan, add oil and it will turn into ordinary pH balanced soap.

Most soap is not actually pH balanced, though Pears (transparent orange bars) is carefully balanced for hyper-allergic skin. You can use a pH test strip from Amazon to test the result of your efforts - make soapy water and put in the strip. It is usually alkaline (pH >7.0).

Thank you for this neato information!

I really do prefer bar soap - (nothing artificial though).
I would love to learn how to make it.
I’m a bit intimidated though, not only because of the caustic liquids, but also because I would be using sheep tallow and we have hard water. We have ashes from the Rocket Heater.
Im still searching for a recipe that works with all of these ingredients to produce a bar of soap that doesn’t feel greasy in the end and lasts as long as some others I’ve used - a long time!

I think it’s nice, kind, and polite, to just simply explain to folks who might be confused.

E.g. perhaps:
Steve, it’s a public site only, run by volunteers and supported only by some reader contributions and sales of mostly owner-administrator-made permaculture-related merchandise.
There is no capability or capacity for private conversations, sorry.
Further: the owners & administrators want you to only speak English. It is the language they speak, and their language of choice.

I would imagine (but not being an administrator, I don’t know for sure) that you could post in your own language IF you *also* *always* provide the English translation on the same post 😊

Looking forward to learning about what you contribute!

Go to bed early / at same time each day
Get up in morning and go outside immediately each day
Exercise - at least a walk every day, if not farm-related
Cut out sugars and all refined foods
Don’t overeat
Drink clean or filtered water
Interact with ones animals in real ways
Pursue a bit on one's goals each day
Creative meditation daily, be that gardening, walking, sitting, shelling nuts, or napping.

These are all positive spoons that take no spoons away and provide more spoons for the future.

r ransom wrote:I suck at salads.  I can never get the dressing right.

What I need is a really simple recipe I can add to depending on my mood.  REALLY simple!  Like Idiot proof simple.  

And delicious.  The dressing has to be yummy too.

Does anyone have a fantastic dressing recipe that is so easy even I can make it?  

Well I dislike vinegar, and it doesn’t like me, so I use fresh lemon, which I love, but sub vinegar if you prefer it.

For a plain, basic, fool-proof dressing ratio:
use 1 part lemon juice to 3 parts olive oil. Salt. Pepper. Mix well.

To make it more delicious, or for certain veggie types in the salad, you add things you like:

Lemon zest of the lemon you used for juice
Minced shallots and garlic
Mustard
Chili flakes
Finely chopped herbs: oregano/dill/parsely/thyme/
Sesame tahini
Miso
Tamari sauce

For a milkier dressing blend in either avocado or a little buttermilk.

Add an egg yolk, grated Parmesan, and minced anchovy if you want an opaque, Cesar-like dressing. Blend with a stick blender.

If you like sweetness in your savory foods, some folks add sugar or honey to any of these dressings.
(I dislike that and never do it, personally)

It can occur in large parts of wool fleeces, if bad, but occurs starting at the skin side and grows out from there.
Can certainly be patchy too.

Yes it really sounds like, from your stickiness descriptions, that this is a scurf-filled fleece. One can’t always see it, just looking at the fleece. It’s sometimes not as yellow as it can be. And again there are other reasons for yellowing that aren’t scurf-related.

Not worth your time as it will NOT come out. It won’t even felt that well 😬
You could compost it in veggie beds are under tree mulches?

Hal Schibel wrote:
In the end, I don't think that I actually got the water hot enough to properly clean the wool and the reason I think this is because the wool was still super sticky, but I didn't realize that until I started trying to spin it.

Really valuable journey, learning how wool works 😊

So many have given great suggestions.

My only question is, the “stickiness” you’re describing.
Lanolin isn’t really sticky. It’s more oily, and if a little remains in the wool, it only makes the wool feel better to work with over the long term. It’s lubricating for ones fingers..

Where stickiness sometimes shows up is in an individual sheep’s wool (it’s not by breed) when they have something which is known in layman’s terms as “scurf”.

Scurf is a fungal type skin condition and it usually affects one or two or a small number of animals in a flock - not usually the whole flock.

It’s not something that can be washed out.

And it’s sometimes difficult to tell before washing if it’s even there. Sometimes it shows up as a yellow color. But there are benign reasons for yellow coloring too, so that’s not a reliable indicator.

So for knitting, spinning, weaving. making clothing and so forth, wool with “scurf” in it, isn’t useable.

The wool can still be used for composting, insulation, etc though.

So I’m not sure if that is what you’re dealing with, but knowing this info is good anyway, on your wool experiences…

Here is a brief video I found on Scurf:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pR9X5Vsj4

I name my animals based on spending time with them and seeing what their personality and physicality brings up. The name has to embody some quality and fit who they are and what they bring.
No other considerations.