Nancy Reading

Mike Barkley wrote:My sister gave me her old electric clippers about 10 years ago. Very simple to use, for short haired males anyway. Zip zip zip ten minutes & done. Just now calculated $2,500 saved. Kaching.

When we moved up here a long long way from hairdressers I invested £5 in some electric clippers from a tabletop sale and started cutting mine and my husband's hair. It's a lot easier to do his since I can see what I'm doing. Mine ususally ends up OK as long as I select the right comb. I picked a too short one last time and ended up a bit draughty! still it's growing out again now

I let him cut my hair only once.

On a slight tangent we had a similar thread a while ago looking at ways of storing the excess energy in embedded energy of goods - like making bricks or other manufactured items see https://permies.com/t/209079/Manufacturing-energy-storage-brainstorm for some more ideas.

Pearl Sutton wrote:I tend to make kids sing me a song before I give them candy. Don't care what song, but you have to sing.

Guising is definitely part of the Scottish tradition for halloween.

Several folks have mentioned popcorn balls. Tell me more?

Run a compressor and store extra compressed gas.
Pump water uphill to use for microhydro later

Welcome to permies Ben.

Ben Foster wrote:- Sort debris as you go. Keep clean brush and wood separate from mixed junk (old fencing, tires, whatever's been hiding in there). Loads that are mostly wood and brush are much cheaper to dispose of than mixed loads.

Sorting it is probably a good idea if you do have rubbish mixed in there. I would think few permies would want to get rid of good biomass material though - hugels or biochar would be my first thought if I had excess wood!

Another thought - One thing that is worth doing sooner rather than later is collecting plants and starting seeds. If you have an idea what you want to grow - particularly pereniial vegetables. It will be far cheaper to grow from seed than to buy a whole load of plants. Even if only one comes up, you're probably quids in! Grow them in pots or a nursery bed and transplant to permanent places as your garden develops.

Ellen Morrow wrote:What do we miss when the lights go out?  Heat, light, flush toilets?  We never planned to go off-grid, but bit by bit it is creeping up on us.  I just don't like that "What do we do?" feeling when the power fails.  Sooo...

We heat with wood.  When the power goes off, we have oil lamps for light, and a bucket or the bushes can serve for bathroom needs.  We've learned to filter water and keep extra on hand for these emergencies.  We aren't there yet, just working on it.

Off grid is something we're creeping towards too. We did plan it a bit - our stove burns wood and works without electric power. That heats our hot water too. Water is 'hill water' and fed by gravity, so power independant. flush toilets to sceptic tank flow by gravity. Gravity is my friend

We're in the process of purchasing a little solar/battery system that hopefully will give our store resilience in a power outage, at least for a while. If it works well something similar could be another step to off grid at home too. We pay so much money per day just to be connected, that going off grid will soon make financial sense. Ideally we'll need a microhydro or wind generator too for winter power. That will be easier to achieve at home that at the shop.

Last year I harvested and dried some silverweed roots. Since it is coming up to harvest season again, I decided now was the time to have a play experiment with the dried roots.
I decided to try grinding the roots into flour and see what I could do with that. I first tried crushing the dried roots with the end of my wooden rolling pin, but they are much too hard. Maybe a heavy stone mortar or quernstone might work. I have a manual coffee grinder which I then thought would be the best thing I have to grind the roots with, and that seemed to work well.

silverweed roots in coffee grinder

It took a little while to get the settings right on the grinder as this was the first time I used it. Every so often a lump of root would come through unground and I had to put it through again. But eventually I had a small amount of fine flour.

fine flour from silverweed roots

There wasn't enough to do much baking with, so I decided to try and make pancakes. I added half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, a tablespoon of honey, and mixed in enough yoghurt to make a stiff batter. I had trouble with the mixture sticking to the griddle, but succeeded in making some palatable, but messy pancakes (or bannock!)

silverweed bannocks

Since I was struggling so much I decided to try baking the remaining batter. I portioned it into a shallow jam tart tray and baked it in the oven for about 20 minutes. I think the over may have been a bit hot, as the cakes browned on the outside, but were still sticky in the centre.

sticky centre to silverweed cakes

I moved the tray down to a cooler spot and gave them another 15 minutes and they were much better cooked.

So I suspect that a bit of fat would make the batter cook better without sticking. The flour didn't seem to be as fine as corn (maize) flour - it mixed up without that thixotropic stage that you get (although maybe the yoghut affected that?) The baked cakes were fairly tough on the outside but spongy inside, so I think adjusting the temperature would help a lot there. They tasted fine though and after a few days they are just a little stale - OK with jam!

I think I'd like to try it with butter or other fat to make a pastry next time, also to use some as a thickener for sauce or stew.