Henk Lenting

Gary Numan wrote:OP:

Your wife said don't kill the mice.  Has that stance softened upon hearing mice make decent chicken food?

well... sometimes don't ask don't tell does work, or it's better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission ;)

This seems like a good place for my question, I just hope it's the right forum.

I currently have some mice living in places I don't want them: my garage and my house (as opposed to the mice in the places around my garden where I gladly let them be). I'm starting to be succesfull in catching them with some no-kill traps (as my wife demands).

Now I've read that releasing a mouse into the wild will result in something like a 90% chance of the mouse dying anyway. So if the mouse will likely die, I'd rather put it to good use as some homegrown protein for my chickens.

Here's the question though: how would you kill some mice in order to feed them to your chickens?

Phil Stevens wrote:I cannot think of a reason not to compost it...it's good biomass, after all.

A rule I can totally live by!

I live in The Netherlands though, Privet isn't invasive here but rather quite common.

It does take a while to break down and may not compost very well in small "home-composters" of like 200 liters. Maybe that's what they were going on about.

I have a large privet hedge on my property that needs regular trimming, and I've been composting piles and piles of those trimmings.

However, a local government pamflet said that you cannot compost Ligustrum trimmings. When I enquired, they couldn't tell me why.

Can anyone tell me if/why I maybe shouldn't compost them? There are never berries in these trimmings by the way.

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Very apt.

Can you clarify what's in the "chasm"?  I see a shark...and not a tiny one.  But I'm assuming there's something that does get across that chasm, and some clarity about what's actually going on there?  

Henk Lenting wrote:Seems to me that you need to apply some "diffusion of innovation" theory, where each fase needs specific kinds of communication


(Not my picture)

Most information out there now is aimed at the very first and maybe the second fase of innovation. You'll never reach masses with only communications like that.

The chasm is a scary thing indeed! Most innovations don't manage to ever cross it because the people behind them stay in the patterns they're used to from the first stages. To get to the masses, I think the RMH has to be presented as something that fits in everyone's life. The people who currently build them are those with alternative lifestyles, who like being different. We need the people who just want heat in their home to build one. Maybe those who have been using pellet stoves, who can't source them at a reasonable price now (at least in Europe this is a problem people are facing right now) Maybe other people facing rising energy prices. Maybe....

The thing is, a lot of details about what to do and what not to do may discourage these people from getting into RMHs. To entice straightforward people, straightforward instructions may work much better, presenting it as a sure thing. With all due respect, I think Paul might be stuck in a pattern of thinking that only works for people who want to be at the forefront of innovation.

In this day and age the best thing might be some mainstream influencers staying in Airbnb's with a RMH, and raving about how easy and cosy their experience was.

I don't have the answers and I'm definitely not an expert either, just hoping to provide some fresh point of view.

Seems to me that you need to apply some "diffusion of innovation" theory, where each fase needs specific kinds of communication


(Not my picture)

Most information out there now is aimed at the very first and maybe the second fase of innovation. You'll never reach masses with only communications like that.

So, I feel kinda foolish
The weather here has been really dry this summer, and I have watered a bit to compensate
When I went to plant some fall crop last week, I found out that my soil had just completely and utterly dried out. No wonder my squash plants weren't producing well!
I would have expected them to start hanging or browning when they don't get enough moisture, but now I've learned that that's not the case

Oh well, live and learn

Thanks anyway for the helpfull suggestions here

I'm still relatively new to gardening, and I'd like your opinion on a problem I'm seeing right now.

I love zucchini and other squash so I planted loads in my no dig beds, and some overflow of pumpkin wherever I had a place that seemed suitable. Now my squash plants are all staying tiny and producing just very little. The plants outside my established beds are producing more like I would expect from previous years, putting on healthy growth.

Am I dealing with persistent herbicides that made it into my compost on fruit peelings like pineapple skin? Or is there something else going on because I'm planting squash in a bed where I also had squash last year? (Along with other plants) Or something I haven't thought of?

Sorry, no pictures. I haven't figured out how to do that here yet.

Amy Gardener wrote:This may sound unusual but I've met some wonderful teachers at living history museums. ... I did a search on living history museums in the Netherlands and found Nederlands Openluchtmuseum. I'd love to check that open air museum out!

That's a great idea! There is even a smallish pretty local open air living history museum here that I've been meaning to visit, definitely need to do that now!

I hope many of you reading this text see benefits in the way things used to be done before our disconnected supermarket culture set in. There is a generation of people still living who grew up that way. Growing most of your food, canning, scything and grinding your own grain are just some examples that I'm already looking into online. But I feel some of those things would work so much better with some live coaching, knowledge from actual experience and also very local knowledge of what works.

YouTube and other sources are brilliant, but for me here in Europe, a lot of resources Americans talk about don't easily translate into stuff that can be found here. And of course the climate that YouTuber is talking out of is very different, and local traditions are often formed in a specific way because of hundreds of years of experience.

Now my question: do you have any ideas on how to get in touch with people willing to share the knowledge I'm hungry for?

Most people around here pretty much keep to themselves, as is probably the case with a lot of old farming / rural communities. And I'm also not the kind of guy who'll walk up to someone and start a conversation about this stuff. I may already know the very people I'm theoretically looking for here, as I know plenty of older people, but how do I get past the basic "nice weather" / "nice sermon" / "how are you? Good" kind of conversation and get to scything and peening and gardening and....

Writing this, the answer may be just bringing it up. But if you have any other Ideas on how to find mentors / like-minded people locally, please write something below.