Harold Skania

So if I were to build one of these Automatic Backyard Food Pumps, I wouldn't need solar pumps or aquaponics gear, right? It looks like you usually set up a hugel to keep the ABFP moist for most of the summer?

I have fed dock seeds to my chickens and they really enjoyed it. I haven't made anything from the dock plant for people to use yet, but I understand that it is a medicinal plant.

The one time I tried to process acorns I let them soak to long and they grew mold. Have you been able to use the ones you processed?

I think Hugels are one way to add texture to the earth and grow food all year, right?

I just requested it from my library. That was fun; are their other good permaculture books to request? My library already has Paul's SKIP book.

That is a gorgeous RMH. I think it deserves to be in the list of beautiful rocket mass heaters.

That sounds like a job for a cottage rocket! It is built entirely inside a barrel. It's probably heavy still, but you could probably move it with a handtruck.

Sometimes when I want to go shopping I browse the library instead. It is just as much fun. But I don't have to spend any money.

There are several handbooks and resources for rigging ropes and cables for trailwork. I've heard of a skyline being set up in a state park to bring bucketloads of gravel down into a deep valley. They are often used to move big rocks or logs.

The US Forest Service wrote one handbook, Rigging for Trail Work

Trailism has a handbook published by the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. It comes with a spreadsheet for calculating loads and such. Have any permies set up rigging systems before?

Have you ever used a hay trolley? They used to be common in barns, where they hung from a rail in the rafters. Farmers would use them to pull hay up into the loft.



A friend once asked my brother and I to figure out how his hay trolley worked and set it up in his new barn. We looked at the tangle of rope, couldn't figure it out, and left it there. Now I know that we just needed to put it on the rail (our friend had already installed that) tie one end of the main rope to something, and then give it a try. Have any of you used one before?

I think that building brush dams, imitating beavers, could be a good idea at the right place on public land. Restore the water cycle and help trees grow healthy for decades to come. There is a story about this sort of thing in the Colorado watershed at a site called "Reasons to be Cheerful"

nonprofits, including the NFF, are looking to the river’s headwaters, using a strategy known as low-tech, process-based restoration, or LTPBR, to improve wetlands and riparian landscapes along smaller waterways that run into the Colorado River. By reinvigorating riverside habitat that has been lost, these areas can help hold water higher in the Colorado Basin watershed for longer — mitigating spring flooding and releasing water slowly through drier months — as well as yielding a host of benefits for the ecosystems along the way.