R. Ford

If I get extra ricotta, I always try to make cannoli. Mix the ricotta with powdered sugar and orange zest, with a little bit of vanilla extract. It makes a wonderful filling.

Using the left over heat to dry wood is an interesting idea, but i believe it will be much too difficult to manage if he is making any type of dimensional lumber. Kilns have precise temperature control needs and schedules. Depending on thickness of wood, you could be talking 5 days or up to 8 weeks. Dry the wood too fast and it cups, warps, and splits. Too quickly and mold and fungi become your main issues. Air drying skips most of that worry. If you decide to give it a try, let us know how the project turns out!

Just tossing it out there to you or anyone else. If anyone would like some panels like these sent to them, or even in different thicknesses of plywood (These are 1/4" but I have 1/2" and 3/4" as well) I will gladly send them to them for the cost of shipping to help some fellow permies out. Same goes for 1x4,6,and 8 scraps of kiln dried pine boards. No treatment other than heat.

When i lived in the South Carolina low country, I would eat a single match head every day starting in late march or early April, all the way through thanksgiving. The mosquitos down there drink deet like sailors drink rum, but they wouldn't even land on me. A friend had told me that that is what they did in vietnam, because every MRE came with a pack of matches. I'm sure i was ingesting some nasty extra chemicals as well, but i weighed it against a hundred mosquito bites a day, and happily poisoned myself.  

Concrete cisterns are still very much in use in the mountains of NC. My grandfather's spring fed cistern (built by my great great grandfather) was the only clean water on his little road (9 houses in a holler) for over a week after Helene came through. When it was built it fed 4 houses and a church. Today, the church has been converted to a house, but it still feeds 3 houses, including one newer one and that church house. I also used to run a summer camp that had a giant concrete cistern that fed the whole camp. It was fed by two large deep wells and served a camp of 400 kids plus staff. I can't remember how many gallons it was, but it had an 8" line coming out of it and it was approximately 80 feet in elevation above the highest point of use.

Well explained by Michael. A closed loop system designed like that would only run for a very short amount of time. Even if you were trying to pump water from a flowing creek up a hill with a ram pump to run a turbine, you would have much better efficiency to use all of the water flowing in the creek to turn the turbine and transmit the power uphill. Ram pumps lift around 20% of the water that flows in to them (best case scenario).

My bins don't smell bad, but they are outside and i will put anything in them. Chicken carcasses, squirrel and deer offal, spoiled meat, etc. If you wanted to give it a try indoors, just get a geriatric potty seat that would normally sit over a toilet, and put a tote or bin in your bathroom and give it a shot. You'll know soon how bad the smell is. As for harvesting, this will depend heavily on where your bin is located within the house, but in general, mine are self harvesting. They climb up a ramp in the bin and ride down a shoot made of 1 1/2" PVC pipe to a collection bucket. You could do this easily if your bin is at least 18 inches tall like a normal Rubbermaid tote, just make your ramp up to the top of it, and then the shoot would run to a collecting container at floor level. They can't climb very well as long as the bin is dry. I think normal house temps would be just fine, as long as you aren't keeping it like an ice box. While mid 80's is optimal temperature, they will breed down to 70 (or so says the mighty google). As far as cleanout goes, I would just take a portion of the bin when it gets full and remove it to your compost pile. If some grubs come along for the ride, so be it. Spread the remainder out in the bin, and keep going.

I think this is feasible, but I would look at it like a two part system. One breeding "egg gathering" containment, and then the actual larvae feeding feces container. Use banded together corrugated cardboard to continue to gather eggs and place them in the bin, harvest a handful of larvae after they pupate and put them into the "egg gathering" area to hatch, breed, and make more eggs. With how much they eat, I would guess that a 30 gallon tote would be about the size needed for 4 people, but you may have to do a little reading up on that and adjust. I know when my bins are full and rocking in the summer time, they can really go through some material. One thing to try to figure out would be the smell though. BSF larvae don't really care for sawdust or other woody materials that are traditionally used to cover and dry out feces. Maybe some dried coffee grounds would act similar and also help cover the stench, but that would also contribute to your food load on the maggots. Depending on size that could be good or bad, but it would be something most would need to source in that quantity. If you give it a go, keep us informed!

Tractor supply used to carry a brand called CE Schmidt that were a duct material similar to Carhartt. In 2015 they were about 12 dollars a pair and I could wear 5 pairs a week (one pair per work day) for 2 years before they wore the crotch out and had to be retired to "working around the house" pants. I'm very hard on pants, and haven't found anything near that price point that would last more than a few months. As a funny side note, my dad told me i need to find a vintage 1970's pair of Tuffskin Jeans. He said they were so stiff denim that the only time you were able to bend your knees or run in them is if you were the third kid they were handed down to.  

I chose the gravel floor base about 4 inches thick to keep it from being mucky under foot. The sink will drain out into the garden area with a pipe, but other watering will just fall on the gravel. My soil holds water like it wants to be a pond due to the extremely high clay content (i live very near to the pottery capitol of the US, and it became that because of the massive amounts and varieties of clay in the area). There are windows on the long back side and the end opposite of the lean to. As far as potting and compost components, I have one compost pile that is within about 20 yards of the building, but the larger piles, as well as my vermicomposting bins are further. I plan to move them closer in the future, but they are currently under shelter in an old pole barn, so i'll have to haul that stuff closer as needed, but I did plan room for 3 55 gallon barrels to sit in the shed. One for finished compost/soil mix, one for plant and veggie material to go to the compost, and one for ground biochar so it's available while potting. Keep the ideas coming!