Jackson Bradley

Joao Winckler wrote:Timing makes a big difference. I've had way better luck sowing in early spring when the soil is still cool and moist, before everything else gets going. Sowing into competition basically never works for me.

+ 1 on the timing. Mid to late winter works best here and allows the clover to beat everything else that grows later in spring.

Yes on transplanting and cutting it like sod. I have done that with great success anytime of year. You may need to water a little if it is going to be dry.

Jay Angler wrote:Jackson, is that fire wind shield easy to assemble and set up? I can imagine it being very helpful in windy areas even to shield a pot on a stove from the breeze.

If you are familiar with or can watch a video of a CLAM screen tent setup, it is the same for the panels and it has some carbon fiber poles you insert at the joints. If it is mildly windy, you can just make it into a "U" or a "V" shape and a few stakes at the bottom are good. If it will be gusty, you can guy out the top of the poles at the panel joint sections.

So about 3 to 5 minutes without guy outs. Yes, made a huge difference when cooking outside. We still use it and it is 3 years old.

A ground fire would not be a good situation because the material is canvas. Anything else works great as long as the fire does not get out of hand and you have coals popping out and on the shield.

And, because I can be a gear junky, we had a folding wood stove/pizza oven that was used for about 1 year and a half instead of the grill. Pizza, quesadillas, flat bread, pots and pans on top, evening fires, etc.

Matt, we started full timing when we had 3 kids and were still full time with 5. We still live in the RV and do some traveling with the 8 of us now. The answer depends on a few things. Will it be hot, moderate, cold where you will be? How long will you be in the RV? 7 adults or will there be children?

Our pattern is to cook inside when it is cold and outside when it is hot or moderate. We travel with a smaller air fryer oven and single burner plug in electric stovetop. They fit easily in the storage compartments of the RV and set up easily on a picnic table or fold out table. This is a very important one.

The limiting factor for us are the 10cuft fridge/freezer not the cooking appliances and space when cooking inside or outside. If 6 of the 7 bodies are made to go away from the outside cooking station or go outside if cooking inside, you'll have plenty of space. Sometimes it is easier for one person to be making one thing inside and another outside. My wife and I do this a lot. We do dishes outside if dry camping and inside in the single bowl sink if we have hookups. You can use and reuse paper plates and the when they are beyond reuse, they become the evening fire or charcoal starter.

Due to the varying state of repair and configuration of the fire pits we encountered, we started carrying our own. Also, sometimes people have burned trash in the pits and if the hosts don't clean them out for every visitor, you could be cooking over burning plastic. A weber smokey joe small kettle grill or the rectangular "Go anywhere" are good options. Roasting hot dogs and sausages are very popular for us and they fit nicely in the small fridge in their packaging. Grilled chicken thighs or breasts, hamburgers, etc. Ground beef is very versatile and compact. Pork tenderloin cooks quick and is great over a fire or charcoal along with boneless turkey beast and both are packaged well and compact. Leftovers get turned into sandwiches, quesadillas or added to the scrambled egg breakfast the next day. If you are a soup person, those are very efficient due to having a lot of dry ingredients.

Unless you are doing something like hot dog fires, where everyone participates, the group may have to get used to not eating at exactly the same time, all of the time. We make pizzas a lot and will make 2 or 3 small ones then get everyone started on eating them and continue to add them to the oven or air fryer oven. The dry ingredients for pizza dough, bread, quesadillas, etc. don't take fridge space so we do those a lot.

Outdoor and/or campfire cooking is very enjoyable.

We are expert at what does not need to be refrigerated and for how long as far as condiments, fruits and vegetables. Potatoes, apples, bananas, avocado, etc. stored on the counter or on wire shelves.

I don't know how often you'll be camping/traveling but you'll figure out what works for you guys pretty quickly, what is enjoyable, and be making some priceless memories!

D Nikolls wrote:You could preserve the airflow aspect of the rainscreen siding, which I consider very important, by using thinner battens on the horizontal seams..

Great point/idea!

If I am picturing it correctly, I would install vertical furring strips on the exterior seam and then run your siding over that. It will help seal the sheet good seams and also provide an air gap behind the siding and sheathing which can be a beneficial path for moisture to escape and dry.

I also assume the vertical joints land on wall framing studs and would be inaccessible from the inside. However, if you have horizontal seams in the sheet goods, you could seal those from the inside with the same furring strip application. If you put horizontal strips on the outside you negate the benefit of an air gap in that area.

1600 sqft is a very large cabin but sounds like you have the lumber on hand. If the exterior sheathing has been exposed to the weather the ZIP tape would not adhere very well anyway and you'd need a liquid sealant from a caulking gun. I imagine that would be equally as hard to come by.

It also sounds like the gaps between sheathing are larger than what I normally deal with if your able to stuff fibrous material in there. What size are the gaps?

Nancy Reading wrote:
I'm not sure why your family seem to get bugs sequentially Jackson, or whether it is better to come down with it all at once, just that I believe socialising more is better for most people for a number of reasons.

There is somewhat of a discernable pattern to it. Typically the 2 youngest kids are with my wife most of the time and the 4 oldest are with me, more or less aside from homeschool time and family reading time. My wife is very gifted at nurture when it comes to sickness and maybe it just trends that women in general are that way and that would make sense. I say that to say whoever gets sick will end up with my wife doctoring them and that will typically expose the other 2 youngest due to them typically being with my wife most of the day.

So it'll usually go from 1 person to a group of 2 or 3 then back to the remaining ones. I normally get whatever it is last if I get it. This happens between 1 and 3 times a year I would suppose. We are not hermits but I work remotely and we are together 24/7 and mostly stay at our homestead and work around here.

We get some occasional one off things that may be allergy related because only one person will be affected for a short period of time. We all are kinda holding our breath when that happens.

Jay Angler wrote:My husband won't touch the stuff.

Thank you for the links. I read through them and they were helpful.

Yeah, when we started getting into herbalism and all that I tried the oregano under my tongue and I can't hardly stand the smell of it after that. I mainly use mulberry tincture now.

The germ theory stuff is interesting. I also find it interesting in light of reading the old testament. There is a lot of prescriptive regulation around cleanliness, quarantine, waste management, etc. I find it interesting we had pockets of culture following things like that and then you have folks dumping their waste right out into the street.

I read "Dissolving Illusions" a while back and the author went into depth on the lack of sanitation in many areas of world at the time of different outbreaks. It is hard to believe there were not more people pushing for better sanitation but then again, if you grow up doing things that way and everyone else does the same, it would be accepted unless you like to question things.

M Ljin wrote:It seems like there is some big money in dividing people against each other (e.g. during Covid, recent virus scares). Taking one snippet of (what I consider) truth (environmental factors contribute to our health) or another (viruses exist and are contagious) and then pitting the two against each other is an efficient way of exhausting people of the energy they could be using to overcome the current system which is crazy but also very profitable to some—and build a better world instead.

That makes a lot of sense. So many things are lifted out of their context.

For me, it is a genuine information seeking desire. Its a new concept to me and I have my observations so I am trying to understand it in light of my observations but to also understand the ideas in general. When the lady from the pickup was telling me a few things about it, I had no idea what to say. My goal isn't to prove her wrong or right, just to dialog a little if it comes up again.

Yeah, Jay, there are probably a lot of groups and ideas in-between but the opposite end of the spectrum from viruses do exist are groups who do not think they exist. I have only read a little bit about it but some reading I did clearly stated viruses do not exist.