Josh Hoffman

Great video and that is a great shirt.

Eric Hanson wrote:My garden bed IS my compost setup.  Any compost I get simply lay on the surface as a sort of sheet of mulch.  I grow exclusively in wood chips composted by Wine Cap mushrooms so there is ample biology to break down any compost.  A little added to the top only adds to the microbiological fun.

If I get a really large amount of compost, especially all at once, I will find an unused corner of the garden and pile it up.  I don’t really bother layering it, I just let it sit for about a year.  At the end of the year the microbes from the pile and soil knit themselves together and the topsoil is all the richer.   I do get some additional nutrients, but in my recent experience the soil biology and decomposers are more important than the chemistry.

Eric

I would like to understand this better, Eric. Do you have any threads that you have given more details and have some pictures?

Trace Oswald wrote:We get -20 every year, -30 sometimes, and I've seen -40 two days in a row a few years ago.  My roost area has to be very tight with no drafts at all while still having a lot of ventilation.  Any moisture or drafts on the birds while roosting will cause bad frost bite here.

WOW!

That brings in a whole different challenge I cannot even imagine. A lot of the other comments on the deep bedding are making more sense to me now that I understand that.

William Bronson wrote:Great thread, love the title very "Dad joke"!

Ha ha great. I just took a second look!

Trace Oswald wrote:A properly designed coop will be bone dry all the time, so no real composting happens.

Timothy Norton wrote:I primarily utilize Pine Shavings in their coop for their softness and exposed surface area. In their run, I dump in arborist wood chips if I have it on hand.

This is probably regional and dependent upon if you free range or not.

Since it stays very hot here (chill hours are around 450 a year or so) the coop/run is open at the top and on the south side. Since it is on a slight slope, we get some ground water intrusion on the north and east walled side (during torrents) and coming in when the wind blows sideways while raining.  

The chickens roost in the rafters and some other lower spots. This allows us to use the same deep litter of wood chips/grass clippings/leaves, etc. for the entire coop/run. We could not do this if we experienced colder temps.

Matt McSpadden wrote: One issue was that it was on a slight slope. So by the time the chickens got done scratching around, it would all end up at the bottom end of the greenhouse... and the top end was bare dirt. I would rake it to the top... or add the new mulch only on the top end. Between those chickens and gravity... it would keep ending up downhill. It also seemed to be breaking down fairly quickly. By the end of the winter, I only had maybe 4 inches of "mulch" on the bottom end, as it was breaking down more quickly than I expected.

In the end, the chickens had a nice warm place for the winter, and the next spring I had some crazy tomatoes growing in there, but I doubt I will try it on a slope again :)

While quail aren't quite the scratchers that chickens are... I would still advise people to try to find flat ground when doing this method... or you will be doing extra work spreading it out again

I built a fully enclosed coop/run. It is 24' wide and 36' deep. 12'x24' has a roof and walled on 3 sides. There is a slight slope along the 36' deep length. It falls 28" over the 36' so roughly 3/4" of fall per 12".

The area under roof has less issues since it stay pretty dry and the chickens mainly use it to dust bath. I have our 8 rabbit breeders suspended on wire in that area and so there is some scratching and digging but not as much as the area not under roof. The material does move down the slope but it moves rather slowly.

Since the lower 12' x 24' was a later addition, I had a 2x6 along the bottom of the original 24'x24'. The 2x6 is not setting on the ground, the top of the 2x6 is 10" above the ground. I added another 2x6 12' down the 36' run. So the 36' side, that is sloped, has a 2x6 every 12' breaking it into 3 sections. I put the wood chips, grass clippings, etc at the very top only. The chickens work it down and it collects to a depth of 11"-12" at the 2x6. I rake the top couple of inches over the 2x6 and harvest what is left to add to the garden.

I used to screen it all with a 1/2" screen but now I only do that when I am making potting soil. I found that after I rake the top few inches, what is underneath is not too hot for garden application.

My experience would be that I agree with Matt and if I had a flat spot, that was not low enough to hold water, that would have been an ideal spot for my run/coop. But, adding the 2x6's and using the deeper part that collects there has been very manageable and I think most anyone could make it work. If you have a steeper area, I could foresee some issues with the material moving along too rapidly. Adding things to slow it down, in closer intervals may be the solution.

Here are a few pictures. This is the transition from the original 24'x24' area to the new 12'x24' area. The slope runs from the top of the picture to the bottom.

Rebecca Blake wrote:Communal cooking is by far one of my favorite advantages of currently living with my parents!

This area tended to be one of the most difficult areas for us. We have been in a few different situations including multigenerational, 3 generations of my family and we moved onto a property with another family that had 3 generations already at their place.

Because there are 8 of us, we can't just "wing it" when it comes to meals. They are planned out and what we do not provide for ourselves needs to be on hand. We keep basic staples in stock and rotate a lot of the same meals to help simplify.

We found the saying, "No kitchen is big enough for 2 women" to be true for us.

Communication was mentioned above as the number 1 thing and I would agree since that would include how to deal with the kitchen and food. We would need some planning ahead in this area for another try at communal or multigenerational living.

Nina Wright wrote:Any recipes for without mayo?

It depends on what you are trying to avoid with not using mayo.

We make ours at home with egg, avocado oil, and vinegar.

Unfortunately, the standard that covers log construction/connection, ICC 400, does not have any reference tables and would require an engineer run the calcs and stamp the design.

The IRC has tables on sawn members but the spacing is 24" max and I don't think the dead load table for areas with lots of snow would be something you could compare.

I think the ICC has a section covering green roofs but again, they want you to engage a design professional.

I would trust it if someone with experience in log construction/connection and green roofs looked at it and said it was okay. This person does not need to be a design professional, just someone with experience, maybe someone on here has that skillset/experience.

If not, I would not want to be laying in bed during a heavy rain and wonder if the roof will collapse on me. I would repeat what you have there on 16" centers and sleep well or cover it with metal as is if I could not find an experienced person to advise me.

That is some very nice looking framing!

I don't have any improvements on the basic recipe ingredients listed in the excellent recipes above.

I tried mixing pickled beet juice into the yolks and I did like the added sweetness.

My favorite so far is to used eggs I have pickled with beets for a week or two and go from there.