E Nordlie

Has spruce been planted in your area before? No spruce species are native on the west coast of Norway, but several have been planted, maybe starting between the world wars. Some of them have become very invasive, once mature they produce a *lot* of shade and seeds. Sitka spruce is considered the worst, displacing native vegetation (completely in some places) and being very difficult to remove. I'm not sure it is always literally the species sitka spruce, may spruce species are quite similar, and hybrids have been planted as well.

Other than worrying about spruce, I have to say the number and variety of trees in that table is amazing, makes me envious - or maybe that's not the right word; I wish I had more space and time, anyway!

Birch bark will last for centuries in the right conditions (and permanently waterlogged, in the dark, may be close to ideal). However, making a waterproof layer seems difficult. Even from large, straight, knot free threes, the bark sheets won't be very big, and the seams between the sheets will leak. Birch bark was used under turf roofs here in Norway, this works because on a roof you can overlap the sheets so that water runs off. I've seen birch bark apparently used as a moisture barrier under sill beams and possibly under floors in remains of medieval houses in Oslo, I assume the bark would act more as a capillary break in these situations - it may prevent the sill beams or clay floors from actually sucking moisture from the ground below. These anecdotes are not directly relevant to the original question, but they do show that birch bark will last a long time in certain conditions.

Birch bark tar seems unrealistic. I've never heard of it made in large quantities the way pine tar was. I've no idea how much you'd need to waterproof a certain area of pond side/bottom, or if it would work at all, but I have read that birch bark yields at most 10% tar pr weight - collecting and processing enough bark to make even a bucket of tar seems prohibitive. It is only the flaky outer layer of bark that is used, in other words a layer of at most a few mm.

Actually, to stay on topic, since the question was how to best use non-chicken eggs, I'd say duck and goose eggs are best fried or used in omelette - haven't tried them for baking - not as good as chicken eggs when boiled. Quail eggs are easier to handle boiled than to crack for frying, baking etc.

For most people chicken eggs will be more familiar and more easily available, so in a way maybe the best use of non-chicken eggs in general would be in applications where you will notice and appreciate their difference. For instance, what is the point in cracking 15 quail eggs for a cake where you could use three chicken eggs? Garnishing a salad with boiled quail eggs, or having lots of tiny fried eggs on toast for instance, will be more enjoyable because then you can tell they are not chicken eggs. Similarly, I like frying duck or goose eggs because then the size difference is obvious, and any subtle differences in taste and texture are more noticeable.

Of course, if local availability means any of the non-chicken eggs are your standard or default eggs, that would make it different.

By the way, gull eggs used to be collected in certain parts of Norway (presumably other places as well), they were considered particularly good soft boiled just by themselves or for garnishing soups etc., and at least some people thought they made especially good waffle or pancake batter. It's been a long time since I had any (gull populations are not doing well, I'm not sure egg harvesting is allowed any more), but to be honest I'm not sure I could tell any difference between gull and chicken eggs. Apart from the beautiful shells..

To me, quail eggs taste the same as chicken eggs. They are fun, just because they look different, but I also find them a bit annoying to use - the membrane on the inside of the shell is usually much tougher than on chicken eggs. It is actually a bit difficult to crack them (for frying, for example) without just squashing the whole egg.

I don't think duck or goose eggs taste very different either, but the yolks feel richer, and for duck eggs at least it is true that the whites turn more rubbery than chicken eggs when fried or boiled (especially). I haven't had goose eggs for a long time, and can't actually remember what their whites were like.

The duck eggs I have had have been slightly bigger than chicken eggs actually. Even when compared to especially large chicken eggs.

In my (very limited) experience sunchokes grow too densely to let much else grow in between them. If you grow peas that don't grow past a meter you can sow them with oats or barley. I'm no expert, but my impression is that few "soup pea" varieties grow very tall?

As far as I know, the two traditional ways to grow drying peas here in Norway is with grains (for support, and to harvest some grain from the same field) or by themselves - the pea plants will cling to each other and form a big mat, which *may* lodge. I guess this depends on variety, soil and weather. With hand tools they could still be harvested, although more peas might be lost to mice, rot or sprouting if conditions were not good.

I've only grown peas with oats on a very small scale, but it worked well. I don't remember the proportions, but I think there was roughly 30-40 cm between the pea plants and 5-10 cm between the oats. They can be sown at the same time, grow at more or less the same rate, and are ready for harvest about the same time - presumably some varieties will work together better than others, but if you sow a mix and harvest and resow them together, suitable varieties and crosses will likely dominate after just a few generations. Especially if your field or bed is small enough to cull completely unsuitable ones before harvest, for instance those that do not compete well, set very few seeds, are susceptible to fungus, grow too well and pull down other plants etc.

Coydon Wallham wrote:Would it be any help in moving large logs out of the woods after they were felled?

Possibly, but it does not seem a very efficient method - you would have to anchor it very well to the ground (in a somewhat flat and open place, to let the workers operate it), and then you would either have to move it or increase the length of the rope (and size of the drum) as the trees reasonably near the machine were removed.

I'm not sure this was used more than ca. 500 years ago actually. I have seen ship parts that seemed to belong to similar machines, which I *think* were from the 1500- or 1600s  (in archaeological excavations in Oslo), and I have seen mediaeval illustrations of treadwheels and pulley systems (back to the 1200s at least). This doesn't mean all that much, since I have only seen limited sources, but presumably the need to fix a capstan very firmly in place limited their usefulness to a few  niches. They could have been used on land in shipyards/docks, or for lifting bridges maybe? Or on the upper floors of storehouses? The mediaeval cranes I have seen illustrations or reconstructions of have all been treadwheels or simple counterweight/pivot systems, but as far as I can remember these were outdoors - a capstan might be easier to accommodate in a building.

Bob Hutton wrote: Would there be special considerations for the compost if the sh*t or other was in a paper coffee filter?

Most coffee filters are completely compostable, to be sure you may have to do some research on the specific brand you have. I've put *a lot* of coffee filters in my compost (although only filled with coffee grounds), and as long as they don't freeze or dry out they disappear in a week or two. I assume they add some fiber/carbon.

A traditional solution is to have the beams on top of the posts, with diagonal braces - either between the sides of the posts and the undersides of the beams (inside the frames), or from the outsides of the posts to the outsides of the beams. This both ties the beams securely to the posts, and stabilizes the frames - keeps them from moving sideways. "Knees" work the same way, but require curved or bent materials, and if the frames are going to be filled with insulation I assume knees would make it a bit more fiddly.

I don't have any serious building experience myself, but have seen a lot of different wooden structures. Sideways stability is important - knees or diagonal braces of some sort are necessary, unless sheets of stiff material like plywood are attached more or less directly to the posts.

We may be misunderstanding each other here - what do you mean by making clay, and how could clay be toxic? I am not a native english speaker, but isn't clay a very fine grained mostly mineral soil? I have never heard of anyone creating clay (what would they make it from?), or heard of toxic clay. I guess clay could be contaminated by different pollutants, or marine clay could contain more salt than most plants appreciate - but in this context the amount of potentially salty clay deposited in each place seems too small to be a problem.

Depending on your local geology and land use, it may be very easy to find clay, or impossible, or anything in between. How accessible a pottery supply store is will vary too, but surely both buying and finding clay must be easier than creating it yourself. Clay that is sold is also natural. I guess making clay would entail breaking down specific minerals in one or more ways that mimic natural chemical and mechanical weathering, and possibly sorting the result very finely somehow.

For what it's worth, I have had another season of beetle free beans May be partly or completely due to random variations in weather, temperature etc., but considering the bean plants seemed very similar to earlier years, conditions can't have been totally different.