Kim Wills

I want to bring long-ish logs (lengths for garden beds & minor hugel-ing; some short but up to 8' or so if I can) from the woods on top of a hill down to the house. They're already cut to various lengths, and some are starting to decay; they're not all smooth and straight. The path out of the woods is pretty clear, just minor weeds & leaf litter. The distances to the edge of the woods will vary based on where the logs are; could be up to 100 yards. Then there's a big field of hay (it's May now, so it shouldn't be too high), which is luckily downhill, about 230 yards.

I feel like I could drag them on a tarp behind me walking but I might be over-estimating myself! I'm in decent shape but even still, I could do a little at a time, if needed, like over a few days. I have a one-wheel wheelbarrow but I can't imagine that working; the land is bumpy and I want longer logs than could fit. The only vehicle I'll have at the time is not able to reliably go through a hay field. I have rope, a straight ladder, and tools of almost any kind available, and maybe a couple 2x4's. I have 4-wheeler that doesn't work, so I can't get it up the hill. I have a dog but I think he's too old to play Iditarod, lol. We have a small dresser we'll be throwing out, and some throw rugs also destined for trash. Not sure why I'm mentioning them but I love a good brainstorming session and who knows what whacky ideas you all might come up with! I wonder if rolling them somehow, or prying them up to roll in bits at a time could work. The hill isn't very steep, for example if you imagine being a kid and rolling down a hill for fun, it isn't steep enough for that.

Now I'm thinking of tying rope to 2 corners of the tarp and getting inside the rope so it's across my chest? So I'd be like an ox, dragging the tarp of logs with the rope...?

Any cleverer ideas out there?

I don't need a calendar or Drive; I don't need to be connected to anyone else for scheduling, etc. I use a paper calendar on the side of my fridge just fine, and a small book I purchased for keeping track of finances. I don't even *want* email; I dread checking it because the amount of email I get is overwhelming. I get online mostly in Firefox using DuckDuckGo. Hopefully they're truthful about blocking the Big Guys from tracking me; but their search results contain a lot of fake Ai sites, which is disappointing.
I confess I like Amazon's convenience.

I wish my online experience could freeze in the early 2000's. That's the perfect amount for me, so if anyone can put me back in that time frame with minimal surveillance, that's what I'm looking for.

And don't even get me started on my phone and all the apps that mysteriously appear unannounced and can't be removed.

Oh, and about targeting me to buy dog stuff. Funny. I hardly buy anything at all. We're frugal and I tie old t-shirts in knots for toys, lol. We 'inherited' my parent's dog when they passed, and being that he's already 12 and we're not his "masters", he doesn't let us bathe him or cut his nails, and his nails were very long and getting twisty because my parents couldn't do that stuff very well anymore. The Petco appointments are a necessity at this point; not a frivolity. I get ads for a lot of things that I scoff "Ha! You think you know me" at.

Ned Harr wrote:Often the app gives the company more insight into your activity (i.e. it's a corporate surveillance bug). Whereas through the browser they only know what you clicked on, what pages you looked at, and for how long, and maybe other stuff you've navigated to in your browser, with an app they can potentially see everything else you do on your phone and also where you go.  (Transmitting all this back to the mothership in realtime definitely doesn't use less data.)

They try to entice you to download the app by giving it more features, or a smoother customer experience, than the website. Most people fall for that.

Maybe you (or anyone!) can give me some advice: I just had a disturbing experience with my tablet that showed me that Google is reading all my email and tracking me. I can see why they want more data centers; so they can store the fact that I had a dog grooming appointment at Petco at 10am today (WHY do they care?!?). What happened was an alarm went off on my tablet to tell me the appointment was in a half hour. I did NOT set that alarm. I not only never opened ANY email on that device, but I didn't even know I had it on there! We got it for free when my stepmom got a new cable plan, and we use it in the kitchen to watch videos or play games while cooking; that's it. So obviously Google READ MY MAIL (an email *I* didn't even read, and didn't even know I got) and decided to set an alarm for me!  

Does anyone know any email systems that are not connected to that mothership you speak of?

I can ditch Facebook fine (they are making it more & more difficult to use on a browser and I won't put them on my phone). Honestly, I'm ready to ditch it all except Permies, lol, but it seems we all need an email these days. I'd actually like to use a whole system that's disconnected, like Linux was/is? Or Ubuntu? Those are whiffs of names from the past that I tried using. I have a laptop and a desktop I can wipe clean and start from scratch, if it's even possible anymore. The laptop is a Thinkpad from a few years ago and the desktop was refurbished in 2020 and never opened since.

Advice anyone?
I have issues with feeling watched.
I want to feel relaxed, and that my home is a private place.

Ok, "first world problem" here, but I wanna cry!! I've been on Facebook since 2007, and I now feel like I'm being "forced off", or maybe forced to put the app on my phone, which I will not do. I get on FB on a browser on my laptop. I don't want it on my phone for 2 reasons:
1 - It will spy on me
2 - It would be too easy for me to use it
I want to use it intentionally, when I'm home and I have to sit at my laptop.

So here's what it's doing to me (sometimes):
1 - Telling me I can't post my reply because I've posted too much and I appear to be spam. This is ridiculous because sometimes it's my first post of the day and there is no way I posted too much.
2 - Telling me "try again later" when I post replies, and then it will never post, even if I posted elsewhere (so it's not my connection or anything).
3 - When I click the title of a group to go to it, I get "page cannot be loaded right now", preventing me from going to it.
4 - Sometimes I go back to find a comment I wrote, and I can't find it.

It is sad and frustrating when I take the time and thought to help people, or encourage them, and I write something of substance only for it never to get to the person I want it to. I've wasted time, energy, and my thoughts and my caring.

5 - And NOW, today, it started telling me (once in a while) to verify my identity using my phone (via their app, which I do not have on my phone). I think the previous things didn't frustrate me enough so now it's being obvious: "PUT ME ON YOUR PHONE OR YOU CAN'T USE ME".

I am really mad right now, and really sad. I did not post inflammatory things. I did not talk about politics. I was in groups with similar interests & issues that I have. I gave great advice, I was always encouraging to others, and I asked real questions and thanked people when they tried to give me advice. Oh, I was in a homesteading group there which is starting to keep repeating the same dumb posts yet it wouldn't approve my legitimate question about a hand pump well (and a few others). Their repeated questions seem suspicious like they might even be Ai, and it's often questions about prepping, which makes me wonder if they are information-gathering questions and the whole group is a sham, or turning into one.
Is that crazy of me to think?

I feel like Facebook is morphing into a robot, with its tentacles separating me from my family and friends on there, and now interjecting blockades here & there.
I just realized I wrote in the past tense about it, I guess because I fear I will be forced all the way off any day now.

It's how I keep in touch with family and some friends, so it's actually quite emotional and I will feel cut off.

Dorothy, Sorry about your hip! I wish you a speedy recovery!

I realize that this video will not help if someone has broken a bone, but if anyone has trouble getting up off the floor and is not injured, check it out! This doctor gives 4 methods of getting up, and suggests practicing them (along with some related exercises at the end of the video) every day, in order to prevent not being able to get up.
Do your sit-ups and squats, everyone!

https://youtu.be/J1JfWe1YL-U?si=aBrBd96Zkx1nQ2Qe


And here's me doing a hip exercise that I would teach my tai chi class if I had one. (haven't taught much since the pandemic)
It's slow & can be done at any level. It's good for flexibility, strength (if you put your feet farther apart as you get better), moving lymphatic fluids (the opening & closing part I talk about), and coordination (many things are going on at once).

https://youtu.be/Y3BZDP2h8NQ?si=RXKX3FZQrcq7LA_U

I wonder if it's lovage, which is edible and has white umbel flowers.
Just wondering, if you don't know what it is, how do you know it's edible and Scandinavian?

Re: MEDICATION  dispensing...
Our local pharmacy offers the free option of pre-packaging each month's pills in little blister packed trays. It's labeled with the date and times you should take them. I got them for my stepmother; they were a little tricky to open but scissors did the trick. They can be peeled if you can use your fingers well; I could do it easily but she could not. The plastic packaging could be considered wasteful, as it becomes trash, but of course we can all weigh the pros & cons for ourselves (or for our older loved ones). If your local pharmacy doesn't do it, larger ones all do.

The pic I'm attaching is not mine; I got it off an image search, from a website that trains healthcare workers (so I assume the patient info is fictitious). I'm just clarifying that I'm not exposing anyone's medical info.

I just read that about 10-15% of the world's texts have been digitized, and not all of that is available to the general public. Some requires pay, such as some scientific journals, as an example.
Also, there is much knowledge that is not in text, it's in people's heads.

It may seem like the internet is infinite, but I wonder how much is redundant? You only need one web page to explain how the heart pumps blood, but I bet there are thousands or millions of attempts, as parts of larger learning materials for different audiences.

Derek Thille wrote:Kim, my only concern would be with ensuring the stumps don't sprout like a coppiced tree.  From your photo, I'd consider cutting the stumps closer to ground level.  If the stumps were living when cut, you may also want to consider drilling down into them to aid rotting - if the trees were already dead, I'd be less inclined to deal with it.  It almost looks like the smaller multi-stemmed tree could be in the way (that could just be an illusion though).  If it is, you could curve your hugel to go around it.

Is that area treed enough for the hugel to be in full shade?  A bit of a rhetorical question, but you'd want to match your hugel plantings to the amount of light you get.  Another consideration is the land orientation - frost will want to move downhill, so you may want to consider whether or not you might create a frost pocket up against your hugel.  I didn't do a good job of that placing the one I built this year and a pumpkin plant paid the price.

Good luck.

Thanks for all those thoughts. The stumps were definitely alive when cut about 3-4 years ago, and they have not sprouted by now, so I guess they won't.
I see how drilling holes or cutting them more could be helpful.
I think the thin trunks we're seeing are all individual saplings, if I remember correctly. Hmm.
The area is in shady woods on a hilltop. I want to grow medicinal forest herbs, and if I need to protect them from deer I was thinking that it's way less fence to enclose a hugel than the same area of flat ground. I figure I could get 2-3 times the surface area.

Thanks again!

Ellen Lewis wrote:Years ago.
Made a heap of branches, centered on a stump, edged on short side by wood rounds set on cut edge.
Had no turf, tried to put mud & seeds on it. Sides too steep but roughly worked. Short-lived clover & buckwheat, soon reverted to nasturtium & pellitory. Never worked for vegetables.
Rounds were stable & rotted away nicely.
Branches are the favorite thing of bermuda grass & poke. I tried to consolidate them as they broke down, but they didn't break down much.
The shade & moisture of the branch pile helped the stump begin to bear mushrooms & now it's almost broken down enough to remove & use the hole for planting.
It's dark out now, so no picture.
Just looks like a weedy mound anyway. 12 or 18 inches high.

Hi! Are you still here?
I searched for stumps & hugelkultur and you're all I found. I was wondering how your stump-pile worked out. Did you ever add more stuff to it? Is it now just barely a lump? How many years before you couldn't tell it was a stump anymore?

I have some stumps in my woods, in particular I have 2 near each other so I thought of making a hugel bed in between them (including on top of them). My logic says it would be a fantastic idea because the stump is still "alive" down underground in a way, drawing water to it, possibly. Or at least holding a lot of moisture. But before I go through the trouble I was hoping for anyone with experience to chip in either for or against it. Maybe there's some decay issues I'm not aware of.

Sadly, due to some timber theft, I am left with about a half a dozen stumps and piles of smaller decaying wood that was too small for them to take (About the thickness of my arms & legs). I get upset when I walk through and see it, so I was thinking that making some of it into something useful would help me feel better. I guess it sounds like I'll be doing it anyway, at some point... but still wondering if there's anything to consider, using stumps.

Thanks to anyone who can give input!