Sher Miller

I love vinegar! I started making my own when I started doing Korean Natural Farming.

Previously my fav was balsamic (drizzle a little on cut strawberries with a slight sprinkling of sugar OMG!!!)

But a made a batch of moringa vinegar. That's the best I've ever had. And so healthy too.

Master Cho pigs on inoculated Deep Litter System. Notice the poop?

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Sher Miller wrote:Does anyone do an Inoculated Deep Litter System (IDLS)?  As taught by Master Cho? I doesn't require cleaning. Once I started using it I never had any more disease, not even mires.
The floor acts as a probiotic dust bath, composts manure and uneaten food almost instantaneously.
The microbes in the bedding keeps it warm enough to brood chicks without a hen or any other heat source. It keeps the building where they are kept warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Personally I choose the tropics because, well, winter, so I have used this system for many years but I have not kept chickens through I cold winter. But I know it works.
I have another question. Why do you feel it necessary to get chickens outside in the winter? There aren't any bugs to forage.

Please tell us more about  this method. How long do you keep adding litter? To work, doesn't it require the bedding to stay hot? [That would be the biggest problem here. You can get down to 40 below and stay that way for a few days, although not the last few winters. Do you do it on bare soil? My coop has a wood floor, painted, so rotting stuff on top of it, if I understand it right, might not be so good.
Good hygiene is indeed critical, and to that effect, I have poop shelves about 6" below the roosting bars. On top of the shelves, I placed some stiff plastic like they use for showers walls. [Even at $24.00 for a 4'X8' sheet, they are worth every penny!]
For litter, I use wood chips, and they last 5-6 months without getting very dirty. Dusty, yes, and that's my main problem, but sh*tty, wet or stinky no. That was actually one of my greatest discoveries about raising chickens: They do 95% of their pooping while roosting.  So if you get in the habit of collecting this rich poop in a homer pail once a week, you can get one free homer pail/ week of free poop. [with 24 chickens]. [That's 56 homer pails of free fertilizer/year!]
That beats removing the whole litter any day.
I usually give them fresh chips in October-November and I don't have to change it until April or even May. When I remove it, it isn't even caked together. It is fluffy enough to use a stiff bristles broom and broom it out of the coop.
I now have 30 young chicks who will start laying in mid to late January and they finally discovered the poop bars =Started roosting. Yippee! I have one of these big scrapers with a long handle to clean the plastic sheeting.
https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-6491/Mops-and-Squeegees/Stainless-Steel-Industrial-Window-Squeegee-22?pricode=WA9164&gadtype=pla&id=H-6491&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw7Py4BhCbARIsAMMx-_K-6gtaYqgLCmOn1cTZACNkfDb8AeeTcPDP4C0oXLHx4bfvCbEh4TcaAjlYEALw_wcB
Mine has a 3" wide blade mounted on a long handle. I removed the rubber part of it and use only the metal part. I also have a trowel to push the stuff in  the pail.
You can put some D.E. on that plastic, and that keeps their poop hard enough to scrape easily. I used BDT for a while, but I saw them trying to eat it and coincidentally, they stopped laying. I don't know if that did it but I'm not taking a chance! I also put that kind of plastic under their water. [That is the other place they do the 5% left of their pooping.]
Getting them outside in the winter isn't necessary as indeed, there are no bugs available then. But just to vary their routine, when there isn't too much snow on the ground is good for them. They have a hoop house in which the go scratching/ dust bathing all the time, so even though it is winter, they don't feel too deprived.

I guess I wasn't clear. There is NO POOP to deal with. It composts almost immediately! You never see it.

Pics attached are a pig farm Master Cho set up. The sheep were mine. I kept 50+ chickens, 12+sheep, a cpl pigs and a rabbit in the barn. I didn't clean it for 7 yrs before I moved on, didn't have to.

It stayed clean, no smell, no flies,no disease, not even mires.

I took out inoculated compost as needed, never more than a third at a time. The bedding is always fully composted at all times. That stuff is amazing for plants!

Once Inoculated the bedding stays warm because it is so full of active microbes feeding on the manure and uneaten food. Everything stays dry & crumbly, smells faintly of bread yeast. It becomes a living floor

It's best on a dirt but my barn was already poured concrete. It worked well. Your floor should do fine.

The bedding needs to be deep, 2-4 feet. I used grass clippings. It's what my farm produced, but it can be anything. I needed to add additional bedding about once a month. But grass breaks down quickly and I had a lot of animals. Wood chips should last longer.

I will say the only time I had an issue was when the tractor was down and I didn't get new bedding added, although once I did everything was fine again.

I made a little video about it. I don't know if I'm allowed to share it here

The secret sauce is the IMO, Indigenous Micro-Organisms, a complete culture, an entire ecosystem taken from local soil.

It can be a little tricky for a beginner, but you can get an animal barn established without going thru all the steps.

Does anyone do an Inoculated Deep Litter System (IDLS)?  As taught by Master Cho? I doesn't require cleaning. Once I started using it I never had any more disease, not even mires.

The floor acts as a probiotic dust bath, composts manure and uneaten food almost instantaneously.

The microbes in the bedding keeps it warm enough to brood chicks without a hen or any other heat source. It keeps the building where they are kept warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Personally I choose the tropics because, well, winter, so I have used this system for many years but I have not kept chickens through I cold winter. But I know it works.

I have another question. Why do you feel it necessary to get chickens outside in the winter? There aren't any bugs to forage.

In many tea plantations they grow trees to shade the tea. Japan uses shadecloth for it's best quality teas.

They are an understory, small tree in the wild. They are not built for full sun.

The chemicals that make the tea healthy and taste good are highest in when shaded.

Have fun 😁

Aurora House wrote:I saw a video about feeding chickens with just bamboo and brown rice. I don't know if you'd count bamboo as "tree hay" and I think the video showed fresh cut but it seems worth a try especially with how fast bamboo can grow.

This is part of a Korean Natural Farming technique but is not used to feed chickens. Rather it's used for the first 3 days of a chicks life (while they are still supported by the energy from their egg) to stimulate full development of the gut. (I didn't know this when I started KNF and had chick loss!)

The KNF approach for storing feed for winter is to make fodder into silage using LAB (Lactic Acid Bacterial serum) which increases protein content.

Using fodder trees to store as hay is also a good practice as these trees tend to be higher in protein and fast growing. A fellow named Nick Ferguson has a website about fodder trees (also a nursery) but I don't know the url.

I just wanted to jump in and clarify the rice and bamboo bit. I have no personal experience with tree hay.

Finally, judging by the label I have a Camellia sinensis sinensis, since there is no other indicator on the label
end quote

Hi, Sherri here, commercial tea grower. Might I offer a few tips?

First, being Camellia sinensis sinensis means it is not Camilla sinensis assamica, the subspecies that was found in Assam India (sinensis means china)

It could be any number of thousands of varietals, so you don't know if it was developed for green black or oolong tea etc. But if you live where you get frost & freezes, then cold hardiness is your 1st priority.

Tea requires at least 80in rain a year so if you get less you need to water. They do not suffer drying out well, and your 1st indication they don't have enough water is they die.They do not get wilted first so beware.

Shade is usually given tea as a matter of quality. Green teas are better with more shade. In fact ceremonial matcha is covered for at least 2 weeks before harvest.

You can get great quality tea in full sun. In Hawaii I would process black tea in the summer and other teas the rest of the year (tea doesn't go dormant in Hawaii like the rest of the world).

You will get better production in full sun! (This is why Japanese tea is grown in full sun but shaded before harvest.

Tea likes soil to be a little acid, similar to blueberries.

Shaping you tea plant is a big part of getting production. The type of leaves you pick are critically important to your results. A flat tabletop waist high is ideal.

You only want to harvest fresh young and supple shoots. Bud tips are the best, and the industry standard is "two leaves and a bud". Just make sure whatever you pluck is soft and supple. If you are not getting leaf bud production your tea plants are not happy and you need to look at your cultivation practices.

You also want to get a big enough harvest at one time to process correctly. I've found it's very difficult to make good tea with less than 250g (half pound) but try to get at least a quarter pound at a time. (Over 500g or one pound is the upper limit how how much can be processed by hand.... your hands are only so big.)

With this in mind, try to plant enough plants and cultivate them so that you get a good enough flush of fresh buds and tips at a time to process a good batch, both size and quality of leaf.

Processing by hand is an art, but a lovely one. Doing it wrong will get you a bitter, nasty cuppa.

Tea has been nibbled by human hands for thousands of years and thrives on being plucked. Enjoy the process from plucking through processing to imbibing. It's truly one of the greatest pleasures I know.

If I can help in anyway, from planting to harvesting to processing and brewing (yes brewing technique matters) I'm happy to help! Aloha & happy brewing

Anne Miller wrote:

Sher Miller wrote:Cherries help gout

Paul has often said that the emergency room doctors suggests that.

Doesn't help me ...

Sorry to hear that. I saw it in a medical journal in the 70s. It works for me. (Avoiding oxylates is helpful, usually the trigger). It can be horrible. I wish you well!

Anne Miller wrote:I don't use OTCs.  I have a bottle of Aleve on my desk that I might use very rarely.  I looked and it expired 9/16.

I use a lemon balm tincture that I made just before my plant died for lack of water because I had a gout attack and could not walk back there to water it.  I refresh the tincture after every use.

I use rosemary as a mouthwash by making a tea.

The only supplement I take was recommended in January by my ophthalmologist. It has marigold with C, E, Lutein.

I voted though that was just a guess.

Cherries help gout

It doesn't matter if it's Cordyline sp.or Dracaena sp. This is a tropical plant that lives in wet areas. I don't think flood and drought is what would make it happy. Nor would a prolonged drought.

If this were my plant I'd give it small frequent sips of water. I don't know what your humidity is like but if it's low it may appreciate an occasional mist, or a home in a bathroom with a shower for humidity. At least until it recovers.

It also looks weak so I would give it a tiny bit of highly diluted fish amino acid (1:1000).

In a proper habitat, they are completely maintenance-free, so other than that I would leave it alone.

...if it were my plant