mary beth rew

on the salt question: i add a lot of seaweed to my compost pile, i don't rinse it or do anything to it, so i imagine it contains quite a bit of salt, and i've had no trouble. i had a certified permie tell me the same, as her experience has been nothing but positive with seaweed. so, extrapolating, i think food with salt should be ok, i certainly haven't put anything aside that i had cooked with salt in it... ok if i brine a whole chicken or something, dump the brine solution in a place i don't care so much about, but the food itself goes in the compost.

awesome!!! tucking that idea away for future use... slug moat!

thanks for the link! i'll come back and let you know how it works for me.

how is it going with this? i just foraged a bunch of pears and was thinking of the same thing- mmm. i also wanted to skip the campden tablets, etc. would love to hear your experience!

yes, they are still quite prolific. i've had two happy snake sightings, and between them, the beer traps, and the crepuscular slug stalking (@adunca, i've been chopping mine in half with my shovel, kudos to you for being able to do it with scissors! but i was starting to suspect the ones i dropped in the beer were simply climbing out... supposing i am selecting for beer-immune slugs...) i keep thinking, ok, it's july. they're not going to last much longer, are they?

sweet, it's a great spot to live, so presumably it's also a good vacation spot. i love it here (newport). when you roll into town, pick up a tide chart at (insert name of any store- they all have them at the cash register in pocket size, yup you carry one in your wallet if you're local- newport has a food co-op near the center of town btw with a decent lunch buffet) and you can scope out when you want to be at the beaches. i know some great ones for tidepooling- maybe you already have some in mind? if not feel free to email earth.huggy (at) gmail (dot) com. it's also a good time of year for it since the lower lows are in the daytime. the yurt camping is excellent, don't get a hotel room, it's way nicer accommodations and for much less money. they are heated. sure there's no continental breakfast but...  i really like cape lookout sp's yurts, but i haven't used the ones right around newport (um, cuz i live there.) and you don't actually always have to book way ahead, it's the only surefire way, but SOMEtimes you can get lucky and score if someone cancels. stalk the online booking site if you want to do it, and you will probably find one. especially if it's a weeknight. the aquarium does still have the otters, for whoever posted that's info. no more keiko of course. free willy and all. the cool organic restaurant in newport is cafe mundo, where there is a long wait for really good organic food, and usually live music. there is also local ocean seafood on the bayfront, excellent food. don't go to mo's. anyway newport isn't necessarily the best place to be, but it is sort of centrally located and has lots of accommodations but if you have a different destination in mind holler. and i'd show up if you present.

those are cute, crafty!

fascinating discussion. i am glad to see many hankie and even family cloth (cloth t.p.) users among us. i think planting a tree to offset the tp/paper towels/napkins/tissues i use does not quite jive for me, so much of that whole industrial paper system is such a disaster (pollution, deforestation, water and energy use), i don't want to spend money on it. personally i use cloth everything, and that includes cloth diapers for my son, cloth menstrual pads, "family cloth" (t.p.), cloth for nose wiping, cloth for counter wiping, cloth for face wiping at the table. it all gets washed together. i think something about cloth diapering really turns people on to this idea, once they realize they can easily deal with the yuck/germ factor with their kid's poop, the rest is all much less intimidating. i am lucky i rarely need tissues, but when i do i grab a square of our family cloth (organic cotton is so much less scary/gross than all the chemicals used in making paper...) and tend to be single-use with it, but that's easy for me since i've made quite a stash of squares so i never have to use them multiple times. not that i wouldn't, but i'm not really much of a germaphobe. i recently saw a crafty person come up with a "hanky book" which was a book of small cloth squares, and you could blow your nose between the pages consecutively before you toss the whole book in the wash. more high tech than i need, but it seemed like a cool idea if one really suffered from allergies or something like that.

adunca wrote:
How is the slug density right now where you live?  Here in SW Washington State they are the worst I have ever seen (I have lived here 21 years).  Just wondering what others are seeing.

we've got plenty here on the oregon coast, but not nearly as bad as last year. they are flocking to the milwaukees beast. i read about snakes eating slugs in gaias garden, so i have been attempting to create snake habitat as well (seeing a lot about snakes in this thread- cool) but so far i haven't seen any snakes. it is so cool and wet, it makes me wonder if the snakes are really ever going to find this place habitable. of course there is plenty of slug prey.

i tend not to like to write intros on forums. nor even "about" blurbs for my blog. but i think permaculture might be the thing that eventually cures me of my anti-social nature. (care for people, care for people, care for people.... feel like i need to go write this on the chalkboard a hundred times...) so i'm new here, and i guess kind of new to permaculture, though it really just feels like i finally have a word to encompass a whole lot of ideas i have already been processing and working on for a long while. i have been slowly and steadily (sustainably) moving towards self sufficiency and seeking out all the local organic food resources (including growing my own) available to me. tomorrow going on a <100 mile road trip, for example, to visit the farm where i'm hoping to join a bean/grain csa this fall. right now i garden a fair amount but i rent, and have restrictions on how much i'm allowed to do there, and have access to one plot at our local community garden. i am also a csa member ( a regular veggie one). and have all our meat, eggs, goat milk, and just about everything else we eat, sourced locally. some of it i trade for, as i make organic cotton baby stuff that i also sell at our farmer's market. i'm considering my current state of affairs permaculture unschool, i have never (and probably will not) taken formal courses but absorbing as much literature and face-to-face knowledge as i can get my hands on, and practicing all the skills so that one day when i have land i will be able to just get busy. those skills include and are not limited to... composting, gardening in general, canning/drying/food preservation, yogurt and cheese making, sprouting, cooking (it doesn't come easy to everyone), grey water recycling, mulching, etc. i am just sort of in immersion mode, having found one local permie who happens to be a certified teacher and also happens to be generous about sharing her knowledge, and another friend (my egg farmer) who is a newbie and interested as i am to learn more, to learn alongside. (care for people..... repeat. seriously maybe i'm not the only one on an internet forum who has this issue, but it takes a lot of effort for me to reach out and speak to people! but i've been making an effort, and it has had nice results.) i'm a single mama to one amazing four year old boy, who happens to be super excited to hang out in the garden. i'm in the oregon coast bioregion where we have lots of 55 degree weather just about year round, where things are almost always nice and damp, where we have good luck growing fava beans and kale, where we can walk down to the beach to snag some seaweed/beach detritus for our cold, wet, worm-filled compost piles.... anyway nice to meet everyone, looking forward to future chats.