Have you considered planting vetiver grass hedges on contour? They form a dense barrier that drastically slows surface water flows and erosion, while stabilising slopes. You would probably place them 20ft apart, allowing you to mow strips across the slope as you do now. They have very deep root systems so bring soil moisture up to the surface which other plants can then access. Over time the trapped material collects up slope of each hedge making terraces of fertile soil on a more shallow incline.
The grasses grow tall, but recover well after fire and can be cut low with a hedge trimmer to reduce fuel load. The cut leaves make excellent mulch for building soil carbon and increasing water retention. It's generally considered a low fire risk, and is used extensively in places like Australia. The above-ground biomass remains green and moist, provided there is some maintenance to periodically cut back growth.
Anne Miller wrote:I cant help with you question other than they less particular about nesting sites.
I have always heard African bees are very aggressive so I would stay away from them as much as possible.
Minor correction.
There is a big difference between African bees (that is, bees from Africa) and Africanised bees. Africanised bees are a hybrid sub-species that originated from mixing bees of European lineage with those from Africa. The hybridization led to very different traits than either parent line.
I've not done beef, but I have processed my own venison. We reached very much the same realisations - I saved too many largish pieces for roasting joints and quickly ran out of mince. We also decided we don't really want chunks for venison stew very often - it takes a long long cooking time to soften down and that just isn't compatible with our daily lives.
These days I save the best pieces for steaks that I can quickly pan fry for an easy evening meal, and mince pretty much everything else.
M Ljin wrote:People haven’t really talked about degrees that might be useful in a permaculture perspective, like, say, ethnobotany. If you had a degree in ethnobotany, that could give you a particularly useful perspective as a permaculturist for feeding and providing for yourself and others, and staying frugal.
Personally, I have not felt the need to seek out a degree in ethnobotany or similar subjects. Part of it is that there are so many resources available, in foraging books and furthermore online in places like the native american ethnobotany database (https://naeb.brit.org/), plants for a future (https://pfaf.org/), and the sorts of old books you used to only find in big city and university libraries (the public domain ones, historical resources, etc.) are available on Google Books (https://books.google.com/) and Internet Archive (https://archive.org/). And of course, Judson Carroll’s generous posting of edible and medicinal plant writings here on Permies (https://permies.com/u/324733/Judson-Carroll)
How many degree level people does the world need in ethnobotany? I suspect that the number is small because, as you imply, the knowledge is readily accessible to the interested lay-person through books and other resources. Degrees shine on the level of an overall society when they are deep, and that deep expertise brings special insights that are valuable to a society in a way that is uniquely distinctive. But even then, the utility of having more people with the same narrow expertise is limited.
My feeling is that many modern degrees frequently don't equip students with sufficiently distinctive skill sets to make them attractive in the job market, and/or "useful" to society based on those skill sets.
Geology, maths, engineering, environmental science, beekeeping, debating, union work, scouts, bushcraft, woodland care, websites, general tech stuff, various deep dives into computer games and physical games, mountain leadership, gardening, mushrooms growing and foraging, dog training, economics... I just goes on and on.
I've been watching the rise of AI with interest, and looking carefully at the spaces where it can enhance, rather than replace, human effort.
Most people at the moment think of AI as text text-generating tool... but my experience of it for that has been disappointing. It produces stuff that superficially looks like good answers to problems, but lacks the depth of detail and nuance that a human who really knows the domain would bring to it.
A case in point. I'm in the process of applying for a job. AI allows me to write a few bullet points about my experience, add the detailed job spec, and then generate a personal statement. That statement looks superficially plausible, but at the same time is generic and bland. On the other hand, if I write it myself, I get much stronger statements with much more relevant detail - but perhaps not hitting the requirements of the job spec. So what I did instead was to get AI to review my own words against the job spec and recommend areas that need more detail or improvement. This, to me, is a lovely balance of using the tool to enhance, rather than replace, my human expertise.
Of course, it will end up replacing human labour where generically "good enough" answers are adequate, so humans need to be working in the territory where that isn't the case.
Alternatively, humans should be working in the domains that cannot be replaced by machines. I've spent the last week completing my Mountain Leader Assessment. There is no AI in the world that can or will, be able to replace the need for humans to take responsibility for guiding others in remote mountainous country. It's a role that requires physical presence, excellent people skills, technical expertise, and good decision-making under pressure.
It's been a bonkers mast year in the UK for all nut crops. Bumper harvests of chestnuts, and the size is much bigger than normal. Over the past few weeks we have filled multiple bags with BIG nuts of great quality. No one seems to know exactly what triggers a mast year.
Also, if we are genuinely talking about "medieval peasants" it's worth looking at the systems they actually used in practice. Again, in the UK the common agricultural system was "ridge and furrow". A field was ploughed in strips with ridges and troughs that grew over decades of consistent use. These were tended communally by people from the community with crops grown on the ridges. I have always envisaged this more like market garden agriculture than the typical modern mono-crops.
In ridge might be planted in a single crop, but it would be unlikely to be a whole field because a modern "field" didn't really exist. In this context sowing your peas and then using pea stakes on a long broad row seems much more reasonable.
Actually I think they probably did it exactly as you describe.
Here in the UK many of our ancient woodlands were actively managed as coppice - hazel, hornbeam and chestnut are the most common species. A common product was bundles of pea sticks made with the brash from trimming other more valuable products.
Here you can see them tied with twine, but they would likely have been bundled with twisted withies of hazel.
Coppice products were used extensively - faggots for bread ovens, stakes for fencing, hurdles etc... and then most furniture for common folk would probably have been made in the woods by a bodger. I think we underestimate hugely the amount of manual labour that was dedicated to these crafts.
I get the point you are trying to make, but I'm not sure it is as strong as you suggest.
1) Capacity issues are resolved by just having a chest freezer in the garage. I have one. Why not fill it with meat? It is running anyway and costs no more to run empty than full.
2) I don't think anyone is opting to buy multiple whole chickens without at least having a plan for when and how they will process and store them. Even if your scale is small like mine, taking the opportunity to buy 4 when the price is right and circumstances allow is making the most of an opportunity. I'd happily walk away from that opportunity if I knew I had no spare time or energy to deal with it.
3) What you end up buying is just better - chicken breasts, for example - are not my favourite. But when I look at the drum sticks, wings or thighs they look insipid and watery. But when I buy a whole chicken the pieces I end up with just feel more satisfactory. They tend to cook up better, and have more flavour. That probably says more about the quality of processed chicken normally available in the supermarkets than anything else. With whole chicken it is more transparent that you are getting a good quality bird.
4) I can't buy bags of bones. I want bags of bones for stock making. It's worth the extra effort just for the chance to have beautiful stock in my fridge.
I do this from time to time, if I see good quality chickens at a reasonable price. The most I have done I buy four at once. It took about 30 minutes once I had the kitchen cleared and ready, and my butcher knife sharpened, to break them down into portions and packed in vacuum sealer bags. The bones all went to make stock (roast them first for the fabulous deeper flavour and colour). It saved a lot of money, compared to buying that same amount of chicken in portions.
r ranson wrote:
A snake is awesome! Especially if it's only a few feet down.
We are big on prevention in this house - all scraps go to the chickens, no grease down the sink, always have a mesh over the drain etc... but i think there is some kind of design fault/obstruction further down the pipes that is just prone to settling stuff out and building a clog.
The snake hasn't worked for me on this. I'm not sure why - it gets so far and then just stops. I can't pull anything back and can't make progress. I suspect there are some tight bends it gets jammed on.
This trick of blowing to clear the clog was brilliant though.
I've got a slightly temperamental drain from our kitchen sink. Every year or so the pipes clog but not in the u-bend, further down. I've dismantled the trap many times, messed around with a plunger, bought one of those flexible snake things - no joy.
Today I caved and had a "drain engineer" call by. £190 call out charge... steep but I was impatient and had no time to shop around for quotes. Came home from work early and waited for him. From the time he arrived at the door until he left was less than 5 minutes.
He unscrewed the u-bend, then screwed a flexible hose to the pipe fitting. Lay down on the floor and blew hard into the pipe - I heard the blockage *pop* free. 2 minutes to close the pipes back up again and confirm that the water was draining well, before he went on his way.
I'm simultaneously impressed, infuriated, and looking to buy a suitable flexible hose for next time.
Swales are sometimes described as a tree growing system. You plant trees on the down slope side of the swale and their roots benefit from the sunk water and accumulated fertile detritus in the pit. They concentrate sparse water to benefit the trees.
What advantage are you hoping to see in a grass growing system? Are you seeing much surface flow that isn't already sinking into the soil? Grass is usually pretty good at sinking in rainwater - more so than bare soil at least.
Most of the major permaculture designers would be advocating for earth moving in the early stages of a project as part of improving water retention in the landscape, building fertility, and creating microclimates. Terracing, building swales and ponds are all excellent investments in the land.
How much could you get done if you hired a skilled bulldozer driver and machine for a day? I think it would be a lot.
I looked into this a while ago as I had a very similar question. Why can't we just use bits of old mushroom mycelium from a grow bag to inoculate another grow bag? My understanding is that the mycelium grows vigorously when fairly freshly developed from spawn, but after it has reached maturity and fruits, it loses vigour and is slower to colonise and develop, and more prone to being outcompeted. This is why commercial growers bother with maintaining cultures of spawn to rather than reuse their mature colonised grow bags.
Can you make this work in practice? Yeh, probably - your results are likely to be it and miss, but if you are tossing the used logs or grow bags anyway you have nothing to lose. I tried this a while ago by burying a spent grow bag of oyster muchrooms in a pile of fresh woodchips. Nothing developed.
A word of warning on your graphs - AI is still generally bad at things related to maths and numbers, including generating graphs. It will confidently lie to you and give you no clue that it has done so. If you want to use a graph like this I recommend that you find the original data source and either use their graphs or build your own.
My chickens have deep litter wood chips in their coop. When confined there they will actively scratch and turn it which keeps the top surface fresh and clear of poop. I add a few barrows of new chips every other month or so. When they have access to their larger run, or free range in the garden, they spend much less time working the litter in their coop and it can develop a bit of a crust of poop - especially under the roost bars. About once per week I go in with a fork and turn any crusty bits.
All this to say that I really like the deep litter - it's a much better solution for me than hard standing which would need to be human cleaned much more regularly. BUT it's not as low effort as some people advocating it indicate and you do need to pay attention to how much they are turning the top surface. In the context of quail and pigeon in this thread I imagine that the surface disturbance is less simply because they aren't as heavy, so the human management will need to be more attentive.
For those who may struggle to source local quality meat, there are facebook groups that connect hunters with excess meat to individuals who want it. In the UK we have "Giving Up the Game". I picked up a 40kg fallow deer this weekend for a good price and have stocked my freezer for the next few months. These are mostly hunters doing crop protection - pretty consistent supply of rabbits, wood pigeon, deer at a good price and all local.
I've been classed as obese for the best part of 20 years, not massive but carrying an extra 15kg or so at all times. It puts extra pressure on my already dodgy knees and is a contributing factor for my sleep apnea (although not the cause). This is to say, I'm pretty motivated to lose some weight, and have tried some diets that worked for a while but were not sustainable for various reasons
Most recently, I've started on a GLP-1 inhibitor for weight loss (Mounjaro), and the impact is fascinating. It modifies the effect of some gut hormones that regulate appetite and satiation. I'm fairly new to this, but even from early on the impact was stark. It flipped a switch in me, and the food noise around snacks was just gone. Completely. I was a habitual snacker, and as a food lover enjoy good meals.
The food enjoyment is still there, but it is so much easier to listen to what my body is telling me about how much I need and how full I'm feeling. My main meal size has reduced by about 1/3, and with the snacking gone, I've already lost a bit of weight. But it feels easy - there is no inner battle, anxiety, meticulous planning of meals etc... I was worried starting this that it would impact my energy levels with my blood sugar tanking during the day, but I haven't had that at all - if anything the post meal crash has gone.
All this is to say that the battle against food noise is real - your body is literally fighting your brain's desire to eat well and avoid snacks by flooding you with hormones. It's not fair, it's not fun, and it's not equal for everyone.
If there were going to be a genuine problem I think it would have been identified by now as people worldwide are already using biochar to grow their plants and the side-by-side trials of beds treated and not treated with biochar consistently show benefits of using the char.
Regarding the specific claim of the metals themselves being a potential issue; in my location we typically have problems with lack of trace metals in our soils, and in particular iron. I've spent considerable time researching how to supplement our plants with these traces. "Free" metals in the biochar would be a win in my book.
(Our bedrock is chalk which is very alkaline and any soluble minerals wash through rapidly with rain.)
Wood chips for the deep litter on the floor. We get them free from a local tree surgeon. More than we can ever use.
Clean pine shavings for the nest boxes. About once every two weeks I replace the shavings. I just scoop them out onto the floor and put fresh in. They get incorporated into the deep litter with 24 hours and you can notice them.
I love the deep litter. It is completely forgiving of a bit of benign neglect. If i have a busy week or so you wouldn't notice because the chickens are forever turning the top layer over. The only time it wasn't so effective was when I just had a small number of birds in the large coop. They were crapping from their roost bars but not doing enough digging and scratching to consistently turn the top layer over before it dried together in a cake.
I have replenished my flock recently and all is operating smoothly again.
Well rotted deep litter has been fantastic for the garden, particularly the rhubarb plants as a thick winter mulch.
Josh Hoffman wrote:This chicken you are referring to ate too much grass? In a coop or tractored or free range?
My chicken passed away today, and a necropsy showed that the underlying problem was that her gizzard was full of tumors. But while I was researching impacted crops, I came across stories of other people's chickens having eaten too much long grass and it getting twisted up and stuck in the crop. Obviously that doesn't usually happen, but I just wanted to let readers know about the possible risk so that they can watch out for it and intervene if they see a problem.
This happened to one of my birds a couple of years ago. Identified by necropsy. She got into some grass clippings.
I have had some good use for it in my work as a teacher. Not teaching itself, but in the peripheral admin tasks.
I write lots of school reports. Some of those go home to families where english is not their first language. I use the prompt "Rewrite this school report using similified language for a reader whose first language is not English". It usually does a brilliant job.
Similarly, I recently had to write a short statement for why I would be suitable for a particular role. I wrote it in the 3rd person "He has worked for the past 20 years doing..." but got feedback that it would be better in the 1st person "I have worked for the past..."
I used the prompt "Please rewrite this in the first person". Again, it did it perfectly in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to go through it meticulously line by line.
Short version - use it for what it is good at, which is language. Don't use it for "knowledge and understanding" which it is confidently bad at.
I have heard, but am no expert, that including some "grog" in the mix helps prevent cracking. Grog is just fired clay that is then crushed and mixed in.
You appear to be using this dry, but not fired.
I wonder if it might be possible to make an rocket stove like this that were actually fired to pottery temperatures? If you could make it work it would be more weather proof maybe?
We have loads of wild blackberry patches near us. For the past few years I have been going out in spring and trimming back the canes to encourage both better fruit setting, and to make it easier to pick.
Wild blackberries send up huge, long thick stems. The following year the side branches on these bear the fruit. If the long stems are trimmed back to about 3ft high, the fruiting side branches will be easily accessible and the fruit set heavier. It also makes it easier to do later winter pruning. 15 minutes with secateurs now, on a wild blackberry patch, can make a big difference later.
I do this long boundary fence lines in particular, where they grow against walls, and along field boundaries.
I missed a few comments here! Glad you enjoyed era 2. I really liked them, but the tone is very different from Era 1. Steris is brilliant.
Re the newspapers - there are some tiny titbits in there if you are observant, and have some awareness of wider cosmere lore. Not essential to the main story line.
I also anticipated the ending, although not the actual detail, but felt like it really did do justice to the characters' overall story.
Megan Palmer wrote:@tereza when you eventually manage to get your scarlet runners to grow, leave the plants in the ground, they are perennials and will come back again.
I've tried this here in the UK with no success. Once I tried heavy mulch in situ - no joy, they seemed to rot in the soil. A second time I lifted them once they had died back and stored them in the cold and dry, wrapped in newspaper. No joy there either.
I'm sticking with seeds until someone comes up with a hardy variety selected for overwintering potential.
I think this is climate specific - when I have mulched heavily with either woodchips or chop and drop I have had slug plagues. Our climate is damp and it just sets up for a slug explosion. I'm trying to be more discerning now. In some situations it works brilliantly for me, like comfry around fruit trees, but around more tender/vulnerable plants or seedlings it is bad news.
Yes, absolutely. I'm a teacher. I could pick up online tutoring at somewhere between £40 and £80 per hour, which I could do from a comfortable heated office. I could easily pay for all my food just with a few extra hours of that - far fewer hours than growing it myself, and much less effort.
I don't grow food because of the time; I grow food because I like the process or gardening, like spending time outside and moving and away from my desk, and like bringing fresh produce in to cook immediately for dinner.
Could I set up more efficient "lazy" systems? Maybe. But getting to that point would require a bigger upfront investment of effort/materials etc... instead I'lljust keep plodding making incremental changes.
Safe for the person handling it?
Safe for the longevity of the pipe work?
Safe for the biological systems downstream?
We live in a very hard water area. Toilets form hard and thick deposits of limescale in a matter of weeks. Our water has insanely high calcium carbonate levels. We choose to use strong hydrochloric acid to dissolve limescale. It needs care to handle safely for the user. But the end products once it has reacted with the limescale and been diluted with the water are benign - just calcium chloride and water with a marginally lower pH.
Reducing silt inflow certainly does help, in the sense that it delays the inevitable. The problem is that most large-volume reservoirs are in steep landscapes - because of the shape of the land and the presence of rainfall make for cost-effective investments - and those environments are by definition highly erosional. I would suggest that the majority of reservoirs are likely supplied by fast flowing mountain streams and rivers rather than meandering rivers in floodplains as seen that that image. I think that is likely the case in the UK at least, based on the dams I have seen.
I think the general answer is... only when either the cost to continue using it is too high, or a better alternative comes along.
The key term here is "willingly" I think. Many specific technologies get legislation passed to restrict them - I'm not sure that this counts as "willingly". For example, many countries have laws that restrict or ban technologies because their environmental impacts are too severe. Short of the legislation the companies/individuals benefiting from the technology would usually be delighted to carry on. It's the classic case of "the tragedy of the commons" where the cost is born by the wider community, but the profit is in the hands of those who exploit it. Everyone has an incentive to run an extra cow on the common land, even if that makes the land overgrazed and unproductive.
Other examples given above - like use of nuclear weapons - are also not really "willingly". They are agreements that have been reached due to international treaties, where huge amounts of political pressure have been a factor.
On the "what is better" angle - "better" is highly subjective. There was a comment above about societies abandoning agriculture. I haven't read that literature but I might suggest that it was "better" for their circumstances.
One specific case I do know of where societies have abandoned technologies is in early human history. So communities - particularly those living on islands or otherwise remote populations - lost their technology over subsequent generations. The theory was that a certain population size is needed to maintain skills and specialisation, and when populations were too small technological innovation stopped or went backwards. The book "The Rational Optimist" explores these ideas (I have issues with some of the authors conclusions about more modern events).
But while I was researching impacted crops, I came across stories of other people's chickens having eaten too much long grass and it getting twisted up and stuck in the crop. Obviously that doesn't usually happen, but I just wanted to let readers know about the possible risk so that they can watch out for it and intervene if they see a problem.