r ranson wrote:if there is a zipper, how do you stop it from scratching the phone going in and out?

By design - some coats have a flap on the inside that stops the zipper from catching one's clothing. #2 son had zip-off pants where there was essentially a flap both inside and out that one side of the zipper was inside of (which would be the deep part of the case), and the other half slid inside of it.

If you make the outer edge square, you can also put pieces of heat-treated packing skid flat on the ground and run your mower right on the edge of it most times. The grass, if it's unruly like mine, will start to encroach, but the trimmer ought to be able to knock it back fairly quickly. At least you wouldn't have to use it every time.

I like Traces suggestion of comfrey - I've got some near a plum tree and the part of the lawn it's adjacent to, is definitely easy to mow. I don't worry if I catch the odd leaf. It can be chopped periodically either for mulch or to support your compost. My Rhubarb tends to die back in the summer - it's not in a place I'd water, so it may depend on your climate.

Personally, I'd go for wood before anything plastic. At least if the wood decomposes, you can make a hugel out of it. Plastic leaves a lot of "plastic dust" around.

Kena Landry wrote:

It needs to be raised at least one foot, since there are moderate concerns of lead traces in my soil

 If you aren't in a rush, growing sunflowers on that area for a couple of years, and then sending them to the dump, could get the lead down to a happier level. Sunflowers are used a lot in Britain for decontaminating old industrial sites from lead.

Diane, the link didn't seem to have a price (claimed it was not available) but if you can afford it, I'd suggest you buy two. If you got two, and put a little fencing across inside at about the halfway point, you'd be able to rotate your chickens back and forth in one a week or two at a time, and plant annuals in the other. Then the following year, reverse the "plant one" and the "chicken one". Fertility would be ensured and chicken safely would be decent so long as you make sure nothing can dig under the bottom. You'd still need a secure coop, as it is unclear the size of the mesh - racoon can get a paw through chain-link size and mink can get through anything more than 1 inch.  

Yes - I'd love such a thing, and they claim they ship to Canada, but the mark-up would be huge. I totally agree that deer and bunnies can ruin the joy of gardening!
I genuinely wish you to do what pleases your heart!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I proudly demonstrated, for my darling wife, my new magnificent tying technique and nugget of great wisdom and ...  as soon as I started to display the magical second loop, she said "oh yeah, just wrap it around twice." She's a teacher. She knows things.

I suppose it never occurred to you to ask your wife before asking permies.... hmmm... I hope you didn't admit that to your wife!!!

For much of my life, I didn't know how either. It's one of those things that you just have to be in the right situation to discover.

So many of us don't want velcro.  What are our options?

1. Design it so it doesn't need a closure - think of pillows that have a flap that gives enough for the pillow to go in, but doesn't easily let the pillow fall out. If that isn't clear, I'll try harder!

2. A loop or a button hole and a large button. A loop sticking off a flap takes less space and you can see the button better. I use these on my son's coats all the time.

3. A zipper:  needs to be decent quality as it will get a lot of use. Does do a good job of keeping dirt out.

4. Two strings to tie it - I think it would be annoying.

5. A draw-string type bag with a spring toggle. Might work, but wouldn't look very professional.

6. A magnet closure - Hubbies first cell phone had a flap with a magnet and the body of the case had some metal in it. Worked great, looked neat, but one doesn't want it near charge cards etc!!!

ETA:
7. Ekaterina posted a wonderful example of a medieval bag clasp a couple posts down - leather strap through a leather loop - simple and effective!

What have I missed, everyone???

Not sure this will help. I've got rhubarb growing where I can't mow and grasses are naturally returning from when I mulched and planted the area years ago. We want the rhubarb to do well, so when I pick it, I intentionally lay the large leaves I remove down flat around the edge of the plant as a mulch. Rhubarb's a heavy feeder, so I also put leafy mulch around it in the winter, have a Goumi bush near-by, and give it the "P" treatment occasionally.

Do you mean that you planted rhubarb and now want pasture to return? Or did something "rhubarb-like" show up in your pasture? If so, have you confirmed it's rhubarb? We have burdock here (root is good medicinally and helps break up clay and chickens will eat some of the leaves, but not their favorite). It has similarities to rhubarb, but is definitely a different plant - hairier for one, paler stock colour, and yes, a more upright growth pattern. Its seed pods are what inspired velcro, and can be quite annoying, so I'm trying not to  let too much go to seed. However, as a mulch, compost additive, clay buster, and soil builder, I'm not prepared to eliminate it at the moment. People with sheep do!

ETA - do you want me to take pictures of each and post them?

Hubby has been complaining that the belt holder (a respectable brand) for his phone isn't secure enough and the phone comes unclipped at times. He noticed that I'd sewn a side pocket (like a cargo pocket) on my winter farm pants and wondered if I should add them to his farm jeans. Jeans are fairly easy to match the fabric to, and farm pants are exactly "high fashion".

Making a custom bag with a strap that the belt can feed through is certainly doable. I'd want to use fairly heavy fabric.

Edward Norton wrote:

I also know that the best time to plant trees was last year and the second best time is now. So not planting trees this year is doubly painful.

Around here, the best time to plant a tree is the fall. As much as renovating is the priority, if there are some trees you know you love, consider pushing a few seeds into dirt just as a break!

After a couple of popular TV show showed wealthy people eating outdoors, "outside rooms" became a fashion statement. Fast Fashion in clothing is extremely hard on the environment, and the outdoor furniture version is no different. It's pretty much all short-cycle artificial fabric full of artificial foam.

If you have, or can find, *any* sort of outdoor chair (or indoor chair that won't be hurt by rain/dew/sun) that fits you comfortably without any cushions, that is awesome. I, for one, am not so lucky. All my outdoor furniture is a compromise for my body, as is a friend's who I often dine outdoors with. When she replaced her cushions due to them wearing out after 15+ years, she bought a matching throw cushion for me to put behind me so that I'd be able to sit with them to eat. "Too deep" is common for me and "back support" in exactly the wrong place or simply totally lacking is equally common, but both problems can be fixed with the right size and shape of cushion behind me.

There's a whole thread full of cool ideas of how to refurbish outdoor chairs that had some sort of strapping on them. The OP was amazed at all the great ideas and decided to try more than one of them.  https://permies.com/t/178119/suggestions-refurbish-older-lawn-chairs

At the very least, permies know they can build better than what the fashion people insist you need in order to "keep up with the _________ " . Learning to ignore ads and subtle "promotion" is a life skill many of us struggle with. Many permies are winning that struggle!

There's a reason I refer to Mallard domesticated ducks as "Noisy Ducks". Cayuga's are thought to have some Mallard in them. From M's experience, at least behaviorally!

I agree with what's written.  I have Khaki Campbell and K-C X's, but they adore foraging in grass still damp for dew or rain because that's what brings the bugs and slugs out of hiding. Most animals are smart enough to forage in the dawn and dusk periods and nap in the middle of the day, except when they're ducks and decide it's bath-time. That doesn't work as well for me, but it sounds as if M has one duck with a particularly bossy determined personality. She may have taken on the dominant role if you don't have a drake (which unlike roosters, are actually quieter than the females!)

If you have a way of checking in casually with neighbors as to whether they're being bothered, that might be a good thing. Explaining it in terms that they're responding to the longer light levels of being almost at the solstice, and should shift back as the days start getting shorter again, may help people accept the situation better. Planting shrubs and trees that will block the early east summer sun (but not necessarily the fall east sun) from waking them might help for next year if you think you won't have relocated by then.

There are pros and cons to relocating to a rural home. With transportation prices skyrocketing, a city home with enough land to grow some animals and a chunk of your food, but still be closer to services, has value. Toby Hemenway's books give a great example of that.

Cristo Balete wrote:

Mowing or string-trimming the weeds will turn it all into mulch.  Try to do it before they get seed heads.  It doesn't get rid of them, but think of it as harvesting mulch.  

Actually, if you start to see the weeds as "part of the solution", leaving some to seed is a great way to attract helpful birds to your land. Many of the seed eaters are also bug eaters.

And wrote:

Have at least one sitting area out in the garden, a "destination" away from the house.  Try to use it!! Ha!  (that's my problem!)

I just couldn't resist...

Cristo Balete wrote:Kena, would it be possible to post a picture of how you repair jeans?   I can't believe how fast pants wear out these days, and the iron-on patches don't work worth beans....thanks.

I admit I avoid iron-on like the plague. I've met the odd person who seems to like them - maybe they found a brand that genuinely works or have an iron that truly fuses them, but I'll stick to mending with needle and thread.

Cristo, I'd suggest you check out this thread for lots of great ideas and pretty pictures : https://permies.com/t/54406/sewing/fiber-arts/mending-clothes

A lovely thread started by R Ranson about advanced mending where you don't want it to show can be found here: https://permies.com/t/152662/ungarbage/invisibly-mended-cloth

And for those of you who like to be rewarded for learning how to do what our Great Grandmothers learned by age 5, there are plenty of mending BB's available in the textiles portion of SKiP : https://permies.com/wiki/101129/pep-textiles/PEP-Badge-Textiles  

Many people don't know, or are only just discovering, how damaging the modern textile industry is on the environment. Just like "growing your own veggies" helps the planet by reducing the food miles your food travels and improves the nutritional value, sewing, upcycling, mending, and caring for clothing so that it lasts is a concrete contribution you can make to living lighter on the land.

Angelika Maier wrote:I like watching interviews and shows. All what I am doing is hand sewing with fabrics from the op shop.

I grew up machine sewing and was never taught to hand-sew efficiently. Lately, I've been watching some of the period clothing videos, and that got me looking at how to hand stitch. I can hand stitch for a 1/2 hour in an evening and feel like a project made progress, and I'm a convert. Particularly if I'm renovating or repairing something, hand stitching may be just as fast as trying to machine sew through a narrow gap. The fact that I don't actually need much clothes helps - it's not like I'm going places daily where I need to be "fashionable" - my ducks don't care!

I read here on permies about a "sewing bird" for holding one part of the fabric for easier hand sewing. I use a spring clamp from my workshop!

I will go to the machine for bigger tasks and straight lines, but hand sewing is quiet and portable. That said, I did challenge myself to sew an entire shirt by hand, which you can see here: https://permies.com/t/154258/sewing/fiber-arts/Clothing-patterns-based-rectangles

I tend to agree that the problem is the solution. Of course, the deer might disappear as soon as hunting season opens! Seriously though, too many people "feed the cute deer" and it leads to what you're dealing with and it's dangerous as well as annoying. I can promise that if you learn to process a deer properly, they taste just fine, and if you don't have a lot of neighbors or the Gov't spraying toxic gick, they're organic also. If you team up with a local who hunts, that can help. That's what I've done. He's a whiz with a cross bow, so it's quiet also.

There are lots of threads here on permies about different options for deer fencing. I would consider having a mix of deer-proof zones and deer access zones if you have the space. If there's lots of wild food in the area, planting yucky tasting plants to redirect them away from things you like might work. However, if food becomes short, the only way to keep some for yourself will be with secure fencing.

Welcome to permies, Shari! I totally hear you about the "overwhelm", particularly when it also involves a lot of shade.

It would really help if you gave us some indication of what your soil is like - clay/sand/rocky with lots or little organic matter.  Also some indication of your garden zone which at least gives us some idea of your likely temperature extremes.

I agree with Nathanael about working on identifying what's already on your land and the land around you. 3/4 acres inside a forest is not that big of a clearing. Identifying parts of it as "swampy" could mean many things, one being to look at potential water plants that are edible, such as cattails, and actually encouraging part of the land to be wet year round.

I'm glad you've figured out the hugel beds and are getting some useful food from them. You mention overwhelming weeds, but an amazing number of weeds are actually edible if you identify them and search for recipes that tell you how to cook the ones you have. At the very least, many of them will build your soil if you find ways to manage them. The type of weed can also give you hints as to what crops might do well. Just this year I learned that Fawn Lily (Erythronium) are edible and were considered a food crop by the local Indigenous People. There are different varieties growing all across Canada, and they certainly like forested areas.

The big danger of living within a "forest" is the ever increasing risk of wild fire. It would be good to asses that risk, identify the most likely direction it would come from if that's possible, and consider ways to "fire proof" your buildings and property. Hugels could potentially redirect a fire for instance.

You mention poplar trees in your front yard. They are a pioneer tree and only live about 50 years. How old do you think yours are? Removing those and replacing them with something that produces food such as fruit or nut trees might be an option. If you want your front lawn to look "pretty", there are some great ideas about "edible landscaping" which works with a permaculture approach. For example, I grow Day Lilies in my front bed and the pods and shoots are great added to stir fries.

What sort of wild "friends" will you need to cope with? I'd also work on learning that. Just because you don't see them on your land, as they say, "if you build it, they will come." That would certainly include racoon, deer, squirrels and many others, depending on your plant choices!

A "food forest" and  "Mother Nature's forest" have significantly different characteristics.

A mature Mother Nature Forest in my area has many very tall overstory trees, and minimal sun on the forest floor, so not a lot of understory plants, although with weather weirding, the overstory trees are in decline and thinning and letting much more light through. Some Indigenous managed forests were like this to facilitate human movement and hunting prior to European diseases arriving.

Most of the human food trees are edge plants, pioneer plants, and shrubby plants with the exception of nut trees like Oak, Walnut, Chestnut etc. So a human food forest is shorter and most of the trees aren't designed to compete and produce in the shade of tall overstory trees.

So step one would be to identify what trees are already growing in the forest you plan to convert. If you can do what Ben suggested and simply thin the south edge and grow south from there, that would work, but I'm not sure that's what you're asking.

What size is the existing forest? How old are its trees (approximately)? Are you prepared to remove some of them to create small open spaces for berry bushes and shorter trees?

Granted, I'm in the Pacific North Coastal area and our "native" trees - Cedar, fir, big leaf maple etc are 75 ft or higher. The huge trees near the coast further south - Giant Sequoia - are so tall that they have trees growing in their canopy and are an entire ecosystem in themselves! Planting an apple tree in the middle of a forest like mine would likely have minimal success. However, a former owner cleared a bunch of trees up a south facing slope in an effort to get a well drilling truck in. I'm now replanting the edges of that swath with apple, currents, seaberry, strawberries etc. I'll watch for and remove any baby Doug Fir that try to establish themselves. There are a few large trees that may also have to come down before I expand to the west.

Jen Fulkerson wrote:

My plan was to use black duck tape to block the light, and spray paint white so it won't absorb the heat.

Have you considered using something like the aluminum covered bubble wrap? You'd need something secure over it so the hens don't peck at it. Pictures of what you're using would be helpful. I sounds as if the nipple one is a bucket, so not too many curves to worry about. Finding a slightly larger bucket and removing most of the bottom so that the water bucket with the nipples fit inside the bigger bucket with insulation between might work.

Carla Burke wrote:Yup, it most likely, is Citronella, but I only ever see it labeled 'Mosquito Plant", lol.

And down the rabbit hole I tumble...
First stop: https://www.seedman.com/pest.htm

Agastache cana is called Mosquito Plant and is a hardy perennial - sounds awesome from the description on the website above

Citronella (Mina lobata) a rare variety of Mina Lobata with bright citrus yellow flowers - easy to grow

Citronella Balm (Melissa officinalis Citronella) - a hardy mint with a citronella smell

Citrodora Eucalyptus ( Eucalyptus citrodora ) commonly known as "lemon bush" - needs full sun

Those seemed to be the ones recommended specifically as Mosquito repelling plants - the list had others, but probably weren't the ones Carla had seen in stores.
Seems that chasing off mosquitoes is a popular subject around the world! Several of the non-citronella smelling plants that Carla mentioned were further down on the link above.

source

Passengers on a small commuter plane were waiting for the flight to leave. They were getting a little impatient, but the airport staff assured them that the pilots would be there soon.

Finally, two men dressed in pilot uniforms walked up the aisle. Both wore dark glasses, one was using a seeing-eye dog, and the other was tapping his way up the aisle with a cane. Nervous laughter spread through the cabin but the men entered the cockpit, closed the door, and started up the engines.

The passengers glanced nervously around, searching for some sign that this was just a little practical joke. None was forthcoming. The plane moved faster and faster down the runway, and the people at the windows realized that they were headed straight for the water at the edge of the airport.

As people see the water approaching, panicked screams filled the cabin, but at that moment the plane lifted smoothly into the air. The passengers relaxed and laughed a little sheepishly, and soon they all retreated into their magazines, secure in the knowledge that the plane was in good hands.

In the cockpit, the pilot turned to the co-pilot and said, “You know, Bob, one of these days, they’re gonna scream too late, and we’re all gonna die!”

You know I love water jokes.

Wastewater jokes aren’t my absolute favorite, but they’re a solid #2.

What did the rain drop feel when it hit the window?

The pane.

I sooo... wish my property had a cave large enough to secure as a "cold cellar". There are so many things I would put in such a place.

The right sort of cave with appropriate access enclosed keeps the temperature very steady in my ecosystem. I've debated at times choosing a spot and using my rock drill to create such a thing, but it would be a huge job and I've got less time-consuming projects to work on!

I have a friend who detests mosquitos. I wish she'd be creative like this about upscaling something for her deck, rather than whining about not being able to find something commercial that will fit the location (a deck with roof overhang impinging on it and a spouse who's over 6 feet tall).

My mom had a mesh cover that fit over their table umbrella. It was waited down with sand bags at the bottom edge or they found mosquitos made it in. I wonder if John's suggestion of Peppermint essential oil would have done the trick. I believe I've got peppermint growing up property. I'm sure somewhere here on permies there will be instructions of how to make it???

Mow - really??? It's been so wet where I am, it's been really hard to get the grass dry enough to mow. I mowed one area and by the time we had another "window of opportunity", it really needed it again, but other areas were over a ft tall. One day I was so glad that I got 2 smaller areas done and was working on a 3rd when I got rained out. A lot of my areas are relatively small with lots of obstacles. I'd like to try a scythe to see if I could use it for even some of the areas, because from what I've read, a scythe cuts better if there's at least some dew on the grass. We get a *lot* of dew.

So yes, lots of grass this year. Too wet here to make hay out of it. It would make decent compost if I had some browns to mix with it!

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Sooo... if one was given unwashed eggs that were left unrefridgerated and reached 40* F and now have also reached 85* F this spring... likely condensation has happened. What are the chances that the eggs are still good?

Questions, questions, questions:
1. so how old altogether are these eggs?
2. have you been rotating them regularly ( If they're in paper cartons, this can be as easy as turning the whole carton upside down)?
3. how clean were the eggs? Visibly dirty? Looked almost as clean as grocery store eggs?
4. what do you plan to do with the eggs?

So, 40* F is pretty much refrigerator temps, so they hardly qualify as "unrefrigerated". However, if the temperature rise happened very gradually and slowly, you may not have gotten much condensation happening.

85* F is a *lot* higher than I'm comfortable with - clearly if this is going to happen a lot, there's a need for some sort of a cold-cellar type set-up. Depending on your ecosystem, I've seen things as simple as a deep hole lined with a pipe and some home-made holders that allow foods to be lowered down on a rope - ideally on the north side of a slope or building so little sun hits the top. I've been hoping to try the "garbage can" cold cellar idea, but I'm getting too old to be bending down into things and so far I haven't found an ideal slope. However, the concept still won't work if not designed for airflow, vermin exclusion, and simplicity.  People with natural springs don't know how blessed they are! A simple spring-water redirecting system could easily get you down to the 50's F.

If your plan is to cook them thoroughly, that would kill most of the bacteria I'd be concerned with. I would crack one into a small bowl, and if it looks and smells fine, I'd use it, then I'd crack the next one into the small bowl, and do the same, etc, etc. Your nose and your eyes together should be a good judge. If you've ever "candled" eggs with a flashlight, you could do that first to weed out anything seriously ugly, but if you've never done so before, you might not know what you're looking for.

There's no, "one right answer" to this question - just a bunch of "maybe's"!

R ranson wrote:

Looks like they have a bust version in my size and I could grade the pattern down.

It looks to me like a classic pattern that is never *really* out of style unless you're an expert that notices every little detail. You could use it as inspiration at least.

And wrote:

But I'm still temped to make a sloper and use the class to draft a coat pattern.  

With your unique body dimensions, it seems a bit of a waste to me to spend money on a pattern then have to totally change large parts of it. It's different if one only has to change length or add a little width, you will want to change how the whole thing drapes to conform to your body. Personally, I think you've done enough at this point, that with a class to support you, you will manage! The patter could always be "Plan B"!

I've been working my way through the document from the Yukon. The review of different animal fibres and their benefits/characteristics was interesting.

However, the following two quotes caught my eye:

Other Mini-Mills across Canada process a variety of fibres to varying extents and all of the mills are working at maximum capacity in terms of demand.
These mills are limited by low processing capacity, the low price for this processing and the high initial cost of the machinery and related infrastructure.

Unsurprisingly, affordability and accessibility are issues!

The continental US has seen a surge in the use of Mini-Mill equipment for onfarm processing of fibre, but time will tell how well they survive.

It would be great to see an update in those statistics. It sounds like an effort to diversify farms, and produce "value added" products, but if your love is for "farming", is this a value-added direction that gives someone involved in the farm a sense of accomplishment?

That said, if many farmers bought equipment and then gave up on it, might it be available at a lower cost than new, making it more affordable to whomever wants to try to get a local product off the ground? From some of the pictures I've seen, it seems the machinery is too heavy and complex to try the "on farm processing" that has been tried in some places for meat processing. Have a big trailer that gets hauled from farm to farm and processing happens on site. (Actually, I recall there was someone doing that for cider in the BC interior at one point - maybe still!)

Faye Streiff wrote:

Weasels managed to spread the wire and get in and killed all the chickens.

We have mink, which are close relatives, and they're natural prey is rats. If they find a rat's nest, they go in and kill everything, then keep coming back for meals from this "larder". Thus, if they get in with chickens, they kill everything, and it's pretty devastating. They're also difficult to catch, but once they've attacked and killed chickens, I feel I have no choice as they will start targeting all the neighborhood coops, and they're smart enough to get through almost anything a rat can get through.

Defense: 1) moving chickens from area to area seems to help, but that approach has downsides too.
2) keeping chicken feed under control so that rats aren't attracted seems to help a lot also.

And wrote:

The bottom wire rusted out from the cement and contact with dirt.

This is a major issue in my ecosystem.
1) Using as heavy a gauge wire as possible can help.
2) One of my plans is to build concrete footings and knee walls as the border, but leave the center dirt floor. This would keep the wire at the edge out of the wet and dirt. Chickens scratch and if the run isn't level, the bedding/dirt will move to the low end with gravity. In one shelter area we've got, I put a 2 1/2' tall fence across about 4 feet from the steep end, so they at least couldn't kick that dirt 15 ft to the other end! I haven't gotten to build this yet, but I've seen others do so successfully. I've got a lot of trees, and a LOT of rocks, neither which make digging easy!

And wrote:

Then I tried chicken tractors, small ones, made with chicken wire.

Coons can do that, and I'm sure many others can also. Rabbits can chew through most chicken wire! We have stopped using it. 1/2" hardware cloth is harder to work with, and I'm sure in my climate it will rust also, but in the short-term, it's doing a much better job than modern chicken wire. I was given some antique chicken wire - wow! you can see the difference in how much thicker the wire is. Modern "chicken wire" will keep chickens in, but absolutely nothing out from our recent experience!

And wrote:

Tried the “feather fencing” electric fence.

We've tried this also - on our rocky soil, once the drought hit, it's a much bigger pain to move than most people admit. The farms I've seen using it, usually have a group of 3-5 workers doing the move, which makes the job *much* more efficient because they can help keep things from tangling. However, as you found, it does nothing for aerial predators and they're smart. I agree - those predators are too important for managing rodents of all types to interfere with them. Yes, any sort of fluttery things I've seen need regular management and you have to have a variety which you keep switching with to keep the aerial predators off their stride. I'm currently using that plastic deer fencing over the top of two runs. The first run moves every three days, but that wasn't enough to stop Ravens from deciding they could harvest the ducks. The deer fencing is light enough for me to move, and is supported in the center by a 6 ft tripod I made from some of my bamboo, but that run was already too time consuming and the deer fencing has made it worse.

And wrote:

Moved the girls to a hoop house made of cattle panels, with extra chicken wire on the outside to prevent anything coming through those wide spaces.  

I hear so many wonderful things about cattle panels... sigh... not made here and not imported unless one's willing to pay upwards of $100 Can/panel. Ouch! As above, I'd save up and replace the chicken wire with hardware cloth, particularly the bottom 4 ft . I'd also consider adding some insulators and electric fence wire to the outside near the bottom - we use two rows on our 10x12 portable shelters. I've also taken sections of damaged aluminum ladders, covered them with hardware cloth and set them flat on the ground on the inside or outside of runs so that if something wants to dig in, they've got the width of the ladder they have to dig. However, mink can and will tunnel that far if they've already had a taste of chicken.

Faye, you haven't mentioned how many birds you're talking about. Multi-layered defenses are always a good approach, particularly when one considers that there are many things that like eating chickens. If your property is large enough, having different housing in different places for different seasons may be helpful.

Also, many people leave chicken feed out all day for their birds. If you raise or remove feed for parts of the day, this will encourage the girls to clean up any spilled feed, which helps with the "don't attract rats" part of the equation. In some of our shelters, we hang the feeder above the perches, which gives the hens a better chance of defending it from rats. This doesn't help when we've got ducks involved, as Khaki Campbells are useless at getting up on a perch! (but they're easier to herd than chickens as they're 'goupies'.)

Keeping chickens safe is an ongoing, creative process. Just changing things up for a month - like taking animals to their "summer" pasture - can help throw predators off their stride and encourage them to stick with wild prey, which is what we want them to do.

Ian Wright wrote:Ive been havin the same issue. And i dont wanna pick up and secure my exterior skirt everyday like i have been. Ive been toying with the idea of an angled interior wall to the tractor. So even if they do dig under their paws will only be able to get to a dead space inaccessible by chickens with the inside edge being out of reach from predator's digging under from exterior.

So like a 45 degree from outside wall to ground wall with corrugated metal inside so chickens cant enter the dead space? Idk what yall think?

At times I've done something similar in that we wrap dog X-pen fencing around a chicken tractor leaving a 3" gap or so. What you're suggesting sounds like it would do a similar thing. Corrugated metal sounds heavier than what you'd need - hardware cloth might be enough so long as you've got enough of a gap that a coon can't reach under.

At one point I tripped over a company in Nova Scotia that's making small batch processing machinery. Bigger than "hobby sized" but not by much. It was designed to be more efficient than processing completely by hand.

People are so used to cheap products produced off-shore by people forced to work for pennies/day. I've said for a long time that we need an entire new economic system that doesn't reward "big". The Industrial Revolution rewarded "big" and we're paying the price in all sorts of ways, small farms and small businesses being only two of them.

This might have been it: https://tapindustries.ca/   However, they specifically have flax processing equipment, not wool - I had a friend interested in growing flax, so I suspect my memory is the issue

This is larger than what I saw before: https://minimills.net/   But this is for wool.

While looking, I tripped over this: https://www.yukonfood.com/FibreMillReport.pdf
It's from 2007 - have you read it?

I think those are all good moves, Dave, particularly thinking to check locally for a few "extras" for your hen.

For future reference, I always try to put broodies in "lockdown" so the problem like the shifted nest can't happen. For a chicken, you need space for feed, water, space out of the "nest" to poop in, and sufficient climate control that the eggs won't die from heat.  It can be as simple as a free dog crate - although I find a wooden box better for controlling heat and humidity.  It is important to be sure that newly hatched chicks have no way out - so mesh areas should be 1/4" hardware cloth for ventilation and for you to see in enough to check on things without disturbing mom too much.

Dave, how many chicks does she have? Just the two you mention, or did more hatch? If it's been 2 days since the last chick hatched, I'd absolutely remove the rest. You could candle them as you go (pretty much any flashlight will do), and check for pipping (a peck in the shell from the inside out), and smell for "rotten", because there's no law saying you can't change your mind, but a first time chicken mom sometimes had difficulty giving up on the duds, and you do want her paying attention to and looking after the live chicks.

Chickens, and even more so, Muscovy ducks, seem to be pre-programmed for "this number of chicks/ducklings is enough". If they have a really poor hatch, the transition is harder, and I've often had moms with single ducks hatch pretty much refuse to give up.

I was going to quote the same statement from Dr. Redhawk! I too am struggling with browns.

1. Some years I am lucky enough  to get leaves that fall in a concentrated enough area (rather than blown a kilometer away by coming down in high winds), but the only reliable source are Big Leaf Maple. It gets that name for a reason! Even adding a thin layer to a chicken operated compost, I found it went anaerobic by creating a solid mat between whatever was there before adding and whatever got added after.

2. Hay is pricey here, but it's also not really a "brown". If it was, it wouldn't feed animals. Straw *is* a brown, but it's even pricier! I have been trying to make my own straw by planting some small patches of wheat. I need a different straw crop or different planting system with weather weirding. The rains have been coming earlier in the fall so the last 2 times I tried to fall plant, it got eaten by bugs faster than it could grow. I tried in Feb this year, and out of more than 200 seeds, I think 4 germinated - we had twice February's average rainfall this year.

3. I can get large quantities of brown paper or cardboard. How much of an issue do we think residual chemicals are in brown paper? I'm sure there are some, but the trees shouldn't have had huge amounts of nasty stuff around them (yes, some aerial spraying is done in my country, but compared to the size of a tree, does anyone know how bad it is likely to be?) It's a waste stream at least.

4. We chip and shred a certain amount of downed branches from our own property and some friends. Most of this goes to animal bedding. From there, I do transfer some of it to my compost, but the issues are: A) I'm now adding more nitrogen - not easy to judge how much more compared to the volume of wood chips. B) wood chips have a lot of lignin. My understanding is that only certain critters will break down lignin and they take a long time to do so. So are the wood chips actually adding useful browns if I need carbon *now*? C) As already mentioned, wood takes a long time to decompose - maybe - in my wet climate, it's faster than in some places. Since partially decomposed wood acts like a sponge to hold water in my garden, the real issue with wood is that supposedly it will lock up the nitrogen so plants won't grow so well. Really? My problem is too much nitrogen, isn't it? So should I stop fretting and let my nose be the judge?

5. Saw dust - basically a smaller version of wood chips. Will smaller mean it will decompose faster? I do try to add sawdust and biochar to the bag when I need to bury a dead bird in the hope that any liquid/smell of the decomposition will be absorbed and composted and not run off.

6. Coffee sacks from a local organic coffee importer. These are purchased, but are $20 Canadian for 150 or more, so quite affordable (4'x7' trailer 1 ft deep). They do decompose, but they are closed with a nylon stitching at one end which I religiously remove because it does *not* decompose. They are supposed to be organic. They are great for putting down in the brooder when Hubby gets meat chicks. I use them to line nest boxes for the chickens with wood chips on top. I use them on paths to make our clay less slippery in the winter. If they're the best I can do for "brown" in my compost, should I be taking the time to cut them up small enough to use them? They don't have to be super small, but larger than 6"x6" may make it difficult if they don't decompose as fast as everything else and I need to shovel it around. If that's the best of the options I've listed above, maybe sticking them in whole with greens in between would simply mean that I leave the compost until they've broken down.

As Tereza and L have said, finding browns is a problem for some of us. I've got an old gardening book, and the author specifically encouraged people to "grow browns", but the two he mentioned were wheat and corn and I haven't had much luck with either in my climate. What other "browns" might be easy to grow in the Northern Pacific Wet Coast?

Heather Staas wrote:
Now I'm looking at #9 and hoping some grumpy person afraid of new things doesn't complain that my "organic mulch"  is really "organic debris"  LOL.  

Hey, I brought that debris in from home,  it's special!  

I admit I *was* wondering about that! If I knew they were going to till it in the fall anyway, I'd actually want to dump a bunch of leaves on top just before they did so all that extra carbon would get stirred into the soil. Alternatively, I'd want to ask permission to add a layer of leaves *after* tilling to protect the soil all winter.

There's not just a bunch of teaching by example you can do with your fellow gardeners. Maybe you will be able to change the organizer's approach with a bit of patience and explanation!

I admit I really wish more people in my area considered deer to be a renewable resource. If people would stop putting anything nasty on their grass/gardens, they'd even be an organic resource.

That said, they are both a blessing and a curse. New moms tend to "park" their fawns and go off to feed themselves. I totally considered it a blessing when one mom choose to do so by my comfrey patch that supports my espalier pear tree. At first I wasn't sure what I was seeing and had to really stop and focus to recognize it was a fawn. It was there for at least 3 hours.

Pierre Ma wrote:

So I need a real low-tech, lightweight, super simple design. BUT, I don't want to use just any black plastic container, because I now most plastics don't do well in direct sunlight (the plan is to reduce my elecricity consumption, not to add more microplastic to the world).

One thing to be aware of is that if the water doesn't get hot enough for long enough, it can act as an incubator for any bacteria that might have survived treatment (that's more or less what happened with Legionnaire's disease. That said, one can control for that with thoughtful design and use. For example, making sure the container you use gets *fully* emptied and solar heated to kill nasty stuff fairly frequently. Also, for washing greasy dishes, you could add "solar heated water" to an electric kettle to finish bringing it up to boiling to sterilize both the water and the dishes. This would still be more efficient than running an electric water heater continuously.

Also be aware that some hoses are considered "potable" and some not. Some hoses can have pretty nasty stuff in them and heat may encourage that stuff to enter the water more easily.

Since you've identified 20 liters, the suggestion of using an old propane tank and painting it black sounds promising. Putting it in some sort of box with glazing to multiply the sun's effect could extend the season and help get the temperature higher.

However, anytime water is being heated, beware of the risks of it going boom! Make sure you design in some sort of expansion room/overflow pipe with a place for the flow to go!

Teacher: “What’s the chemical formula for water?”

Student: “HIJKLMNO!”

Teacher: “What are you talking about?

Student: “Yesterday you said it’s H to O.”

John C Daley wrote:

I have never seen so much discussion about a roof!

Yes - I think it's awesome. I expect Coydon's learning a lot. It always amazes me what ideas people can come up with. Some day, I would sooo... love to have a shed with a barrel roof.

@ Coydon: Is there a reason you're set on a "shed" roof?  Have you considered making it a gable roof? I've read somewhere that mechanically speaking, the gable roof is stronger than a shed roof. The fellow that built the log cabin up north years ago, used thin round wood rafter tightly set.