People have different personalities and some are genuine hermits.
Personally, I'm more impressed by people who live with/around others without succumbing to peer pressure to "buy more stuff" or the message "who cares if you use all that gas and electricity". They're the ones who's lifestyle can rub off on those around them. I've been doing that for a long time, starting with my very prim and proper co-worker who I convinced to hang her laundry - her excuse, "I can't let the neighbors see my underwear". I told her to hang her private stuff on a rack indoors, and hang her jeans outside - her neighbors have already seen her jeans! She gave me the funniest look and a few weeks later, bought a rack!
I'm going to expand on the "dogs shouldn't spend hours alone" theme.
Our neighbor's got an outside "guard" dog, but they were often at work, so they got a second dog to keep it company. One fall, a good friend of mine needed someone to trouble-shoot an intermittent electrical problem in their motor home, so it landed in our driveway so my husband could help (he's an electrical engineer by training and very good at trouble-shooting.)
Our driveway is about 20 feet from the lot-line which had a dense cedar hedge followed by a chain-link fence. The dogs would *not* shut up. If their owners had been there, they would have made them shut up, but with their people gone, it was virtually constant for hours while Hubby and my friend's husband or dad helped. At one point, my friend's husband threatened to go home and get his gun! That's how bad it was. If they stopped in response to me ordering them to be quiet, it only lasted 10 minutes. Finally, I had my kids entice them up property by going along the hedge and I jumped the fence and closed a gate behind them to keep them further up property. That helped for a while, but apparently, they could get over/under that fence.
The catch here was that the neighbors had *no* idea how bad it was when they weren't there. The dogs were fine when they were home. Most of the time, we weren't working in that area and they new me well enough to mostly "go lie down" when ordered. However, Hubby was working at that time, and the dogs didn't know Les or Alf at all, so it was a real problem.
The moral is - unless you've got a baby monitor turned on and some sort of recording device - you have no idea who your dogs are pissing off when you aren't home. So if neighbors are close, it's up to you to find that out and figure out how to fix the problem. The neighbor wasn't pleased with me locking his dogs up property until his wife explained the situation because at first he didn't believe how badly they behaved when he wasn't home.
PS: The fault Hubby finally found in the motor home could easily have caused a fire. My friend was totally freaked when she saw the melted wires that so easily could have killed her and/or her family.
Antonio, I'm afraid I will need to ask you some questions:
Can you get a good enough picture of your PDF floor plans to post them as pictures? Apparently if I try to embed them, they will no longer be able to be downloaded.
Do they have lots of measurements on them? Measurements would be helpful.
You use the term "biodynamic" which implies to me that you want natural materials. The issue is that then you have no insulation or thermal break. Thermal mass inside an insulated envelope helps to hold heat and release it gently (which is what makes RMH's keep an area warm for multiple days from a single firing. One older home I know, has lots of thermal mass but zero insulation, and it requires a lot of energy to both keep it warm and keep it cool. A different house I know has no thermal mass and it's quick to warm up, but equally quick to cool. The house I currently live in has a concrete basement floor with no insulation under the concrete - it will hold some heat from our wood-stove, but once it's cold, it takes a lot of time and wood to warm it back up. If the builders had put insulation under it, it would have made a huge difference. Those are the sorts of things you need to consider. I'm definitely in favor of thermal mass, but figuring out the where's and how's will be the challenge. I'm also in favor of natural materials, but I'm willing to compromise a little for the sake of efficient use of time and energy.
Having just watched a series about water security and ground water infiltration and storage, I would strongly recommend you consider how to manage rainfall. "Water gardens" designed to infiltrate water rather than letting it run off (Brad Lancaster's work is one example) is key, but looking at what's available as large, cost-effective water storage tanks on or in your land could make a big difference. With weather weirding, rainfall/drought is getting much harder to predict. Storing water in the soil is the cheapest approach, but if that water is going into an aquifer that others can access, you may find the water you so carefully infiltrated won't be there to help you. That is still better than just letting it run off, but I'm suggesting a two-pronged approach.
I think this field is changing so fast that what you're looking for may be a moving target.
That said, step one is always to find ways to reduce your need for energy as much as possible (for example, a well insulated house may have more embodied energy than a house with no insulation, but will use far less energy over the long term, so that up-front energy is worthwhile - and this it true for hot summers as well as cold winters).
Step two is to look for the shortest-cycle energy sources (for example using coppiced wood and branches to heat and cook with an RMH or rocket cooker).
Step three is to do your best to evaluate both the short term and long term environmental costs and benefits. People are coming up with some cool new sources of energy and better and less troublesome energy storage systems very rapidly. Some of the new systems are more appropriate for small systems, others for community level, and others for city level.
If you haven't run into this fellow's programs, many are very good and cover much of what you're asking:
https://www.justhaveathink.com/
- optimum temps in later vegetative phase is 20 – 24 °C, for flowering around 25 °C.
I will guess I will get nothing! In our 2 hottest months, we're lucky to get 22.4 C as the Max daily temp. I saw the "cool weather crop" and thought I had a chance. If they look happy in the spring, I may break down and put some row cover over them to boost the temp a little as much as I try to stay away from it.
I guess it will be back to growing Scarlet Runner beans for my bean dip. It's hard to get those large beans to dry in my climate, but the plants will be happy so long as I can keep the deer and bunnies at bay! I really like humus, but if they want 25C for flowering, that will likely take a lot of work with landracing them.
I was already picturing that your drive band might need to be shoe-lace licorice. I think it only comes in red or black, neither of which are ideal. Maybe someone else has a thought on that?
My sister used to heat sugar in a heavy fry-pan until the sugar melted and then would dip the edges of the pieces in the melted sugar and quickly stick them together. It cooled *very* fast and made a decently strong house. I suspect that's a version of what Skandi's suggested.
I'll be happy if I just manage to get cookies made this year - major building projects will be out of wood and glass! But I, too, would love to see what all of you come up with for building.
Unless I was in a big hurry for some reason I see no need at all for much equipment other than maybe a chain saw.
Hubby recently bought a battery chainsaw pole pruner. For fruit trees it might be really useful, as fruit trees will have been encouraged to grow "out" rather than "up". Being able to remove branches sticking out while standing on the ground could be useful.
Turning much of this into hugels seems like a good plan for at least parts of the property. However, I also agree with Dorothy Pohorelow's suggestion of watching the land for a year and just working on Zone 1 while doing so. You may decide to rewild parts of the land, in which case just pushing in lots of tree seeds and understory seeds around the dead trees will be all that's needed and save a lot of work in the short term. If you do decide to run animals, even dead branches give some shade.
As many have suggested, you need to decide if the dead trees are a resource or a problem. Permies are great at finding "the problem is the solution" responses!
1. A little info as to the ecosystem you're talking about would help - dry, rainy, temps, soil type, rocky - that sort of thing.
2. Do you have some idea of why all those trees died?
3. Is this a traditional orchard with full-sized standing trees (which would be the norm for cherries) or are there a bunch of posts to contend with?
4. Are you prepared to only tackle portions of it at a time, and use different techniques depending on the permaculture zone?
For example, I could see that for the further out zones, sticking tree seeds of various compatible varieties in rows on contour ignoring the dead trees and let them be standing for the birds and to gradually fall and feed the soil. In my ecosystem, standing and fallen dead trees become "nurse logs" to start new trees on. In some dry ecosystems, that dead wood would be dry for decades from what I've been told, so it's hard to suggest an approach.
r ranson wrote:With the price of butter going up quickly, is there a way to substitute with lard? It's going to be stale by the time it's eaten anyway, so might as while use the cheaper stuff.
I don't buy lard as I don't like the way most pigs are treated, however I'm happy to use Muscovy Duck fat or venison fat. I have some local lamb, but I tend to use that fat for Yorkshire pudding where the flavor is an asset. Organic coconut oil might also work, but it might not be any cheaper???
I think if your goal is about 12" tall, I'd just make mulitple layers and icing them together to get the strength. The spokes might have to be a little chunky rather than delicate, but I think if you make enough of them, it would hold together if you made the spokes and sandwiched them between two rings and two centers.
The good thing here is that if you start experimenting early and are prepared to eat your mistakes, you could try several options and decide which works/looks the best?
Jay your pepperkaker recipe (pepper cake) has no pepper in it!
I thought the same thing when my friend insisted we make it. It's apparently an old German recipe and since I've now got 3 friends who adore it just as it is, I will stick with it!
This is a recipe for a rolled and cut *very* crispy cookie:
Old Fashioned Pepparkakor
Bake @ 375F for 8-10 min
Sift together;
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp Baking soda
2 1/2 tsp ginger (I use fresh ginger finely grated because I like it better)
2 tsp cloves
3/4 tsp cardamom (this can be harder to find - I get it in the Indian spice section of our independent grocery and it is the whole seed which I powder in my spice grinder)
Add rind of 1 orange or lemon
Cream together:
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
Add :
1 unbeaten egg
3/4 cup molasses
Stir in dry ingredients gradually until thoroughly blended. Cover and chill overnight. (this is important!)
Dough may be used in small amounts and will keep for a week in the fridge.
Roll out on a well floured surface, 1/3 at a time to 1/8th inch thickness. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters and place on a greased cookie sheet.
I have not done a Gingerbread house with this recipe, as I'm past that stage. However, I did use this recipe to make Zombie Gingerbread for a friend and the picture is posted here: https://permies.com/t/25058/zombie-attacks-gardening#1028125
N. Neta wrote:As we’re looking on other properties for sale around us… most of them are surrounded with fields that used to (or are still used) to grow potatoes. For decades they were (still are) spraying roundup and other chemicals on those fields, and the fields that are not cultivated for years, are still empty from any vegetation…
This may be increasingly difficult to avoid. In fact, Mark Shepherd (Restoration Agriculture) did essentially that and Greg Judy (https://www.amazon.ca/Comeback-Farms-Rejuvenating-Livestock-Management/dp/0972159738) did a variation on that and has improved his land tremendously and is convincing other farmers to follow his example with spread-sheets that show that they will end up with more money in their pockets.
Without help, those empty fields will take longer to recover. If the land is that bad, step one would be as many wood-chips or dried leaves both inoculated with mushrooms and then planting the top layer of chips with *anything* that might grow. It certainly wouldn't be my first choice to own that land, but if people like us don't use the tools in our tool-boxes to help them recover, they may just continue to loose more and more topsoil.
I tried fall planting some garbanzo beans (often called "chickpeas" in my area) - of about 20 seeds, I think I've got 2 that have survived so far... sigh... As you mentioned, with weather weirding, we can't count on past patterns. Supposedly, my region is a "Mediterranean Climate" but I'm on the east side of a large Island off the west coast of Canada where there are some big ocean currents that can shift things year to year. Hopefully the ones you try planting will be more successful!
I have some Seabuckthorn growing. It tolerates pruning and is a nitrogen fixer, so it could be helpful as a salt-tolerant wind-break that might help you build soil. The improved fruiting varieties are supposed to be very nutritious, but I only just got a pair of females this year to give my male company - yes it's one of those plants who only produce flowers of a single sex, so if you want fruit, you need to make sure you've got both.
BC takes a different approach, and not as draconian.
We have what are called "farm taxes" which are *much, much* lower than "municipal property taxes". They are based on income before many expenses are deducted, so a moderate operation, for example, use space for a couple of cow/calf pairs with the calves being sold when market ready at 2 per year, and you're there. If you have a bad year, you might have to pay more in property tax, but you certainly wouldn't loose your home. You may rent out land for hay or to market gardeners and this is also allowed. They are tightening up on this rule because people keep buying farmland, putting up a McMansion, and having a just large enough chicken flock with a run to make the lower limit. So I do get where the Dept of Making us Sad is coming from.
So Robert, particularly with this being the beginning, I'd try to write a *very* informative and positive proposal about how a permaculture property that might not sell a lot of market goods, is building soil, reducing the owners global footprint and energy footprint. When we applied for farm taxes, it seemed that "preserving a healthy forest" wasn't considered using the land as "farmland", but this narrow point of view, doesn't consider that a forested area upslope of our field is supporting both surface water and our well water. People don't know this stuff - water comes out of a pipe and is treated with chlorine or it's not safe, doncha know? See yourself as an educator. Get other people in your ecosystem to help you generate ideas (this thread could be your "drafting area" if you want) and I strongly encourage you to focus on the "this is how you meet those goals in a healthy planet way", rather than in anger/how dare you do such a thing sort of way.
I did a similar thing with what our province calls the "OCP - Official Community Plan" which is pushing building more houses at a higher density, when we have no Family Doctors for our existing population and *no* food security. I sent them a letter stating all the things I could think of that would reduce the carbon footprint of our Municipality, and the feedback I got was, "wow - positive suggestions instead of just complaining". That means that at least it got noticed. Good luck!
I've heard of this sort of thing. It's the sort of situation that has pros and cons.
One way to make it a big pro would be to find a group of people you're compatible with, and all move to the same street - think subsidized planned community with permaculture principles! If you can buy open land as well as a house so your community can produce some quality food, that's a huge need.
Another way to make it a big pro would be to have an idea of how the people you're moving with can make money. Most of those towns are empty because the only factory shut down. Let's not repeat that cycle!
The big elephant in the room, is why do they need more people? If you can tame that elephant and provide quality of life for your group, even if it doesn't look like the fancy car life that is being sold as "it is your dream" when it's really my nightmare, this could provide cheap land that could turn into a permaculture hub for all the Gert's you could want.
It was mentioned over in the mending thread in the sewing forum, that at some point, clothing is done. Permies wear lots of jeans, so there are lots of pictures all over permies of creatively used old jeans fabric.
It was suggested that we have a specific thread to celebrate all the things permies have used jeans for!
Personally, I used them to make covers for my oven mitts. They're lasting *really* well!
I also made a pocket organizer wall hanging for a neighbor who needed a place by the door for her gardening gloves, twine, pruners etc.
So let's all think of cool uses and post pictures and instructions here, or if the info is posted elsewhere on permies, please provide a link to the post. Upcycling is near and dear to me and I can't wait to hear and see all the things people have done with old jeans.
...things to do to keep them from my orchard trees and the trees I'm going to use for bio-char fuel. Whew! Yes I can co-exist with them, I just had to change my focus.
Hmmm... I've seen some pretty impressive piles of chips from beavers chopping down trees that would be great for turning into biochar - Nature's chipper/shredder - so you may find them assisting you in unexpected ways!
Tereza Okava wrote:Please do! One of us has probably encountered whatever hurdle you're facing. I use a lot of old jeans for stuff, and I know I'm not the only one here.
Yes - someone used salvaged jeans to make a roof for his packing skid "yurt" guest room - I'm sure the picture's somewhere here on permies. Way better than using plastic tarp and not much difference from "canvas". People can think up all sorts of cool and practical ideas - the rest of the internet can do the floofy stuff!
If you have access to wood chips, inoculating them with mushroom such as Oyster mushrooms that are known for breaking down and sequestering nasty stuff, and then putting them in clumps to spread might be of some help.
Rio Rose wrote:Added bonus: we had record-breaking heat and wildfire to our doorstep this year, and came as close as anyone can to having it all go up in smoke. The creek bottom and newly expanded wetland was the only damp place for miles, and I was extremely grateful for it. As were the multitude of bears and other fire refugees who made temporary camps there!
I feel that the fire-mitigation benefits of beavers needs to be *much* better advertised. Too often people only see beavers "interfering" with their choice of land management without thinking about how to utilize the benefits the beavers choose to gift us! I'm not saying that humans don't have the right to try and "guide" the beavers to places we would prefer they build or "guide" them away from trees we'd prefer be left standing, but if humans can work with dogs and cats and cattle and poultry, we ought to be able to find a way to work with beavers.
I'm not sure who Jon Stewart is, or who exactly he's representing, or if he is just pointing out that hypocrisy is alive and well, but this story is not new - it's old - very, very old.
I've been reading " Animal, Vegetable, Junk, a History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal" by Mark Bittman and it talks a lot about who does the work vs who takes the risk vs who makes the money in the world of food and other grown products (like cotton). It's a bit depressing to read because it's been going on for so long (hundreds of years in North America - thousands of years if you start where farming began) and is so intrenched that permaculture is going to struggle to shift it (and some forces will try their hardest to not let it shift) and yet I feel for much of our farmland to heal, a shift is getting desperate.
Schools only teach the history they want their future workers to know - at least that was all I was taught!
Alas, I'm going to be another vote in favour of finding a way to use the beavers as an asset, rather than seeing them as a liability.
Are you in BC's interior? Water shortage and fires are increasing there due to a lack of beavers and too much monoculture. I would look at your land and figure out good places for them, and consider shifting them on your land rather than removing them as a first step.
If you gave us some ideas of what you want to do with the land, that might help with suggestions.
My first thought was: If the land is fairly flat where the beavers are damming, can you "unflatten" it by making a "chinampa" system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa My second thought was: If they're flooding flat land beside a "stream" that sounds like "flood plain" to me. Just because it hasn't flooded in recent memory, with the weather weirding we're having, it may flood when you don't want it to.
My third thought was to actually dig them a pond - beavers respond to the sound of moving water - if you give them a deeper area that their dam efforts will flood, and use a beaver-baffle to keep a water level you can both live with, you might be able to create a lot of useful "edge" and live cooperatively together.
Why does it need to have a valance? I’m really not a fan of valances
Most curtain rods stick out from the wall by 2-3" so that pleated curtains can slide along the rod to open and close. In those situations, what Carla said totally applies. However, the "valances" that were in our motor home were very simple wooden structures with the front upholstered - *no* tassels or frills I assure you! In fact I see no reason that it couldn't be a nicely sanded and oiled wood valance, although it might not seal as fully. Windows tend to set up convection currents - I think the idea is to prevent that.
I'm having a little trouble picturing what Trace Oswald suggested, unless the idea there was to leave the thermal curtain in place 24/7 rather than opening it for light during the day? If it was going to be opened and closed, I think I would attach the curtain to the frame and add a couple of handles to the frame (old drawer handles?) and make sure to put triangular supports in the corners. Grab the handles, pull it out and lean it on the wall when you want light. Push it back into the window frame at night. If the frame was a bit too loose to stay, an extra layer of a thick fabric in key spots would likely be enough to tighten it up.
The way I hung my Roman shades eliminates the air-flow at the top because the wooden 2" by 1 1/2" wood that it hangs from acts as the block. However, that doesn't stop the air moving in and out at the sides. Something along the lines of a "door snake for drafts", but hanging down each side might do the job? If it was long term, a wooden frame at the sides to fill in the gap would help a little, and I have seen houses where they actually have hinged boards that they close over the edges at night. By the time I was messing with that level of complication, I think I'd be making indoor, insulated wooden shutters which I'm beginning to seriously consider for my bedroom which was built by a previous owner who thought that sliding glass patio doors with a metal frame was fine on a north wall!
Personally it seems a little silly to try to make fiber from the top of a pineapple, but what do farmers/gardeners do with the plant itself?
The whole plant has leaves large enough to have genuine use for fiber. It seems similar to the plant from New Zealand that many people grow as an ornamental in North America. I recall it's perennial.
My sister grew a pineapple top indoors one winter - it's leaves were plenty long enough.
Getting fiber as a bi-product from food production or from perennial plants makes much more sense to me than abusing soil to grow all our clothing as a mono-culture or to use artificial materials which are toxic to produce and don't biodegrade into soil.
K Eilander wrote:The biggest problem we had was coming up with a good way to fasten them to the windows. Not to thread-jack, but if anybody has ideas on that, i'd appreciate it!
No matter how nice the drape is, it won't help if it's not hung!
The easiest I know of is a wooden rod that pinches the drape against the window frame and is held there by a few cup hooks.
Velcro isn't biodegradable, which is preferred here on permies, but for small drapes I hung before I was converted to permies, I installed a square wooden rod above the window frame and put the velcro on the top of it so the drape did a 90 degree bend, but that way you don't see the velcro.
Lee Valley tools has these neat screw in holders for rare earth magnets and I used some to hold insulation to a metal garage door that we didn't want to make inoperable. I always wondered if I could use a system like that for interior shutters of some sort? I'm *really* going to try that if I get some sort of a small greenhouse made.
Part of the issue is if you really need or want the drape to be held against the wall on all 4 sides. Just holding at the top still allows a fair bit of air flow, but that's still better than no drape at all, or something flimsy rather than several layers that slows air flow. Also of course is the issue of how much you feel willing or able to put holes in walls or add permanent fasteners to a window frame.
I have to learn that! Fantastic! Now time to start collecting old t-shirts.
Extra hint - decide where the carpet's going so that you collect t-shirts that blend together and with their planned home, and then mix the colours so that there's a semi-regular repetition rather than the carpet being blue at one end and red at the other, unless of course, that's the effect you're going for.
Tricks to using local stores to order things for you:
#1 - plan ahead so you're not in a rush! A small local gardening store has to pay for special seed orders, unless they're part of their regular order. I *always* stress that I'm happy to wait if they would simply add my request to their regular shipment.
#2 - buy stuff from them even when the big-box-store has it a dollar cheaper so they know you're a "regular". (I don't know how many times I tell people that if you don't buy from your local guy, you won't *have* a local guy when you need him.)
#3 - give them free publicity. In other words, tell your friends and enemies to buy from them because they're local, reliable, and a valuable part of your community.
Michelle Heath wrote:Oh and the terrycloth idea is good too! I'm toying with the idea of making a rag-style bathmat using old towels and cheap washcloths.
I have a simple woven mat on my bathroom floor I made with cotton warping thread and strips of fabric as the weft. It's been in daily used for over 20 years, goes through the wash on "delicate" and hangs to dry on a rack and is large enough, one doesn't have to worry about it slipping around. It could be done without a fancy loom - just a simple frame - although mine was done on one.
Hanging out here on permies, reading a cool idea, and thinking - that might just solve this problem I'm having. So I went ahead and tried it. However, it involves a plant, so unfortunately, I won't know if it works until next summer when it either does, or it doesn't. Good thing I Ok with delayed gratification!
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