permaculture tinkerers presentation

Rather than make a powerpoint, I decided to try something new:  make a long thread at permies.



"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."

-- Frank Zappa

deviation ->  deviate -> deviant

First, Kelda asked me to present 30 minutes on rocket mass heaters - easy enough, I have a two hour presentation I could condense.







This may be the most sustainable way to heat a conventional home.

And then I thought, well ... the wofati uses no heat whatsoever, so it is even more sustainable.  Maybe I should divide my presentation into two 15 minute presentations.





And then there is the experiment where last winter I cut 87% off of my electric heat bill by heating myself instead of heating the whole house:





Another approach to heat your home is the jean pain method. 

Which is closely related to the video I made about 500 hot showers from one small compost pile:



And since we are talking about Kelda, I know she doesn't like it when I try to steer people away from rain barrels and toward hugelkultur - or generally eliminating irritation by using permaculture:



Is it considered a "tinkering technology" if you take the steps to convert a dry gully to a year round creek?

That's five minutes per topic.

Yesterday morning I was drinking a bit of coffee and thinking about the presentation and how five minutes per topic is really not enough time to explain it, but to just make people aware of it. 

I was drinking from one of the old permies mugs riddled with obnoxious bits about permaculture technologies.



Maybe I could just make people aware of a plethora of technologies and leave them numb from information overload.  That would be entertaining for me.

6: raising chickens where the chickens self harvest their own feed, you don't need to clean poop and you can leave for up to ten days at a time.



7: An old technology that has been ignored because the knowledge was lost - a cast iron pan will be non-stick and last more than your lifetime with just a little knowledge.



8:  diatomaceous earth is an edible powder that you already (probably unknowingly) eat and is deadly to bugs.  There is nothing better for controlling fleas or bed bugs or many other insects.



9: lawn care can be 80% easier, cheaper and 100% organic with a little knowledge.  And then you can mix in all sorts of fun things.





10:  Here is a tiny home built for $50 39 years ago:

11:  here is that same guy with an even smaller place that was built 32 years ago for $15

12: same guy in north idaho with a special greenhouse design that gave him tomatoes in december with no added heat.  If the greenhouse wasn't so leaky, he might get his tomatoes to last all year.

13: speaking of greenhouses.  Here is a similar design, but heated with a rocket mass heater.

14:  using a rumford fireplace outdoors is so much smarter than an open fire pit

15: an old upright freezer converted to a solar powered food dehydrator

16:  "2005 called and they want their cob oven back" - until you see the double chamber cob oven.

17: two home scale DIY grain threshers

18: convert road kill to chicken feed with maggots

19: a walk in refrigerator made with a small insulted room and an air conditioner

20:  a scythe is faster, more precise and safer than a string trimmer.  (and cleaner, quieter, lighter and easier)

21:  slug control with a pile of rocks or branches

22: colony collapse disorder is only a problem if you don't respect the bees

23: bicycle panniers from kitty litter buckets

24:  lots and lots and lots of tiny houses and eco building techniques.  Here is a tour of a bunch of tiny cob homes designed by the author of "the hand sculpted house"

25: a tiny house for $362

26:  Masanobu Fukuoka - 95th percentile for rice yield per acre with zero till.  Crushing the myth that organic practices cannot feed the world.  Plus, from that exact same acreage, he pulls off a crop of winter barley.

27: an earth berm pig shelter cuts feed costs

28: refrigeration without power - routing spring water through an old non-working fridge

29:  a home made from a $1700 insulated shipping container

30:  Sepp Holzer has a "bone sauce" that will keep all animals from nibbling on little trees - one application lasts more than ten years

a very nice compilation of videos ..thanks

Thanks a lot, this is great stuff.

awesome paul 

I've been flip flopping between computers and I was trying a mac that didn't have a vga port.  So I thought it could work out to put this in a thread and then scroll through it on another computer at the event.

I was asked to give a 30 minute presentation on permaculture tinkering.  There would be other presenters doing the same.  So I thought it would be a hoot to tantalize the taste buds with 30 tinkers in 30 minutes.

It took me about an hour to slap this presentation together.

I recorded a podcast from it.

The podcast is up so you can relive the presentation if you were there or pretend you were there if you weren't

http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/

Direct link to the tinkerers podcast: http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/189-podcast-020-thirty-tinkerers-in-thirty-minutes/

Ok, I THINK this is where your podcasts say to post ideas. I could have this wrong a little, but I'm new. Have you ever heard of or seen the DVD set "Free Food and Medicine with Markus Rothkranz?"

I came across it recently, and you want to talk about BEYOND organic, BEYOND sustainable-AMAZING!!

Now the first video will make you feel like you accidently bought into the infomercial-haha! But keep watching you get in to the good knowledgy stuff not long after.

I guedd I got the most excited starting on the second DVD because THAT'S WHERE I WANT TO BE!

I actually came across these DVDs before I did your site. But really I think it was these DVDs that led me to become more serious and expand more of my mind about where I'm going with this permaculture thing.

Now granted I'm at ground 0 almost, I started an organic little tiny garden last year, and looking up fixing things organically I found permaculture and now I'm SOLD!!

Anyhoo, I guess I could have done some more searching on your site before going into all of this and asking about it, but I'd REALLY like to know what you think about this guy and these people who are practising all of this to the extreme they are.

I'm giving this presentation in Great Falls tomorrow, so I want to bump it so it is easy to find.

This is gonna be my keynote in sandy eggo. But I want the list to be double the size - 60! Okay folks, what are more things that should be on this list?

I think I will do 15 tinkers, then a few minutes on something like HUSP, then 15 more, then a few minutes on some other small topic, then 15 more .... and, thus, fill two hours!

So I need the filler topics too!

Suggestions?

16: dan rojan's mosquito trap
17: farmstead meatsmith's chopping block
18: raw milk
19: soil science
20: melting iron in a rocket stove

Keynote: https://permies.com/t/19559/southwest-usa/Southern-California-Permaculture-Convergence-March

This presentation was the predecessor to my famous keynote:

Paul's presentation at Singapore International Energy Week, 2021: