thomas rubino

I like a D-handle with a square head and a long handle with a pointed shovel.

Moving day.
Today I shut the piggies out of the bedroom pasture and let them into the comfrey pasture.
It won't take them long to till up this area, and be ready for the next.
I will reseed both of the small pens when I let them into the apple tree pen, home of the summer palace.

Excellent idea, Robert!
I like it. It might have some condensation at times, but overall, a great equipment shed.

Hi Anne
One would think that with the grocery store, being a one-way 65-mile trip, we would be very prepared...
But I would say that most of the time, we do not plan meals before shopping.
Dinner planning generally takes place each day between 8 am and noon, just enough time to thaw something.
We do make a shopping list; sometimes it is made just before leaving the house.
Other times, we have a running list on the refrigerator.
Sometimes we forget to bring the list with us... when that happens, it is usually sitting in plain sight on the counter...
When we arrive at the grocery store, there is a 50/50 chance we will remember to bring the list inside, it fits in the car console so well...
Once we make it inside, with the list, we must remember to look at it...

So, planning? lists?  
We just must remember to create one, manage to bring it to town, carry it into the store, and remember to look at it...
Really, how it goes, we just stroll through the store, loading up what we think we want.
If we eat first before shopping, we save money, but spend the next few weeks lamenting not having any snacks...
If we are hungry, we spend extra dollars loading up the cart...

Sure would be nice to have a butler and a chef at our house, then that planning, shopping, and cooking would be their problem, and not ours... so much easier!
Oh yeah, they could do the dishes as well!  Yeah, I like that idea.
Now, if only my unknown great aunt would just leave us a castle and staff, oh, and barrels of money...

What are your feelings about Sea buckthorn trees?
The orange berries are extremely tart, but highly nutritious.

Yes, rock wool can be used around the outside of a riser. Superwool is better if available.

What to do when for three days the daytime highs do not top 53F and nighttime lows are 48F?
What you do NOT want to do is light off your masonry stove...
But when you only have wood heat, after a few days it starts to feel pretty chilly indoors...
The answer is the old Great Majestic wood cook stove in the kitchen!
It has hardly been used in several years, since Shorty moved in.
This morning I had enough. At 5:15 am, I found myself out at the woodshed, splitting some dry cedar & larch wood.
Now at 6:30 am, the whole house is nicely warm, but not overly warm like Shorty would have made it!
Hard to get a just little heat from a dragon... but the Great Majestic is happy to fill an important position during shoulder seasons!

Hey Adam, Great Idea!  
Heating with brick is the best way to stay toasty warm!
Matt Walker's Stoves are beautiful and super efficient.
You might also be interested in Peter Berg's Batchbox design, with a brick stratification bell.
I have three, as well as a Walker Black and White oven.
Here are some photos

Hey Ben, a bit of RMH history
Years ago, I asked Matt Walker how many half barrels an 8 " J can push, and his answer was 5 barrels.
Matt's 1/2-barrel idea was well before Batchboxes became mainstream. At that time, nobody knew the parameters between them.
He built his half-barrel J-Tube in a bar back east, stunning the fledgling RMH world!
Meanwhile, Lasse Holmes & friends were playing with fire on the west coast and invented the Batchbox design, which Peter then refined into an ultra-efficient powerhouse, and inserted it into a stratification chamber (Bell), which is known today as First Generation Batchboxes.
Matt was also the innovator who disassembled his 8" J-Tube with a piped mass and installed one of the new 6" Batchboxes into the 8" piped system.
This was where we learned that a 6" batch and an 8" J-Tube were comparable in performance output.

Fluffy went out partying last night and seems to have ended up in the wrong house this morning