Joshua Myrvaagnes

September 1 this is going on the open market.

Someone will take apart, the rocket mass heater, level the hugelbeds, put in conventional landscaping, and call it improve improvement.

If there’s anyone out there who is interested in taking this on, this is a great steppingstone property for exiting the rental cycle while starting to do some amount of homesteading.  Please write to me ASAP!

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Seeking deep green permie(s) for carrying on the work here:

—rmh that still needs some more cob on the drum to really sing
— willow feeder buckets in process, and willow. (not the whole willow feeder setup just yet, unfortunately, just a large store of semi aged willow food in the barn)
— soil building with fowl for 4 years
— a few nut trees, sadly not from seed, but that was attempted also, and some black walnuts from seed, mulberries, legacy apples, wild apples, some stone fruit. Two honey locust from John Hershey line, by way of the river Chestnut Farm
— one properly built hugelbed , and a bunch more that are easier soil to grow in, hauled in from a landscaper‘s jobs. the properly angled one has issues—soil is so sandy it will take a long time for it to function, maybe a few more years? and I didn’t know about the magic basketball of garden soil going in the middle of it… has drip irrigation barrel in place.
— multiple portable bird hutches, electric, fencing, perimeter fence
— Solar hot water heater
— on a major numbered route, perfect site for a farm stand. Space to build on a second parcel, and by right two more dwelling could be built for a total of 4. In addition if it were up to me, and no building code could get in my way, I would build a wofati there. if I stayed here longer, that’s exactly what I would do, and keep it small enough to be within the code definition of a shed, making an “animal shelter“
— well is OK, there’s also deeded access to a spring across another nearby numbered highway, and there’s another Spring nearby that you can fill up large container containers from
— up-and-coming community, that is to say, this town is really hitting bottom hard. The long range plan may have some Permaculture and resilience measures in it, if it ever comes out I’ll update.
— local Strong Towns conversation, one of only about five towns or cities in the state to have one
— a lot of people care a lot about this town, even if some of the ideas of how to make it better might be going backwards, and  the building regulations (irc) are real barrier
— land is unfortunately very flat, and extremely extremely extremely sandy.
— road noises considerable, recommend putting up a berm on the south field or something and live there.
— sunchokes established, but you should know that even sunchokes struggle to grow in this soil.
— rainwater catchment, barrels, and gutters,
— big barn and below-grade barn basement
— House can hold four people for sure, and up to 608 hippies
— seeds Of Solidarity and the Farm School are nearby
— maker space within walking distance; sort of bikeable
— more than happy to pass on all of my notes from my many, many mistakes I’ve made here on the land—and boy do I have a genius for making mistakes.
-- I really want this land to go to someone who will be a good steward of it, and will use and value the RMH
--$460,200 zestimate; 3 br, 2 bath, 2.25 acres on north and 2.25 on south side of highway, an alfalfa field, woods owned by the rail. turkeys and coyotes common.
--will try to finance but I don't know if I'll be able to afford this.
I'm putting out feelers now, will want to build trust to know for sure.  Thanks.

Had to reply, same thing happened to me. She has many AI husbands. She says it’s our incompatible values (me land stewardship, her comfort) but I’m sure there’s a way to bridge those and have both. I don’t have an answer for you but happy to talk about it if you’d want. Just wishing you the best.

paul wheaton wrote:We are thinking about recording a toobie thing with talking heads on friday, aug 21 about thorns.  9am mountain time.  

Is there anybody that has read the book and wants to be a talking head?

I can try to chime in. Read it years ago and haven’t had time to refresh my memory but I can at least show up and speak from experience living communally.

I think these videos are made with AI, and there’s another series with a guy in America who claims to be a ninth generation farmer and uses exactly the same turns of phrase and is more obviously AI generated.  

That being said, there’s some good information in there. I am going to do my own experiment and see if my birds will eat willow tree hay, but my birds aren’t chickens so it’s not the fairest test.

I’m trying how to relate to these many AI videos about homesteading that are coming out now. They may not actually be any more inaccurate than the ones made by fallible human beings who like to overgeneralize.

The YouTube gods sent me to this thing, I thought it was actually very well done and also very poetic.  

Mulberry, Comfrey, Siberian pea shrub, Hawthorne, worm bin, and tree hay from either mulberry or willow. Cold climate specific. Thoughts?

A wise use of “light bulb conversation”
—let’s design a response. If it has come up, it’s an entry point to the kinds of other conversations that could be more constructive. For the average, non-engineer person, a starting point meeting them where they are or can reach to from their level of ecological scale awareness. (Use slow and small solutions).


My brainstorms:

“A clothesline will make a much larger dent.” (Simpler to start with than micro heaters conversation)

“Heating the person, not the air will make a much bigger dent.” (General concept easier to get to than specific “heat yourself with the lightbulb” or “microheaters” which sounds more obscure and unfamiliar.

“You can save more money by…” (maybe but once people are on their “virtue track” they may feel defensive and not want to talk about saving money.

“You can send less money to the electric company” maybe.

Anyone else want to brainstorm here?

I leaned some shutters against the window to my basement, to block out light, and attach a blanket with some pushpins to the door, which has a big window, so that there isn’t a whole bunch of sunlight heating up my basement in the summer.

I’d estimate that this reduces the heating of it by about 2000 W for three hours per day, so 6000 W hours of heat that I did not want. My basement is a nice and cool 50°F, and want it to stay that way.

Downside, the shutters have lead paint on them, I couldn’t think of a way to deal with that, and plastic seemed like it was even worse in a way. There’s already plenty of lead paint that has entered the soil by that wall anyway.

The blanket is out of possible rain, all, and mostly out of the wind, and I pinned the bottom up with some staples that were handy so that it wouldn’t drag and get caught in the bottom when you close the door.

This is very Yankee engineering, am open to thoughts, or pointing out where the longterm failure points are!

I imagine you get this all the time, but I can’t help it notice that you have “lye” in your last name and you posted on a laundry thread!!!

I like that there’s something with just one moving part. I will circle back to this at some point.

Edward Lye wrote:Started reading this and see early entries about aerating water.

If I needed to, I do this.

It is multi-purpose - aerate water, stir laundry, make compost tea, wash soil to separate
clay and sand, . . .  nobody at the laundry thread watched this. I am disappointed.

Only one moving part.

Only one hand needed.

No batteries required.

Just give it a few punps  whenever you pass by.

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:https://youtu.be/EJs51qdCJr8?si=oyMVDgcr6jefKJs4

Wow, no metal, no masonry, I’m so curious to watch the rest of this. Thoughts?

Well there’s smoke in it all the time and it’s more of a survival thing.

Also it’s AI slop, partly accurate info and partly hallucination. Still, really beautiful images in there. And I learned of a construction style I hadn’t known about.

Anyone have a better resource on Saxon pit construction?