Francis Mallet

I live with blueberries, black spruce, peat and red maples so acid soil and lots of clay. I sowed common comfrey and kept a close watch afraid that it would spread. It does self-seed but it's not invasive at all here. That would be 7-8 years ago and most died. They gave very little leaves but lots of flowers and attracted lots of bumblebees which I like. I've seen claims that roots can get 8-10' deep, not for me. I've never seen any root deeper than 3' here, not just comfrey, everything.  

Next I tried bocking 4. Much better leaves and much larger plants but all the flowers are brown inside and bees don't like them. That was a big disappointment. I don't know if it's just my plants or if it's characteristic of bocking 4. I can cut it all the way down once and it will come back before the frost put things to sleep. But it's ugly then, and takes much longer than two weeks to grow pretty again. So I would not do this in front of my house if I want to keep things pretty. My chickens don't care at all for the leaves.

I plan on trying bocking 14 this year see what it does.

All I do is get a plant, dig a hole put it in, water and wish it luck. Maybe I'll water again but maybe not so yeah it's a though plant.

Matt McSpadden wrote:I have not tried, but I heard a guy who swears by using a wood chipper... as long as the char is wet. If its dry, you get a cloud. If its wet, you get a pile of small sized char.

I have tried chipping wet charcoal myself and I would not recommend. I ended up with black sludge and a gummed up chipper. The charcoal had been extinguished with water and left there to drain for a week or so. I do have a modified chute on my chipper so that might not have helped for the sludge but it might also have been a worse mess without the chute. The next time I used the chipper the black dust cloud that came out of it was impressive. I could imagine the trees going "cough cough, wtf, man! cough cough" So I'm not going to try chipping dried charcoal. It's a small Champion brand chipper, maybe other types would do but not mine.

John Suavecito wrote:I looked through Google Scholar and read many articles. I literally could not find a single article in which they advocated or even considered not crushing it.

I admit I've never researched this like you so this is just an opinion. I read through the links provided in your post and they talk about the effects of char on heavy metals, water retention, crop yields, etc. Interesting reductionist research. But who here makes char from sewer sludge or apply tons per acre?  If viewing char as an amendment within a conventional agriculture system then yeah, crush it I suppose. My feedstock is a mix of sizes so the char I get goes from 2-3" to powder. I sometimes top-dress with it and I've seen larger pieces with holes plugged up by silks so things live in there. I like that. Maybe nobody talks about larger pieces because nobody tried it?  Just saying.

William Bronson wrote:
I commented on his great coaching,and he pointed out it came from having to learn from scratch, analytically,  rather than being able to rely on "just picking up on" social cues.

He's doing great. I was thrown into a retail job a couple of years ago, what a ride! I got real good at it too. Nothing like starting from scratch. Funny thing is, put me in another context and is back to square one. Well not quite, but...

It was really difficult growing up but I stopped being angry when I realized normies are messed up too. Lots and lots of unhappy people. Makes me feel better lol

I don't have children, so no evolutionary bonus for me.

Jessica Henry wrote:I have never met more intelligent people than those with autism....
   

Meh, I'm not convinced. Intelligence is like a faceted gemstone. It looks different depending on your point of vue amd there is most certainly a flaw somewhere. Personally I'd trade my "genius" anytime for better social skills. It's not lack of skills, really, more like a blindness. I learned to fake it but I'd rather be dumb as a rock and socially normal than be super smart but lonely like the last man on Earth.

I enjoyed reading about your project, Nancy. I can appreciate the amount of work you put in it.

There seems to be no end as to how something can fail. Two of my worst fails: 4cm netting can be fatal to chickens less than 1 1/2 month old, and trees will eat a pile of compost in no time.

I don't know if charcoal is worse than dried hardwood but I don't have any problems sharpening the blades on my wheel grinder. I use a soft white aluminum oxide wheel, forgot the grit size.

I decided to try it myself, the charcoal was wet and it made a mess. I won't be doing this again. I think I'll let the freeze/thaw cycle break the charcoal for me.

can you accurately and deliberately throw them where you want them?

With the straight pipe, no. It's a bit like those confetti things that explode. A big mess, hence the screen. It's unfortunate I don't have a video with the screen on, the chips all behave and stack themselves in this neat little pile. Magnifique!  But for control, charcoal has been on my mind and this fantasy about chipping charcoal right into feed bags. My plan is to use one of those flexible dust collection hoses for wood planners. Maybe that could achieve what you have in mind?

Why would anyone call it useless? It does what it's supposed to do. Not like round head screwdrivers, now those are useless. Give it a spin Tammy you'll see it's not that difficult to make. The screen is 1/2" hardware cloth.

Champion chippers
Model #91050, or an older version of that model? Not sure.

I should call it Mighty Champion instead, yeah I'll do that.

Hello reader friend, I hope all is well with you.

I clear a lot of brush every year and I like to chip some of it for mulch, paths, etc. The little bag that came with the chipper is not fun to work with as it fills up quick. I tried chipping without a bag but this will damage the ground and spread chips everywhere. I came up with a hack that saves me lots of time and I wanted to share it with you.  I tend to name the tools that I make or modify so the little chipper is now known as "Super Champion".

First the output chute is turned upside down.



Next I attached a 8" stove pipe section to the chute. I didn't know how to do this and a friend told me I was overthinking things. "Just bang it on" he said, it worked.



At first I was concerned the chips would stay stuck in the pipe, ha!  I tried it without the top elbow, just for kicks. That canon shot chips all over the shop roof! It moves a lot of air and the screen is necessary to catch the chips or else they end up everywhere. I would not stand behind the chute, the stuff that goes through the screen fly quite far from the machine.



Happy chickens, early June right at the start of black fly season. One trailer full of fresh chips, with lots of greenery mixed in. Worms like it too.



Happy me, around mid-October. Not sure what this is, it's brown, doesn't smell like shit and weeds love it. Compost?



One hand chipper operation demonstration, try at your own risk:



The blades are getting worn after 5 years. I'm thinking about feeding it damp charcoal chunks, anyone tried this?

Have a good day!

ps: Thank you Pearl

Yesterday I discovered peg looms, not much more difficult to make than a backstrap loom and probably easier to use. I really want to try this!



Usually I'm like a bee that hops from one flower to the next but I'm still having fun on my little inkle loom.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:
Speaking of attention to numbers and stats, I have this silly habit of calculating my "batting average" of apples to posts. I'm currently batting .259 -- is that enough to make the big league? Yep, very silly. :-)

Another fool right here,  >1 is my goal :)  
I like to please and I see apples as tokens of delight, really fun to collect!

My profile tells me I've only given 28... wow so hard to please lol