Coydon Wallham

I'm hoping to add three more cloth covered structures this year, so back at the sewing tarps game. I thought the technique would come back to me but I'm in a new setting on a new machine, and this ain't no bike ride!

After some comedy figuring out what distance to make the initial stitch (thankfully Jay had all the good advice earlier in this thread), I finally got around to completing the first of the ~20 ft main seams with a flat felled. The second initial stitch went quicker, then when I started the finishing second stitch I immediately wondered why I hadn't had any difficulty pushing fabric under the machine's arm completing the first seam. Uupsie!

Just wanted to check if there is going to be any problem if I just go back and sew the flap down the way it should have been done the first time? I'm guessing if I try to rip the whole extra line of stitching out, it won't do anything but maybe leave extra gaps in the fabric?

Great shot of Melissa with the raptor(?) soaring above...

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote: wild strawberries growing in my front yard (got a plant from someone who got a plant from someone ... etc.). And yes, I only notice the tiny red fruits when I bend down, or even sit on the ground, so I can look at the underside. There they hide!
Their taste is incomparable to any store-bought strawberry, even the organic strawberries right from the grower. Flavourful indeed.

Someone at our homestead club seedling exchange had what I think they called an 'Alpine Strawberry'. I put it in my hugel and it has survived with a few fruit appearing right away, but they are behind the wild ones in ripening so not sure I'll be able to make a direct comparison...

This has inspired me to develop a year-round cardboard cycle project.

I work at an ag job in fall. I've been intercepting the big sheets of cardboard that come on pallets of packaging material, diverting them from their outdoor 'burn pile' to make a double layer of insulation around my yurt for winter.

In spring once temps stay above freezing, I take ~half the cardboard off, leaving some up on the south side to block out sun heat. As rain and humidity degrade the cardboard and create an environment to foster mold, I tear down the rest. This year, rather than ship the cardboard to the dump, I'm tearing it up and storing it.

I now have a half dozen banana boxes of cardboard shredded and waiting, along with a garbage can full and more big sheets sitting around, waiting for next heating season when I'll put up a new cladding of cardboard insulation. Of course the yurt needs a great deal more heating than a double-wide, so the cardboard is just supplemental. Maybe it will reduce my cordwood needs by ~.5 cord? At least it will save some time collecting kindling.

One question- any feedback on how to feed the cardboard into a J tube? It is easiest to just drop a flat strip in, but I've found when mixing with other sticks/cordwood that these flat pieces usually get hung up above the burn area. Increasingly I've been carefully tearing longer strips and rolling them up, then rolling them again super tight to crush as much of the air pockets out, so that I can insert them into the burn box like a stick. Looks like they burn better but I lack the instruments and time to monitor specifics and am wondering if any central air pockets might disrupt air flow and affect combustion efficiency.

On the other hand, I'm concerned that small flat patches of cardboard are likely to get drawn down the burn tunnel and hinder the combustion cycle, especially if not mixed with some wood in the feed tube.

I feel like the Spring growing excitement robbed us of a final summary of this experiment?

On thing I noticed going around and harvesting downed branches for the RMH is that unless you have a yard that is constantly being cleaned up, you have no idea how long the sticks have been on the ground. I've taken to snapping them rather than cutting them to get a feel for if they are dry and crispy, but not sure if I am separating out the 'green' sticks from old punky ones (for proper hugel disposal) properly, as the green ones seem to break rather than bend if thin enough. If dried out thoroughly, will an older 'punky' stick burn well without pulling away more BTUs than it contributes?

Coydon Wallham wrote:Good luck with the wild raspberries. I've seen wild raspberries like that all over the places I've lived for the last decade. Last year was the first time if found one tiny, pea-sized fruit that escaped harvesting by other critters. I'd sure be interested if there were some trick of timing or such to find them in quantity, they taste as good as the real thing (you shouldn't have to worry about false strawberries in Montana...)

Whoopsie! I'm very used to finding wild raspberries prolifically (esp black caps), so in this case meant to say "strawberries" as were mentioned in the previous video.

I came back to correct myself about the scarcity of said strawberries. I wandered off to investigate some deer snorts a few days ago and found myself in a patch full of wild strawberries. I think there are two 'tricks' to foraging these- one, they ripen during what is normally the height of mosquito season around here, so I'm not spending much time just wandering around outside at this point. However, the mozzies seem to be thinning out early this year so I wasn't adverse to taking the time to investigate this. Second, it helps to get your head down a little and look sideways to see the berries under the leaves, for being bright red they don't pop out much just walking directly over them. I suspect this may be partly because any that do grow out from under the leaf cover are visible to birds and are snatched up at the first sign of colour change.

I might actually say these are more flavourful than domesticated strawberries, but that might just be the fresh picked vs. store shelf phenomena...

I would think that interfering with chemical hair dyeing was a non-issue for most Permies (or maybe a feature), but also suspect excess copper in drinking water has more troubling side effects on health. I recall a conversation with Alan Booker a couple of years ago where he warned me about a copper drinking bottle I was considering, though the details escape me...

And a very intimidating Mafia boss at that. Looks like the next picture is Melissa?

Usually I post from my laptop with pictures uploaded to it, but had my phone and tried to make a quick post with a pic I had just taken. The "browse" button on the page shows an inversion when I tap it, but no box appears to select a file. I switched the browser to 'desktop' version and no change. I clicked 'desktop' version at the bottom of the Permies page, same thing. I went into security settings and switched from 'strict' tracking protection to 'normal', no change.

Any idea if there is a setting that would be preventing the website from pulling up a box to select files on the phone? Using Fennec on an old Pixel4 running LineageOS, a reverse engineered version of Android 15.

Made this knife last year, but the pine tar didn't end up cementing it in the handle first try. Even so, not sure the blade could take much beyond some cheese slicing. I like the idea above of finding some D&D folx that might want it for a costume...