Coydon Wallham

Clay McGowen wrote:I was at WL for the 2024 PTJ, and had quite the opposite experience.
With delicious food provided for me three times a day, I could hardly resist!

Oh, for sure, I would never think of snubbing Paul's generous offer of wholesome vittles during an event! The late breakfast was during a multiple month stint in bootcamp, and is something I tend to do in regular life now, but it is not rigid dogma I've subscribed to.

Going off the map here. I suspect a single meal or shorter window for eating each day would provide health benefits over a strictly maintained three meals a day schedule for reasons mentioned above, but also think there is an over-arching element of variability and serendipity in eating schedules that is necessary for a fully healthy and flexible lifestyle, one that operates outside of the farm/factory worker routines that were engineered for citizens in the wake of the industrial revolution.

As confirmed by a 7 year-old last weekend, 100% sure no doubt, a fire breathing dragon should be a nice deep red.

Cujo Liva wrote:Many societies, both currently and historically, have no real pattern of eating breakfast at all which is why that marketing pitch was created in the first place.

Don't confuse "need" with "need to eat".  Many of us have had years of practice at storing excess calories, so a large percentage of people have absolutely no need to eat 1600+ calories every day.  This dates back to our earliest pre-history where food was not consumed as regularly as now with available restaurants, supermarkets and pantries.  Humans have practiced fasting from the very beginning.  I understand that there are legitimate cases of people "wasting away", but that is a comparatively niche problem in modern societies right now.

Funny timing on this comment. A few years before my experience at boot camp above, or hearing the term "intermittent fasting", I remember hearing a news snippet that stuck in my mind. Interjected into radio programming, it was a 'researchers have found' story framing that normally makes my eyes roll, but in this case had an odd ring of truth and relevance that made me retain it among hundreds of other long forgotten blurbs.

It was simply a study on Asian (I think it was specific to China but don't recall for sure, or perhaps Korea or Japan?) eating habits among the aged. The claim was that it was a cultural norm for elders to only eat one meal per day, and that people in this culture were among the most long lived on the planet. The study showed a strong correlation between longevity and those that held to this norm. I chalked it up to being the wisdom one of the most ancient, ongoing cultures, and it seems to fit with the more benevolent science-based speculation I've encountered on the subject.

Carmen Rose wrote:Maybe I just haven't found it yet, but is there a printed instruction sheet for willow feeders? I am building a house and would very much like to include a willow feeder.

There are also a few threads that show details from the building of the indoor Willow Feeder at Cooper Cabin, but I can't recall them off hand. If you encounter any questions on specific aspects of constructing a WF, you are welcome to post them in the wiki thread on the subject. Hopefully that can prove a guide and a source for a more helpful document covering the subject...

I stumbled on my most productive eating routine while participating in the Wheaton Labs Bootcamp.

I've never been one to find early morning hours productive for any work type activity, without external schedule demands it is a calm, grounding time for me. A need to plan an extra 15+ minutes in the morning for food while staying at base camp (moreso when commuting from the lab) led to a skipping of breakfast at that time. After a short period of psychological hunger pains induced from past habit, I would feel normal and then even better than usual by late morning. Breaking fast at lunch time even seemed to make the food taste better.

Soon after I read about what some would call "intermittent fasting", based on a theory that the additional time between meals encourages your body to work through the easily accessible carb stockpiles to start processing some fat cells for energy. I've never had a real problem with obesity, but it seems to me that that periodically accessing those reserves keeps the overall body functioning much better.

Kelly Craig wrote:SIDE NOTE: All orchard ladders are tripod like, because a tripod will not rock on uneven surfaces, like that four legged restaurant table.

Stability is one major benefit, and another is the ability to more easily position the single back leg between branches and get closer to the trunk than with a traditional ladder shape.

That riser is calling out to be further described! Looks like a very tight gap between it and the barrel, did you calculate that out precisely?

I look forward to details about the floor construction. I'm set up to attempt something similar once weather conditions are more favourable.

In the most recent podcasts from Paul, he and Alan Booker essentially sent out a call for help from the public to advance the "experiment" with the Willow Feeder (WF) model. A primary concern expressed by Alan was to see if WFs in various climates would produce similar Returns On Investment as have been seen from deposits made at the Willow Candy Warehouse at Wheaton Labs.

I'm not aware of a fully comprehensive resource describing a complete build of a WF, or laying out the various design considerations that present options a builder would want to consider. This ain't exactly Rocket Science, but it would still be good to have a document that approaches the comprehensiveness of ones for RMHs as done by Ianto Evans or the Wisners.

I'd like to maintain this thread as a clearinghouse for questions and answers about the pesky little details that would prevent or stall various efforts to complete and maintain a Willow Feeder operation by inspired Permies. I started planning out a system for my land last year and have a few such issues that are making the process seem like a much more difficult undertaking than it seems it should be.

1) Pressurizing the Candy Chamber
2)

The greatest hurdle I've had trouble moving past in design thoughts has been how to engineer the negative air pressure in the 'candy chamber'. Obviously it is based around an exhaust pipe extending from the chamber to the exterior of the building. Options used at Wheaton Labs to generate the negative pressure have been battery fans and trombe walls.

The trouble I am having at the conceptual stage is how to create the air tightness in that chamber to allow pressure to build and draw up the exhaust. Can dimensional lumber alone be utilized with tight enough tolerances, or does it require some sort of liner? It seems a rear access door that would be used to cycle the bins in and out would be particularly difficult to construct to form and maintain a seal, such a large, unfixed plane being prone to warping over time.

The other part of this equation is the air intake. Does this need to be strategically placed? Is the gap around the access door the default intake? I would guess that the system would perform best if the exhaust were at one end of the chamber and the intake at the other to ensure flow over and around the bin(s). Would it work to have an air intake from the interior of the feeder to help cycle fresh air into the occupied area?

A related issue is air around the seat access. I recall the WL Feeders have regular seats that have been altered to sit flush with the surface of the candy chamber top such that they form an air seal while in the closed position.

In the most recent podcasts from Paul, he and Alan Booker essentially sent out a call for help from the public to advance the "experiment" with the Willow Feeder (WF) model. A primary concern expressed by Alan was to see if WFs in various climates would produce similar Returns On Investment as have been seen from deposits made at the Willow Candy Warehouse at Wheaton Labs.

I'm not aware of a fully comprehensive resource describing a complete build of a WF, or laying out the various design considerations that present options a builder would want to consider. This ain't exactly Rocket Science, but it would still be good to have a document that approaches the comprehensiveness of ones for RMHs as done by Ianto Evans or the Wisners.

I'd like to maintain this thread as a clearinghouse for questions and answers about the pesky little details that would prevent or stall various efforts to complete and maintain a Willow Feeder operation by inspired Permies. I started planning out a system for my land last year and have a few such issues that are making the process seem like a much more difficult undertaking than it seems it should be.

1) Pressurizing the Candy Chamber
2)