J. Syme

what's worked well for my daughter's chickens is to separate the sick ones from the flock, keep there butts clean, add electrolytes, vitamins to her water, make sure plenty of fresh water to them hydrated, supplement her food with some cooked egg. peace & quiet helps too. good luck, some times they just don't make it, but give them a fighting chance

Lana Reyes wrote:I've been thinking about this because it seems like we spend a lot of money solving a problem that the ground has been solving for a very long time.

You grow potatoes, carrots, beets, cabbage, onions, squash, maybe some apples.

Then winter comes.

<redacted>

A proper dug-in cellar is one option.

What's the cheapest root-cellar setup you've seen actually work?

cheep cellar
4 yrs ago helped neighbor with digging a hole, he's 94yrs old
put 55 gallon drum in hole let it stick up about 5"
backfilled with dirt to make a sloped dirt collar around it so you could get lid off easier
he has several burlap sacks with stuff he tosses in there for cold storage.
this is closer to his house than his celar by the creek bank.
not pretty but usefull. same guy has 1950's stove with pilot lights you can adjust individually.
he shuts them all off except one burner. this one he puts a can of soup on in the morning
come lunch time he opens the can for hot lunch.... i shake my head at him regularly with
the stuff he does.

This weekend shared some pears, apples, basil & tomatoes and got a surprise pint of pesto sauce back. I call that a major win. Last weekend gave couple gallons of salsa to neighbor on hard times. sunchokes are lining the edge of the forest on the east side of my back corn field, wonder how far they'll go? Birds got the rest of the elderberries before i got a 5 gallon pail filled, they seemed happy. It's not a great year for apples for me but enough to fill cellar for now. The grapes were not worth the effort to clean the wine press. I'm wondering how everyone else is doing with food supply?

Cats really dislike being sprayed with water. A motion sensor water sprinkler did the trick for me to keep deer out of the garden (just have to remember to turn it off when you want to go there). a few nights in a row will send a clear message that the carport is not a good place for them to be.

Coydon Wallham wrote:

J. Syme wrote:To block sound from getting to your ears you need to bounce it away, or absorb it some how. Sound that has a direct line at you can and will travel far. Long needle pine trees are great for minimizing noise. They keep there foliage year round and make gentle whoosh noise in the wind.

Do you think pine needles would be better than other conifer foliage? My property is full of Red Pines, but they are close to 40 years old and have no needles below like 20 ft so no help for close by traffic. There are firs, spruce, and pine saplings springing up randomly, but I planted a sight/sound barrier of White Cedar (arborvitae) in two staggered rows where there was a direct LOS to the road. I figured the density of their foliage would be optimal. Unfortunately I didn't fence them off from the deer...

i like the white noise, sound of the long needle pines better than the shorter ones, my personal preference. the longer softer needles seem to have a denser foliage. What you need is a variety of sizes and shapes in the woods to break the noise into tiny scattered bits. might be worth it to mix in some ground cover and some new pines in with the 40 yrs old's.

Christopher Weeks wrote:How far can you hear traffic?

My wife has an online knitting friend who used to rent an old farmhouse in the boonies and when we visited I noticed that I couldn't hear anything but the sounds of the fields.

But how remote do you have to be in order to get the noise profile I'd like?

To block sound from getting to your ears you need to bounce it away, or absorb it some how. Sound that has a direct line at you can and will travel far. Long needle pine trees are great for minimizing noise. They keep there foliage year round and make gentle whoosh noise in the wind. Another option is a day on a Doser/excavation.  Make a mini mountain range between you and the road, heck you could make one of those sloped hill gardens Paul seems to like.

my relatives doing mission work in Libya use the used bias ply tire sandals. a takes a lot of labor to make the sole out of tire tread & bands from the sidewalls, but it provides a durable tread for many years. i picked up a pair while in south Baja Mexico a quite a few years back.  i don't wear sandals much anymore, my old feet like the squish of a rubber sneaker. I must be getting soft.

When my Phone is not with me,  i breath a sigh of relief, and enjoy the peace and quiet... so to find it, is not a panic for me. my phone is in my pocket, on its charger or on desk next to my computer... others in my house have smart phones with ability to track last known position. They seem to use this function every other week.

find something that you hear other's complaining about doing, (hard labor) digging ditches, (Mind numbing) doing taxes, (icky stinky) unclogging drain pipes, (high risk) cleaning gutters, trimming trees. anyhow look for things others would gladly pay someone else to do... frankly i would pay someone to fillet fish for me, of butcher hogs/deer, yes currently i do process my own meat, but i would pay for this service if i could find someone with good skills & attention to detail. find out what chores the locals hate doing... there's you niche

test email worked, apparently I'm slow to check emails