Nick Mick

Perhaps a chisel/ spade end tamping rod would work. I know the old ones are heavy and indestructible, could get one at a yard sale or flea market.

I use wood chips in my chicken coop. I don’t have time to compost so I just make rings of the manure infused chips around my plants. Wood chips suck up nitrogen and chicken manure has allot of it. This would probably work with charcoal as well. I don’t know how hot the manure is when mixed with wood chips though, maybe it wouldn’t matter as much as long as the leaves don’t touch it.

Stag horn sumac would grow there, mugwort gets pretty tall but not to tall, milkweed, cattail (if wet enough), autumn olive, willows. If you got one of those ‘green spaces’ that has a field or meadow nearby that gets mowed once a year or two that would give you an idea of what can handle getting cut.

Sounds way better than the half dead, disease ridden peach trees that came with my house. They only exist for the honey bees at this point.

I make my detergent using one box borax, one box washing soda, one cup soap flakes or finely shredded castile soap. Only needs 1/4 cup detergent per load. I use it in regular top loader machine.

M Ljin wrote:

Nick Mick wrote:You can make a string for a bow and arrow out of stinging nettle fibers, or raw hide, or sinew. If it’s strong enough for that it will be strong enough for an instrument. I don’t know if it would sound good though.

I suspect that nettle or sinew might be too fuzzy. But rawhide might be one to try, as banjo membranes are made from rawhide so we know it resonates well (whereas a nettle bedsheet stretched out, is unlikely to do so). My impression is that in a string for a musical instrument, the individual fibers, typically, run the whole length of the instrument, hence why horsehair and silk are used but not wool. Or they interlock well enough that they appear as one, coherent fiber.

I don't have any rawhide but if I did I would try it!

You can get rawhide from dog chew toys, they reconstitute in water. You unfold it then cut a spiral to make a string.

You can make a string for a bow and arrow out of stinging nettle fibers, or raw hide, or sinew. If it’s strong enough for that it will be strong enough for an instrument. I don’t know if it would sound good though.

Cats poop anywhere with loose soil, and foxes and coywolves , raccoons, possums, skunks, all  poop in or around my yard. I never bothered to actively compost my dogs waste but instead just buried it in shallow holes in my pounded gravel driveway. The only thing that grows in the driveway are thistles that I’m not going to eat, and the soil is not good.

I have an extendable ‘roof rake’ which I use on my single story house to get snow off the panels. It’s basically a snow shovel on a really long colapsable handle that you pull towards you. I think I got it at Home Depot but I don’t remember. If you can reach it maybe put a tarp over it before snowfall .

I’m a carpenter and I wear wrangler Riggs work jeans. Doing interior work they last about 3 years before they get to frayed. Not sure how long they would last doing concrete or steel work but they are only like $50 bucks.