Nick Mick

You can use a bucket with a new toilet plunger. Can heat up large metal containers of water with turkey fryer burners and use a wooden paddle to agitate. Saw a lady online that washed clothes in a river and slaps them on rocks to clean them. I have ‘cleaned’ large blankets and rugs by leaving them hung up in rain storms.

I got allot of cross over from foraging, but I have been eating crab apples, lambs quarters, stinging nettle, wine cap mushroom, wood sorrel, ground cherries, black locust flowers, autumn olive, dew berries, blackberries, assorted raspberries, mystery melons and squashes that pop up

I don’t know any specific ones, but some pointers would be use peanut oil instead of vegetable oil (if you have enough tallow even better) and to marinate for at least 24 hours with a buttermilk based marinade. When it comes to batter, toss it around in flour first, then egg wash, then toss in flour again for extra crispy.

You could always get into ‘prepping’, there’s plenty of overlap with permaculture and the things you decide to prep for will give you a sense of control along with accomplishing something that you may need one day. And there are plenty of naturally occurring compounds to help mitigate stress (among other things )

Black locust flowers taste like sweet pea with a hint of vanilla. Can only get them for a two week period then there gone. Day Lilly’s are good, I keep wanting to put ice cream in one and eat it whole but will have to wait till next year.

From what I understand in terms of gamey or off favor, any animal that is not slaughtered correctly can taste bad. Like with deer, you have to get all the blood out as quickly as possible and not rupture any organs or it will be gross. Even fish have to be bled out properly to be good. Mabie people are not processing them correctly.

Carla Burke wrote:Here, it would be difficult to stake into the ground, because it's all classy & rocks, but I could see mounting it in a bucket of cement, for stability, and moving it around with a dolly. I wonder if this might help protect my chickens, so they could free range, again. I hate that they're cooped up all the time, now.

I have been using this method for about two years now with great success. I’m mostly dealing with Cooper’s hawks (chicken hawks) in my area if that matters. Those heavy patio umbrella stands could work to and got for free on the roadside or marketplace.

I have had zero hawk attacks on my chickens using this method, and it uses no nets in a relatively open area. It’s a scarecrow with cds hanging from fishing string on its arms. The thin string makes the cds move with little resistance. I also move it every day from one side of the food forest to the other so the hawk doesn’t get wise (I did have an attack when I stopped moving it) you can use umbrella stands or permanent posts to move it too, my two spots are about 40 feet away. The scarecrow is just a 2x4 cross with clothes and a head on it.

Update: I am now receiving emails again, so whatever the issue was it seems to be resolved.

To me it’s just a stamp that says “there is much less synthetic chemicals and colors in this”. Some things are close to organic like pasta or flour from Italy, and if I buy local I just ask if they spray or use chemical fertilizer. Sometimes it’s just a matter of washing things before you eat them. Most of the other labels are meaningless or flat out lies, like ‘all natural’, ‘cage free’, ‘free range’ ect. so it wouldn’t surprise me that the organic label doesn’t mean as much as you think it does. It shouldn’t be this hard to buy food that doesn’t have poison in it.