Kye Goods

I really appreciate your response here. I ended up trying to follow up with my county, but they have this terrible habit of demanding your address before they'll answer questions. But from what I've gathered from others is essentially you can't get your permit of occupancy without being hooked into the grid. And you can't sell your house without being actively plugged into a grid. There is a house about a half a mile off of a road that was recently forced to pay for electrical lines to be run up to the house so he could sell it. It's a shame that they're doing this to people and seems like a scam that only benefits the power company.

My electric company is terrible and they just signed a 30 year contract to continue to buy coal power from Texas. It's a co-op so even if I'm not using electricity it's still cost over $55 a month. I think my plan is to wire the house up to code and get plugged in to the grid because I have an electrical pole nearby so it won't be difficult. And then just go default on my bill so they shut my power off and I have a feeling that they don't communicate that with my county. Or that's my hope.

Russ Cottrill wrote:Strange this topic is a relative new posting on here, as I just saw a program on this very thing just this weekend on t.v. or dish .
Here is what they said, Some townships, counties and maybe a state or two have in the building codes that you have to have utility supplied electricity to qualify for a permit of occupancy. The kick is continued service is required to not face condiming of the residence (not fit for habitation is what they claim)! They also showed the way residents got a small breaker box with a main and 1 20 amp circuit that ran one 25 watt bulb some put it in the root cellar some in a kitchen cabinet so they could shut the door and block the light ! the little bulb made sure they used some so no  claim it was a fake service and still used less than the minimum amount I dont know what year the data was from but they said this got them a bill around $8 dollars a month. Research the rules before you start a big home steading effort so this type thing can be avoided all together very few places seem to have this rule.

Jeremy VanGelder wrote:I think someone on permies would pull a tire through culverts to clean them out. Put a rope down through one end, tie it to the tire. Then tie the other end to a tractor and pull the tire through.

I appreciate the reply. The problem is we can't get a rope through it because it's so packed with sand and it's such a long run from end to end to tie it to a tire and pull it throu

My community has a very long culvert that's over 100 feet. It's completely packed with sand. We don't have water electricity in the mountains where it's located in a very remote spot of our irrigation channel. Anyone out there have other suggestions I've done a lot of research and we don't know what to do. Besides, send in children with buckets to start clearing it out.

See Hes wrote:

Kye Goods wrote:Most of the tree bark I'm dealing with is coming from conifer. So I'm a little cautious about using it around deciduous trees or any of my garden.. but I do have a lot of pine trees in the desert that get a little too hot and need good mulch so I kind of just layer them around the base of the tree as a mulch that provides shade and collects condensation that keeps t the soil moist

Its an old lasting myth that conifer are poisonous to other plants.
It alters the PH level very little and the only thing is that it decomposes slower, hence it releases less fertilizer in the same time like other mulch would do.

The Blueberry farms in Germany prefer conifer/pine mulch so the soil stays within the PH ranges as it has been prepared for blueberries.

Pine needles and bark contain compounds that can act as inhibitors to the growth of some other plants and tress, a phenomenon known as
allelopathy. While there is a common myth that pine needles destroy plants by making the soil highly acidic, studies indicate that the primary cause of sparse vegetation under pine trees is actually these allelopathic chemicals

Be aware that a lot of barrels have some pretty funky paint embedded in their metal and it can take a real long time for them to burn off. I regret making a burn barrel out of a painted barrel.. if I could do it again, I would go find a stainless steel barrel or something that hasn't been painted. When it's really cooking even after months of burning, I still get toxic smoke coming off.

This is such a hard question. I love birds..

Hummingbirds are amazing and eat mosquitoes and come right up to me and look right in my face while hovering.

We have Canyon runs, and I love how they are upside down and sideways and running along the trees. They seem to be goofy.

I'm in love with the common robins. They're so brave around my dogs and they're just kind of a domesticated pet that I have around my property. They always appear when I have water running somewhere.

There's a kingfisher who thinks he owns the river and I can hear him from a quarter of a mile away, going up and down the river telling everyone that he owns it.

I've always really liked magpies, but I've come to kind of dislike having them around my property. They make a lot of noise.. and they're kind of bullies to the other birds and read their. They also have a terrible habit of spreading my dog poop all over the place.

I love ravens but they have such a long-term memory. Some kid 15 years before I lived here used to shoot at them with his airsoft gun and they never forgot. I have just started winning trust with them again.

I have some Blue Jays that are so incredibly brave around my cats. They have no fear.

Flickers are absolutely beautiful, but they're kind of dumb and they tend to always build Ness in my eaves of my shed and they always spook me when they fly out.

I have some turkeys in my area that get pushed down from the mountains when we get a lot of snow. They tend to stalk me so when I go on my nightly walks with my dogs the next day they'll be turkey tracks that have literally followed my old tracks in the snow. They're very curious. And I love watching them fly up to the top of the trees at night to sleep.., they're way more capable than I gave them credit for

It's my opinion that you should not ignore something like this and do everything you can from preventing it from getting out of hand. Once they get embedded, it can be a real problem and even if that specific group dies another group can come in and start adding onto an old nest.

I'm not sure what kind you're dealing with if their paper nest wasps you can crumble up white paper and hang them on little strings around your house and they will feel that they're infringing on another colony it might leave.

There's a guy on YouTube I really like, and he uses a shop vac with little soapy water in it. If you can reach it, I would suggest trying to capture them with the shop vac and even taping the shop vac in the location and banging on the wall and get them to all come out and get sucked up by the vacuum..

This is crazy that this is a 10 year old thread still going

Recently had a client we started smelling something that was dead and couldn't find it

After much searching, I found a dead deer underneath some shrubs., in it already been there for a while, and it just wasn't gonna be worth extracting the remains. So I built a big compost pile on top of it. A bunch of leaves and weeds and some stuff from the kitchen and some mulch.

By the end of the summer, it had been completely digested by the pile

And my client never had to find out about it

Calcium can be a hard thing to get into my dog's diet. So I clean and dry them out and put them in my little coffee grinder, and sprinkle a very small bit in their food.. I also mix it in with my finish compost. I've also given it to my roses.