What did you learn today?

Many of us do lots of learning and research day to day on permaculture, homesteading, and farming, but we keep it all to ourselves unless someone asks or we find a topic to mention it on.

So this thread is for anything that isn't so big it needs an informational thread started, but where we can share and exchange links and little ideas.


I'll start:
Today I learned about heating walls for crops, and how you can keep grapes fresh for long-term using bottles of water. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html




(Please try to avoid things that could be considered cider press stuff, or advertising.)

Today I learned about the process felt hats are made from rabbit fur. (I always thought there was only wool felt!) http://www.hatlife.com/hats_made.php

I learned that placing straw on the ground will bring earthworms to the surface. At least that's what happened in my one case. I uncovered my strawberry bed 6 weeks ago, and casually raked aside the quite thick (4-5 inches) mulch of straw I put down last year, and left it there, thinking nothing of it. Today I was working in the garden and picked up several fistfuls of that straw laying on the ground beside the strawberry bed and it was quite populated with big fat, jumbo earthworm friends. It wasn't exactly teeming with them or looked like something out of a horror movie, but I was surprised at the number. Interestingly, there are earthworms in my strawberry bed, but all down in the soil (I checked today) and much smaller in size, but they weren't milling about in the straw 6 weeks ago when it was on top of the bed as a mulch.

Do we have any worm scientists on permies?

I am in the midst of scaling up my farm and inadvertently made a mistake on calculations. I am going to redo the numbers tomorrow just to make sure, but it looks like I will make about the same amount of money by only going with 200 more sheep instead of 300. It seems counter intuitive, but with only 200 more sheep I can make the barns I have now work, where as with 300 sheep, I would have to build a new one, thus increasing the amount of money I would have to borrow.

That is definitely good to know!