Eric Ellison

Poultry. Small domesticated animals.
Ducks, chickens, quail, turkeys, geese, dove, pigeon to name a few and even rabbit.


Eric

Peter Herrel wrote:I think that the more organic material you piled on that cardboard the faster it would decompose. I have an old hemp shower curtain that I'm going to experiment as a grass suppression layer in a sheet mulch this winter.

Do you have any pictures of the cardboard underneath the straw? How much straw was used exactly?

Not to answer for Jason.

Here are some photos of my orchard grass suppression project. I been slowing adding to it all summer. I'm shooting for about 6" of compost.
http://s67.beta.photobucket.com/user/eric_wa/library/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Orchard%20Summer%202012

About once a week I stop at our local freight house and come home with a truck load of cardboard. The appliance boxes are my main target. I'm also on a call when ready, about every 2 weeks, I pick up 1 to 2 truck loads of horse manure. I love free stuff.

Couple problems I see with my project. My ducks seem to enjoy resting in the deep mulch bedding, but I'm stealing all their green forage. Not sure, maybe I have replaced it with more slugs and bugs.

Voles is the other problem. They love to shallow tunnel just under the cardboard. I lost a Kingston Black apple to these bastards, but that was before the cardboard project. Time will tell if have aided to the problem.

I wasn't concerned with any toxins in the cardboard, but deworming medication in the horse manure crossed my mine.

Eric

I'm about to build myself a solar collector outside, cabinet inside dehydrator. The cabinet will be in the southwest corner of my to be canning / processing room. Being in the corner, two of the walls are already built.

Typically the false wall chimney is opposite the collector intake. My question is, can the false wall be against the west wall 90 degrees to the collector intake.


Another question, Has anyone used a plenum to help distribute the income warm air?

I'll start here. What say you?

Eric

Scott,

I'm just curious if you have worked the bugs out.

My first thoughts from your video was that your chimney just wasn't tall enough. Adding maybe 2ft pipe will create more draft.


I'm about to embark on my own Solar Dehydrator project.
I will start a new post soon.

Eric

Hey folks, Basically a new member.

Eric - Double Dog Farm, Like to join in if I may.

I've raised several different breeds of mostly egg laying ducks. Khaki Campbell, White Layer, Golden 300 and Muscovies. Currently I have 26 Ancona ducks. I was influenced by Carroll Deppe's book Resilient Gardener. They will be 13 weeks old tomorrow. I must say of all the breeds, I have raised, the Ancona is the most handsome. Here are some pictures.
http://s67.beta.photobucket.com/user/eric_wa/library/Ancona%20ducks

The Ancona are not finicky eaters. Here are some of the things I have tried on them.

Sea Buckthorn, After reading that their leaves have about 24% protein, I pruned off a couple branches and threw them in the pond. They didn't go for it right away, but by the end of that day, the branches were stripped.

Comfrey, Two berms in my orchard have comfrey on them. They are roughly 5ft wide and 20ft long. The ducks chewed the plants to the soil line. I have low fences around the berms now.

Fruit, peaches, plums, tomatoes, asian pears, gooseberries, currants, marionberries.

Vegetable, Boiled potato and squash, lettuce and most leafy greens.

They are also very good at bug and slug control. It's amazing they can swallow a huge Pacific Banana slug.

Anyone have a Pellet mill? My brother and I are thinking about buying a PTO driven model. They are about a $1000. This mill produces about 400 to 600 pounds of feed pellet per hour. It also could be used for fertilizer and wood stove pellet production.

Good to be here.
Eric