Louis Laframboise

Makes me wonder what mice are eating in my cellar, amoung other places. What sloppy trail, plunder, ecojewels (heat, MC (microclimate), food, insulation,...) have i left behind, spilled, to make it attractive for them? This also may result from old or shoddy house construction--possible openings to the outside world.

This particular cultural edge of mouse elimination we do with our traps and very in situ efforts performs the same function the plastic toxic mouse/rat boxes adjacent to buildings and other infrastructure supposedly needed for our globo instant world. Though ours may be more in your face and direct though not having to be toxic.
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(Since deer mice can carry disease, I use a dedicated set of needlenose pliers and a flat screwdriver to empty and reset the trap without touching anything.)

Let's add a grain of salt here. Regarding the above snippet quote from your reply, i am curious what the different takes would be in the various worldviews of bioterrain and germ theory.
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Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

Louis Laframboise wrote:What do you use as bait?

I have had success squeezing a raisin into the bait holder and this has worked beautifully. Upon simple observation, it looks like it is quite hard for the mice to remove the raisin without tripping the trap.

Good idea!

I use peanut butter for bait. Dear Wife is a PB lover and I take the last traces out of the empty jars. Since I reuse each trap many times it's important to refresh the bait. (Since deer mice can carry disease, I use a dedicated set of needlenose pliers and a flat screwdriver to empty and reset the trap without touching anything.)

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Hack #10:  I use drywall screws for all sorts of minor fixes since they're easy to drive in by hand and don't split the wood as much. They're not for anything heavy or structural of course because they're fairly brittle. But sometimes that's useful -- if I'm joining two thin pieces of wood, I'll put in a drywall screw that's 1/3 longer and break off the excess length by bending it with a hammer. It breaks roughly flush with the wood. The broken end goes into the metal recycling bin.

Surprised they take metal screws in the mainstream recycling system where you are. Here (rural Ontario), we have to bring them to a particular place where this "other, special, scrap" metal stream is accepted. It is NOT part of the default, sometimes come-to-your-door service recycling program organised, government, run, sometimes local, recycling system municipally-run perhaps or corporate  kind of --as in one of the ecojewel sectoral flows. Maybe i am out of the loop with what is accepted.

I know this is going on a tangent. Though, this response sprung after reading your comment. You may want to see the video by Stossel on the scam of recycling. It is usually helpful to widen the conversation, maybe pick up some nuggets. Not selling anything or trying to convince.


Libertarian Journalist John Stossel Debunks the Green ‘Religion’ of Recycling: ‘A Dead End Street’ (VIDEO)
(7 minutes)

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/12/libertarian-journalist-john-stossel-debunks-green-religion-recycling/

What do you use as bait?

I have had success squeezing a raisin into the bait holder and this has worked beautifully. Upon simple observation, it looks like it is quite hard for the mice to remove the raisin without tripping the trap.

My most recent dealings with slingshots was in and around 2001 to 2006 in and around Fernández, Santiago del Estero province, Argentina. I lived on the edge of the town of Fernández, mostly dirt streets, where the neighbours and students of the school would use slingshots. One of the uses for the slingshots was to kill my chooks. I was a relatively naive Canadian gringo of temperate continental clime, dumped in to a Spanish-speaking foreign country and culture in a dryland, very hot, sub-tropical climate, and raising chickens for the first time in my life. I often could associate better with the weather, plants and animals than with most of the human specimens however foreign those all were to me. For slingshots, the kids would fashion their "Y" piece of the slingshot from a locally available tree or branch crotch. The elastic, flexible, part of their slingshot came from old bicycle inner tubes. In this climate one could bike all year and could nearly go barefoot all year. Gentle, generous, but very hot at times and unbearable. This compared to my climate of native origin as was evidenced by the bizareness and foreign practice of hot weather at Christmas and New Year's eve, plus that i could hear the roosters calling all night as well as the firecrackers at night to mark these. Much different than the cold, snow and relative quiet—and lack of firecrackers and fireworks—at this time of year. Plus i was a total newbie at/with chooks, the Australian word for chickens. The chooks there in Santiago del Estero were partially nomadic, they would range far even if it was through other peoples' gardens, properties or spaces . Neighbours' chooks would be crossing through, travelling in and amidst my edges of living and working.

Ammo also needed to be invented or specifically located and obtained: there weren't even rocks in this bioregion-- ancient lakes, seabeds and also plenty of saline environments. So the slingshotters had to be creative, imaginative. Construction materials might sometimes yield ammo.

It was thanks to the slingshots—home mande, including from rubber from disgardeded, excess, unwanted, no longer useful (in its first function/iteration) that they were able to speed their trajectory onto plucking, gutting and BBQing my chooks to eventually feast on them. I have to say that the Argentinians are real masters of the original barbequeing. They have gotten the science and art of cooking/baking/roasting/boiling with fire down. For example, they manage their fires such that they always have a (small, secondary) fire going on the side to heat up water or for other utilitarian uses as well as a source from which to scoop out their real, home-made coals (charcoal purchase avoidance) to power the BBQ.

Jeremy,

What happened with your analogue tool: www.growculture.net. ? That page does not load. I know it has been several years since this thread was going.

Louis

Hello Nancy,

Although it looks like you may not necessarily have that much woody material, tree/shrub prunings, brash available where you are, you might want to consider fascines as well. There is some kind of connection and similarity between fascines and chinampas. If I understand you correctly, it seems like you are in part looking for dry surfaces to walk on so as to be able to cross the wet areas. Maybe it would be instructive to look at Chris Dixon's article on causeway construction (see the link to the complete article after Dixon's quote below) as there are some commonalities and potentials to your scenario in Scotland. The interesting part about your setup (by the looks of things gleamed from your photographs) is to tap into the wet area as a "birthing" place for planting shrubs and other plants which create more organic material to then build more structure to slow, spread, sink the water. This watery edge begins a process which can provide feedstocks for creating more earthworks to increase the water's reach and benefits. You can tap into the coppicing or resprouting nature of these plants as well—especially if you do not want their tall(er) or shading characteristics. Also even if these plants were kept low, their roots would also help to anchor the hills in place (erosion seen in photographs). Good luck with your project.

"I use my fascines mainly for causeway or dam construction on our marsh, building up the water-storage capacity and also sequestering carbon in the construction. They can also be used to stabilize banks and steep slopes and for light-track construction, but imaginative permies will see other applications, such as inclined planes and large-scale earthworks. By staking fascines in lines along contours, similar effects to swales can be achieved. If you use willow for stakes, you can then grow materials for more fascines to extend the system."
--Chris Dixon.
"The Causeway Approach" The Permaculture Activist #78, November 2010, pp. 37-40.
https://fliphtml5.com/hyxr/zncm/basic

Also check out my article on fascines in a different context yet which shows the diverse uses and potential of fascines.
https://www.biodynamics.com/blog/fascines-ecojewels-landscape

Louis

I heard Patrick Timpone, host of One Radio Network, say on his show that he distributed fire ants throughout his property in Dripping Springs, TX and this rid him of his tick problem.

I know the lab bottle was mentioned as a sprayer or as a bum cleaner in a previous post for those forgoing TP. You can also use a spent dishwasher soap plastic container (with a little opening in it) as a portable, nomadic bidet. You can use warm water in the cold weather. If you can't find one of these containers with an already manufactured hole in it, you can punch a hole in the cap of a water/pop bottle using a nail and hammer.

Get ahead of the next Covid-19(84) or other socially engineered/manufactured event toilet paper shortage--whether actual scarcity or created hype/fake news--by using water instead. It felt truly liberating to ditch the TP and was also a cleaner experience. Imagine the size of the pile of TP or rolls you use per year multiplied by all the folks throughout the world following this "refined" cultural practice. I use it whether I am using my soil toilet/dry toilet system out in the sticks or when in the city on the centralized peak sewershed. When using the soil/dry/compoosting (not a typo) toilet system, allow yourself the "luxury" (and don't feel bad about it) of a bit of water to clean your ass since you aren't doing any flushing anyways.

Thought I would share this audio which is related to the subject of this thread. This podcast interviewing permaculture elder Tom Ward reveals some fascinating facts about mapping, its fundaments, optics, and the keystone behaviour of field work & presence. They get into part of the story about the formative basis of all the more modern and digital mapping tools. The interviewer is the brilliant and diplomatic Scott Mann--host of the longest-running (North American or globe's) English podcast dedicated to permaculture, the Permaculture Podcast. The episode is titled "Optical Surveying and Social Forestry with Hazel". Hazel is Tom's nickname. Interestingly, he also looks into the need and importance of maintenance, rather than the seemingly over-focus on design in permaculture. If you had not heard, another great podcast looking into and reexamining the "givens", assumptions, essence and regular (sometimes mindless) practice of permaculture, is the "Making Permaculture Stronger" podcast with Dan Palmer.

Here is Tom Ward's interview:
https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2018/1830/

May this provide other perspectives and be fruitful for your great map works.

Louis

Here are my suggestions of podcasts--not in any particular order. I tried to make sure they were not already listed in all of the previous posts, though many of the others I enjoy are also in this cummulative list.


Earth Repair Radio
Inspiring regenerative projects and people from around the world from permaculture teacher and video producer Andrew Millison.
https://www.earthrepairradio.com/

A New and Ancient Story
Author and speaker Charles Eisenstein's podcast.
https://charleseisenstein.org/podcasts/new-ancient-story-podcast/

Microbial Secret Society Podcast
Hosted by a varied group based out of Hawaii covering, amoung other topics, Korean natural farming, ferments and soil.
https://microbialsecret.org/

Legalise Freedom
Hosted by independent UK writer and journalist Greg Moffitt.
http://legalise-freedom.com

Planetary Regeneration Podcast
Hosted by Gregory Landua of Regen Network and co-originator of the 8 Forms of Capital.
https://soundcloud.com/planetaryregeneration

Future Ecologies
Hosted by Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski. Great multidisciplinary ecological storytelling in/of Pacific Northwest.
https://www.futureecologies.net/

Business Second Opinion Podcast
Hosted by contrarian author, speaker and business consultant Carol Sanford on regenerative business.
https://carolsanford.com/business-second-opinion/

Down To Earth podcast (hosted by Mary-Charlotte Domandi and produced in collaboration with Quivira Coalition)
http://radiocafe.media/downtoearth/

Red Ice Radio
A long-running show hosted by Swedish Henrik Palmgren.
https://redice.tv/red-ice-radio

Muse Ecology
https://museecology.com/

Designers of Paradise
Hosted by soil activist Erik van Lennep and a production of RASA (Regenerative Agriculture Sector Accelerator)
https://rasa.ag/designers/

Logos Media (formerly Gnostic Media)
Long running podcast (video and audio) hosted by Jan Irvin looking into some challenging topics which have helped me shatter many illusions which were supposedly non-negotiables. I was introduced to the powerful tool of the trivium method (which includes the logical fallacies) through Jan's work.
https://logosmedia.com/

Team Human
Hosted by author and teacher Douglas Rushkoff.
https://shows.acast.com/teamhuman/

Louis