Hans Quistorff

Always thinking permaculture, as I travel back and forth through Kitsap and Mason coutys here in Washington state I see theses timber company tracts that have large shallow ponds surrounded by second growth trees that need to be thinned. Seems like they would be Ideal for some one that wanted to homestead with ducks. If one set up a rotational system in these ponds they theoretically should improve with disturbance and regrowth.  Get grass to grow in the area that they trample and manure then nesting pairs of Brant geese will come and raise there young there.
Most new homesteaders are trying to raise ducks in feedlot conditions which means you have to dispose of the waist instead of it cycling naturally.
If you are interested in the land mccormick-land-company-port-orchard

October means 2 or 3 days of rain and 2 or three days of cool but dryer weather.  I have a lot of standing dry grass with new growth starting underneath so getting out there with the scythe to mulch where I don't want the grass to grow on dry days is much easier than the heat of summer or trying to do it morning or evening and getting bug bites.
Getting the greenhouse and high tunnels ready for the cold  is the other priority along with moving planters into them. If it is raining I can work inside. between showers I can pop out and get things to bring in.

To make sure the other branches dont try to become leaders hang weights on them to simulate having fruit  which seems to stimulate fruit spurs and makes them less likely to break later under heavy fruit load.

The only time it worked for me was when I pinned a ruled coulomb paper to the wall to the greenhouse inside the door as a reminder. It had the high/low reading inside  and outside and a longer line for observations like fog, snow and plantings. During the summer I open the north wall so noting the high difference was informative. When the night temperature was above 50F The temperature would self regulate to a high of about 80F but earlier in the year with the wall closed it would quickly go to 110 which would stop the fruit set on the tomatoes.

Not familiar with that quince but it seems to have a pattern of leves on opposite sides of the stem but one side may have been broken off and replacement leaves have started from the collar cells where it was broken off

Did you see my ship lap log design? /Ship-lap-logs-build-wofati

Kenneth Elwell wrote:
If there was a modular system for the RMH bench, and a designed combustion unit in kit or "shippable" form, that any mason capable of building a fireplace and chimney could build instead... and it had a UL rating to satisfy insurance companies, depts. of sadness, etc...
Then a builder or home-owner/buyer could make a layout like they were choosing cabinets, place an order, get it shipped in on pallets, and assemble as per instructions.
It would cost more than the current DIY method with local/free material, but the fuel cost savings payback is so fast!
There needs to be a level 2 option.

Someone is working on it.

I was able to spread the word at the Fiber Arts Show which is part of our Key Peninsula Farm Tour. Found out we have a new local fiber mill and associated yarn shop.
www.soundviewfibermill.com webpage  using a Canadian mini mill she taught from Oregon.

Genevieve Higgs wrote:I liked this person's video on year one of working on a wheat landrace for his location.  He does things like calculate how many grains he gets back for each one planted, and what his yield per square meter was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkO3EhG7v3c

As illustrated Growing wheat to make bread is labor intensive but raising it for chicken feed is easy. I found that the chickens always planted some as I moved the chicken tractor along. It dose most of it's growing in the winter feeding the soil organisms and storing up soar energy that would otherwise be wasted. It does not have to be possessed for chicken feed just throw the bundle in and let them pick the grain out of the head.  It also works for millet and sunflowers so I planted bird seed mix for my summer cover crop.  I am working the blackberry roots out of my pear orchard so I am going to plant a bag of wheat in the bare soil this winter and next summer I wont have to buy feed.

You have to consider 3 types of heat in your build; conductive - the heat in the stone or tile you put the pizza on, radiant heat that is coming from the wall of the oven, air heat from the the riser of the rocket stove.  So you have to weigh the positives and negatives of each at each level of your application  The more insulated the burn chamber and riser the sooner it gets to complete burn  Honey Do Carpenter was able to use aircreat with sodium silicate impregnation. He also used it to insulate an oven. The aircreat cement has a high heat absorption and radiant factor while the air content has a high insulation factor.
For the oven, if I understand correctly you want the air/radiant heat to cook the top of the pizza before the conductive heat burns the bottom. So will you spend the time to build up radiant heat in the walls of the oven or depend on continuous flow of hot gass from the riser to cook the top of the pizza or combine the two by having enough mass well insulated in the oven that can build to radiant heat quickly?