Kim Travis

The point is, I am trying hard  to not use much wood, in the novel, wood is valuable, and charcoal takes a lot of wood to make.  So that isn't really an improvement.  But thanks for the suggestion.

I know how hot my rocket stove gets in its interior, and what kind of heat I need for a forge.  While this may not be convenient in a world with propane, I am curious if it would be possible to use that heat to forge metal.  I am an author who writes alternative history novels set in a regenerative universe.  I am trying to avoid the use of coal.

I wanted to test this out for a book I am writing.  We used coal after the stove had a good bed of coals from wood, and it worked beautifully.  Allowed the last two hours of heat up, without adding more wood.  But we found you had to get it going with wood first.

Oh, we can heat the bed.  It is a heavy material bag of dried corn .  Chuck it in the microwave for 5 minutes, you are toasty all night.  However, it does nothing for the middle of the night potty run, or facing breakfast and coffee in a cold kitchen.  We are golden agers, getting cold hurts much worse now.

Thank you for the information.  Yes, I assumed the stove would have to be hot and have a decent bed of hot coals from the wood to light the coal.  We use wood chips and dried grass to light the forges I work with.  Normally when I run my stove, you can't smell it outside.  It is super non polluting.  I will test the coal next month, when I have access to some.  

I have a rocket stove mass heater in my place.  I live in the south, where it is fired now and then, not a daily thing.  Only when a cold front comes in.  So lots of time we are out when the cold front arrives, and we get home late to a cold house and we want to go to bed.  It takes 4 hours to heat our mass, so it is a very cold house in the morning.  Now, I am around coal fires, hubby and I are hobby blacksmiths.  I know several people that put a bit of coal in their wood stove at night to keep it going until  morning.  I have been wondering what would happen to coal in a rocket stove?  Will the rocket stove burn it cleanly?  Will it stay burning longer, so the bench will heat and I could go to bed?  I am thinking that if we have a stove that will re-burn the gasses, like a properly designed rocket stove, then it should be safe.  comments welcome.

Hi, I haven't been here for a while, everything has changed.  I would like to post a new question, but can't figure out how.  I am looking at a hybrid, but wondering about burning coal in a rocket stove.  

Greetings,
I love her book Nourishing Traditions for the information, but the recipes are all extremely spicy. While hot food is nice once in a while, I don't want a steady diet of it. Does she ever do recipes that don't overwhelm the palate? Also, I am curious why she likes to use unusual ingredients so often?

Greetings,
Hi David,

Have you ever done a pool in a hot place like southern Texas? I would like to build one, but I have many concerns. I now have the books by Michael Littlewood, I plan on buying your video when I find the money. I would like to run a couple of hundred feet of pipe in the bottom of the pool to use to keep my floors cool in the summer. I plan on using hydronic heat in the winter, so it seems a natural.

Greetings,
I grow dairy cows, Gulf Coast Sheep, Tamworth Pigs and plan on adding chickens and turkeys to my rotational grazing. The food forest in my pastures is becoming my hedgerows that I am growing on my fence lines. They feed my animals during drought and dry seasons, they add variety to the mix, but some of it is also good for me to eat, like pumpkins. By using the fence lines, my animals get better shade, I have less fence fixing problems, and domestic dogs can't get through or over as easily so my sheep and fowl are much safer. A few fruit trees may wind up back there, but mostly nut trees for the upper canopy. I am slowly researching what trees will fill in my hedgerow, but things like sage bushes have traditionally been used as feed for sheep in drought seasons. Just think of the food forest as food for your critters. Some of us are parasympathetic and require animal protein to survive, also, I have no desire to promote any species going extinct. so, growing food animals is part of our farm. For us, permanent paddocks for rotational grazing is much easier to look after. We are already in our mid fifties and found that temporary fences just didn't work, our animals quickly figured out that storms will knock them out. So, escapes after bad storms were common. Hedgerows are a form of food forest that are traditional, and need to come back. Sage bushes will be a good place to start, as they grow naturally in your area. Animals are not all I grow, I am working on a Hugelkulture bed right now, and I raise rabbits as well. Lots of garden beds that are being slowly converted to a polyculture, as well as an orchard being changed over to a guild/food forest for humans, mostly.