Jay Angler

How can one be nice to others if they feel their way is the only way? We are all different, and we need to accept other people's feelings and beliefs by expressing our own nicely.

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Sam Alcoff wrote:... There are large rocks embedded in the ground...

Windstorms and weather weirdness has increased in my region in the last 30 years. I fully support having the building fastened to something solid. The right tools can drill into many types of large rocks. You could then use small amounts of concrete to hold stainless threaded rod in place that can be used to firmly bolt your cabin down.

Ten by ten is small, but you will be much more comfortable if you can somehow harness the benefit of thermal mass inside insulation, even if that is just a small foundation of native rock. There's a tiny home build somewhere here on permies where that was done.

I'd look very hard at where the water is running and plan up front to make it go where you want it to go. I've used a native stone-filled gully beside a chicken coop to get it's roof water away from the driveway.
Thomas' done a better job here: https://permies.com/t/275116/Leaning-tower-Pizza

There are lots of low-tech ideas out there. It's a matter of choosing the right one for your skill-set and your location.

Yes, you say there are no codes, but there's still the 'code of nature', so I recommend your loft has an operable window large enough for egress if shit happens.

Timothy Norton wrote: My house was originally built in the 1850s. There is not a lick of storage to the house to speak of! I yearn for closets and a pantry. :)

In Japan, they used old fashioned "wardrobes" to do the job. A friend in Canada, installed 11" deep kitchen cabinets along his kids walls to provide storage. A different Canadian friend took the smallest bedroom and turned it into a storage locker.

Avoid the danger of "too deep" storage spaces. My current kitchen did 3 deep pantry cupboards along one wall, but stuff gets stuffed to the back to never see the light of day again. The narrowness of them aggravates this issue, and the "beige" colour doesn't bounce light as well as a shinier white would have. Small details can make a big difference.

I'm a *big* fan of deep drawers so long as they come all the way out. The hardware is more expensive, but the functionality is worth it in the long run.

Ned Harr wrote:I think the reason so many fireplaces get built on exterior walls is to make the exhaust ducting simpler...

I was told at one time that the code changed to disallow central chimneys because a chimney on an outside wall reduces the risk of a chimney fire burning the entire house down, and increases the chances of Humans getting out of the house before the fire blocks them in.

However, there are plenty of ways to reduce the risk of chimney fires, and of reducing the risk of fires from other causes, and reducing the toxicity of objects inside the typical house, and, and, and!

Building codes are written for reasons, but sometimes they are written to solve one problem regardless of whether that makes other factors less efficient.  Some of the builds written about here on permies talk about "double wall insulated stove pipe," which is more expensive. I've sees less written about how to get that pipe through a wall or ceiling safely, but I know there's a badge bit related to the issue, so I just may not have explored the right corner of permies yet?

But please everyone, always consider fire exit routes if you're going to have something hot and potentially fire starting in a home where people will be sleeping. I like my permies alive and not toasted, thank you very much!

Maybe the question ought to be, are there lessons from archeology that can improve permaculture practices?

Maybe there are a whole bunch of questions along this line that we could be asking. My interest/study area last winter in geology, crossed over into archeology due to the geological areas that contain archeological sites of many ages. It seems that many "beliefs" about the origins of Homo sapiens and what they learned when and where, are being challenged by the current researchers, in part due to incredible new equipment, and improvements to older technology.

Too often, researchers came from Northern Europe (the funding push), and they wanted to run the show. But they had preconceived ideas from what they'd found in humans that either adapted to their ecosystem, or died!  Other ecosystem adaptations were no less critical to survival, but require a very different mindset to recognize.

What looks like "farming" north of the Mediterranean, is very different that what looks like farming in Brazil! I suspect the entire concept of a food forest, very much evolved as a tropical farming method, which to a great degree, I suspect moved north from South America to North America where it is known that the Indigenous People intentionally planted "useful" species of trees, particularly American Chestnuts and various Oaks.

I'm hoping that as permies find documents or videos that have archeological impact on permaculture, that they will post them here.

That includes permies threads like this one: https://permies.com/t/365630/Evidence-Humans-Making-Fire-Pushed

I should go looking for the one about an extinct Date Palm that researchers have tried to bring back from seeds found on an archeological site in the Middle East. There are a few other plants that went extinct due to Humans that it would be wonderful if they could be recovered, but I suspect those seeds are much smaller than date pits.

Nicole Alderman wrote:I received these hair cutting scissors last Christmas, and I have found them quite sharp.

I have a great respect for sharp things from Japan, so I decided to give these a chance. My friend who orders from Amazon added them to her list and I picked them up a couple of days ago.

My bangs had gotten long enough to start bugging me. These Equinox scissors were comfortable in my hand and did a great job on my bangs - definitely easier to use than my old scissors.

We will see how it goes that next time I have to cut my son's hair! Granted, I'm going to try a slightly different approach to the problem which will hopefully also help make it easier on my hand.

M. Phelps wrote:... the one person said dont even bother with a greenhouse just grow with lights 20 feet underground

I have read of this being done in old mines in the Sudbury, Ontario region. They were specifically growing tree seedlings for the lumber industry (I refuse to call monoculture industrial tree farms, "forests"). It was climate stable and there wasn't a bug problem!

The idea of using solar collectors and fiber optic cables makes sense to me, as I don't think we really appreciate some of the nuances of real sunlight. It's the difference between "NPK  fertilizer" which hurts the biome, vs homemade compost tea. To make lights "more efficient", much of the range has been removed and focus is on the "essential to work" light wavelengths. Just because we don't know what goodness comes from the non-visible spectrum, doesn't mean it isn't important?

In Canada, clothes are obliged to have a content label, but the catch is that certain treatments like "non-wrinkle," "flame resistant" and "stain-guard" may be used, may be toxic, but aren't "content" by the definition of the rules.

Things like rugs may have even less requirement to be labelled even for content, so buyer beware!

I have a rag rug that is likely mostly cotton. It was intended for a bathroom and is 35 years old, so that improves the odds. However, ones I've seen since have likely had mixed materials in them.

We bought a wool rug for around our wood stove - again about 30 years ago - and it appears to be 100% wool on a jute backing. However, I've since seen many patterned area rugs that imitate wool rugs, so if they don't say 100% wool and have a pretty high price tag, I would assume they're 100% artificial.

I brought some lovely hooked rugs back from Ontario when I was last there. Definitely wool, definitely natural backing, and definitely extremely time consuming to make. My sister did awesome work. I should have hired her to make one for me.  I can totally understand Matt not having time to go there. However, that same sister pulled a fast one on my mother. She gave mom a "kit" for Christmas - and got her to make her own latch hooked rug (the shaggy sort, not the more difficult loop type). You would have to make up the kit yourself to get wool, rather than acrylic material, but latch-hooking is definitely an entry drug into the homemade rug  addiction... The things I did before children...

How much of the problem is Nitrogen and how much is toxic gick along with Nitrogen?

If the problem was just Nitrogen, I would wonder if the better approach would be a hydroponics system that you put the well water through first with lots of fast growing plants, then used just a regular sand/gravel/biochar filter to get drinkable water that the plants had partially cleaned?

Then again, if it was that easy, someone else would have thought it up, so maybe I'm out to lunch?