Jay Angler

Earthquakes and volcanos are impacted by the same forces. It seems there is an increase in volcanic activity in both Hawai'i and Italy in the last few days. Those of you who are near volcanoes rather than fault lines, keep an ear out on what happening in that department. (In between working on your garden! I'm having to do indoor gardening as we're having almost constant light rain.)

I quite like Thai Basil Eggplant. I have made a homemade version modified from the web to use ingredients I already had (I'm not buying a whole bottle of Oyster Sauce for 2 Tablespoons when I already have Hoisin Sauce, which Hubby loves, open in the fridge.)

So it ended up being more of a Asian Fusion Eggplant Stir Fry, but I liked it, and that's all that matters!

Judith Browning wrote: Here, the kitchen is separate and walking into the next room becomes an 'out of sight out of mind' thing.

Do you carry  your cell-phone? Most of them have some sort of an easy to set timer. Can you leave the phone in the kitchen when not using it, so it's always handy for doing double duty as an alarm?

I totally hear you about the 'out of sight' thing... Alarms have saved me more often than I like to admit... My phone is just one of my options.

r ranson wrote:I should have looked out later.  It was still spitting here when I was doing the chores.

Will look harder tonight.

Alas, they just changed the forecast here and are talking Atmospheric River... sigh... the odds don't sound good.

Tommy Bolin wrote:
Well, to be honest, I was dreaming of a mini version of Sarah Conner's apocalyptic weapons stash from Terminator 2.
Your idea might be better.  

As a Canadian, I'll just say that weapons don't taste very good and leave it at that...

And wrote:  

What do you do now to store apples? I know about nothing. Our legacy orchard is crabapples, prolific, bright red, really sour, excellent canned. We also have a small tree Lil'B calls a 'transparent'. Tasty, light colored, bruises very easily, does not keep well.  

Mice like apples (as well as bears). We have a room on the north side of the house.  I put the apples in boxes inside a barrel in there. They would store better with more air-flow, but that would attract more mice... This only works with fall apples, as it's usually too warm in the summer.

Transparent apples are great dried. I have to use an electric food dryer because we're too humid for solar. I have my eyes on the Wheaton Labs rocket food dryer, but  it needs a spot to live as it's pretty heavy. They make a decent apple crisp too. My son froze a lot of them chopped up which I'm baking with, but freezers take power. The trick for cooking is to pick them a bit unripe. Our ducks and geese love them, which since the grass tends to dry out in the summer, is reason enough to have a productive tree - I need to start one for their field, so they can self harvest!

And wrote:  

There is a small log structure rotting into a north facing hill behind the garage, think Andy used it as a lake ice refrigerator box. Building either dry(er) root cellar or ice box there, not sure which. Need produce storage.  

Earth cooled is great for storing a lot of things. The trick is that one size does *not* fit all. Canning jars and winter squash are better in a dry environment and it's critical not to let them freeze, whereas most veggies benefit from more humidity, and different ones have a "just right" temperature niche which can sometimes be managed by shelf heights and location within a space. Somethings are best not stored together even if you manage a good amount of air exchange because they absorb flavors.
Short answer is that having separate areas for storing different foods is not a bad approach and has the added benefit of redundancy. Using Lake Ice as a cooling system has been done for a very long time - low tech meets modern harvesting techniques!  However, even it would benefit from being earth bermed, on the south, east and west, and ideally being shaded by plants as well. In northern areas, being below ground isn't essential, but places where there's really deep frost, you might need to go deep to be safe, or actually insulate the berm and the north side.

r ranson wrote:Heavy cloud last night.
Will try again tonight.

Only until there wasn't and the temperature dropped to freezing in a big hurry...
I predict 'unsettled weather' and if you don't like it, wait an hour!

I  think that cutout is a great idea! In my dreams, I could see you digging a cold cellar and then moving your skiddable structure over top of it. I get frustrated with not being able to store my apples in a low work, low energy way. I have contemplated the "barrel in the ground" system, but it would be a nuisance to access. Having a building over top with a trap door would make it much easier to use.

So far as the building itself, good job. I love the curved roof. It's nice to make a building both practical and aesthetically pleasing. I do hope you plan on adding more pictures as the work progresses?

Earthquakes are frustrating to plan for! It's difficult to keep life ticking along but still have everything bolted down!

We are in that awkward spot of knowing the house we live in is old enough that it *might* be bolted to the foundation,... but then again, it might not be. They *might* have dug down to bedrock, but they could have used fill. Fill and earthquakes are a *really* bad combination.

We know that we live in an earthquake zone, but Mother Nature doesn't exactly announce her schedule on a human time scale. There are signs and portents, but will it be this year, or 10 years or 100 years from now?

All we can do is look at our priorities, remind ourselves where things we may need are stored, and consider potential plans. Then there's that old military line - no plan survives contact with the enemy. Our important resource is ourselves - our knowledge and our ability to problem solve and adapt. That's what permaculture is all about.

Kim Wills wrote:

Christopher Weeks wrote:
The source of babies map is maybe a little fraught because of the way people will layer on weird religious and political judgment (along all vectors),

Not me. My first thought was "But Australia is so BIG! Do they not have sex there?!?", which caused me to look up their population and find this fun list at the World-o-meter:
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
And now I am shocked to learn that Australia's population is the same as teeny-tiny North Korea's!! Wow!

There are soooo... many factors involved. Australia has a lot of dryland which didn't encourage high density human habitation. Canada has many similar areas. If you've ever visited areas north of Lake Superior in Black Fly or Mosquito season... let's just say it takes a certain type of human to live there! (I react badly to both types of bites, and the whine mosquitoes make totally throws my concentration, as I don't filter sound the way most people do, so I definitely don't want to live there.)

Canada has had a lot of immigration in the last decade, but most of it landed in our existing largely populated areas. I've seen some interesting maps of the USA where they have suggested reasons for population density - sometimes based on history, sometimes based on ecosystem, but often reliable access to water ends up being an important key.

Morfydd St. Clair wrote: There's much less light and heat and I just have to cook more to use it up quickly! :)

Yes, light and heat are the enemy of spices. I have a bunch that I don't use regularly and I have a basket in my fridge that they all live in - cold and dark is  win!

Glad I'm not the only one who puts her spices in alphabetical order!