David Wright

Hey, Jesse. This project looks like a lot of fun and very useful. I saw another company making RMH shippable cores and saw they were using the multiple-piece approach, as well. I like the look of your cores better, though!

http://www.dragonheaters.com/rocket-mass-heater-shippable-core/

paul wheaton wrote:

Chris Dalton wrote:A big hello from the Ozark area in MO. Paul why don't you plan to heat that pile up with humanure? We are using the system outlined in the Humanure Handbook on our small homestead. Our compost pile has been holding a steady temp of about 140 degrees for several weeks now. Seems like the perfect addition to get things going.

I have a lot of concerns about that path, so we will not be doing that.

Paul, I'm curious about your concerns. I just finished reading The Humanure Handbook, as well, and it looks like it has a lot of proven potential. Are you worried about the fecal matter permeating through the plastic pipe into the heated water?

Is the price $420 for each of the three workshops, or all three combined?

I meant sex-linked like Red Star chickens. I don't know much about rabbit genetics, so I thought I'd ask.

We recently bred a sandy flemish doe to a california white buck and ended up with 2 pure black and 6 pure white kits (kindled today). Does anyone know if the color could be sex-linked?

Thanks, Tyler. Yeah, good idea. I'm not worried that everyone will suddenly wake up and start growing nuts instead of corn. I think the niche market will remain for a long time.

It turns out that it was, in fact, a blood clot in the spine, not a broken back. We weaned the kits at 4 weeks, and all the kits survived.

How about questions 8 and 9?

8. You mentioned in your talk at Acres that you spend 15 minutes doing chores in the morning, including gathering eggs and feeding a
nimals from a central location. I'm having a hard time visualizing how this aligns with keeping the animals in paddocks in the alleys between trees. Can you help elaborate?

9. Have you experimented with almonds in your system? Are they like acorns and beechnuts in that they have roller coaster yields?

And I thought of one more question...

10. If thousands of people get started with a savanna perrenial staple crop farming, which I think is a great idea, prices for chestnuts and hazelnuts will necessarily go down. Right now you're getting $5/lb for chestnuts, but it seems very conceivable that *if* every corn farmer in the US switched to chestnut/hazelnut, then the market would be saturated and prices could fall to $0.50/lb pretty quickly. New Forest Farm is in a great spot to enjoy the high prices for the next 15 years while the rest of us are waiting for our first crop, but then we finally get the crop and we're bringing in a tenth the projected revenue. I know this isn't very realistic (near impossible to convince corn farmers to switch, let alone changing the eating habits of an entire country), but the principle still applies even if the affects aren't quite as dramatic: prices go down when production increases. Suddenly, you're in a commodity market instead of a niche market. Any thoughts about what to do about this?

Thanks for both responses. The doe is in a standard wire cage, so nothing to do with flooring material. We plan to wean at 6 weeks, if the doe lasts that long.

If I'm figuring correctly, with 25ft alleys on a 100 acre restoration ag farm, fencing on both sides of the tree line to keep animals from eating the trees would require over 60 miles of permanent fencing. I can't imagine being able to afford this, so I assume you use mobile electric fencing. What brand do you favor?