Mark Brunnr

I believe it's in the book Restoration Agriculture (or I read this here/online while reading that book recently) where someone placed several inches of sawdust around the base of nut trees, so the squirrels would harvest the ripe nuts and bury them in the sawdust. Then the human comes out and rakes them out of the sawdust and gives the squirrels a food reward in return. Then smooth out the sawdust again for the next batch of squirrel harvests.

That book also has some nice planting layout ideas for integrating nut and fruit trees with understory shrubs and plants for that perennial food forest a lot of people want, producing around 4 million calories in one acre after the trees are established but still producing serious amounts in the earlier years too. That's not including the annual crops you'd plant in between the rows of perennials which are spaced 23' apart, or if animals are your thing making it a silvopasture system with just enough live wire fencing to keep the critters from eating all the woody plants.

Ive seen people plant willow cuttings at 45 degrees, alternating the direction so they can weave the shoots to look like a fence. Perhaps the same could be done here, and make it into a circular or oval shape so it remains self supporting. Just leave a gap to walk inside the form to reach the interior fruit?

Edit: I also saw a method where t-posts were placed in pairs angled outwards a bit so the tops are further apart than the bottoms, so 2nd year canes can be tied to the outside for easier harvest, and the new shoots can grow in the middle. Then the old growth can be cut back and those interior shoots get tied to the outside for second year harvest, and new shoots are directed inside.

T Melville wrote:Replacing petroleum with people, during the zombie apocalypse?

Exactly right, I see zombies being used as a free labor resource for as long as they last. Draft horses have blinders to the left and right; I see zombies having a modified metal hat with blinders above like a ball cap. A fishing rod is attached, holding a tempting piece of... whatever zombies find appealing... and when that is lowered into the zombie's field of view you get forward power to pull a plow, a cart, you name it. The modified hat covers the zombie's ears and holds its head still, so the farmer can steer by dipping the food to the left or right, and the zombie never gets distracted by what it walks past. No more accidents picking up the kids from school, with this cool customer pulling the cart!  Call now while supplies last, to get your homesteader zombie today!

Meg Mitchell wrote:

ray Bunbury wrote:can we compost zombies?

It depends on what kind of zombie apocalypse you're in. Sometimes the zombie virus only affects humans, but sometimes, animals can also be infected. Putting zombie flesh in your compost pile could infect birds, rats, or even worms. (A worm is probably not going to have an easy time eating your brains but could transmit the disease when eaten by something else.)

Perhaps most worms are in fact Zombie Worms, all that's left from a zombie invasion (the REAL cause of the Dark Ages, but it was covered up, dontchaknow!), and it really is their goal in life to eat human brains; sadly they are unable to see or hear us in normal ways, so they just wish a human nearby dies and hope for the best reaching the brains...

As far as composting, it all depends on whether the cause of the disease can survive hot composting heat, or if there's a time frame before the virus/etc dies outside a host. But if we thought people were touchy about humanure being composted, just wait until it's zombie juices being composted!

I expect deer would get used to zombies once they understood the undead were harmless to deer. I've walked by wild deer that lived in a spot they knew was safe from hunters, and you could get within 20 feet of the deer and they would watch you but just lay in the grass so long as you didn't get closer. So I'd still consider deer a greater threat than zombies, zombies typically aren't known for eating half a garden of new growth overnight.

On the other hand, zombie mice and rats would suck, they can get into tiny openings and already know ways into many houses. They seem conditioned to people, so might be the first to overcome any fear to start biting folks. Or perhaps we all die the good-old-fashioned way because of the fleas hopping between the living and the dead. Some say history repeats itself, this could certainly be one way.

I planted several elderberry cuttings 2 years ago in early winter, and the week after we had really cold weather, like 0-5f, for a couple weeks which froze the ground. Despite that, over half the cuttings are now about 7 feet tall and producing fruits. Other berry cuttings failed, likely due to cuttings being too thin to handle the weather.

The nice bit with having the bucket exposed is that despite the weep hole the bucket will remain full from the ongoing rain landing in the bucket. Only after it stops raining and has had some time to drain does it reset, so you arent losing that diverters worth of water as often as the T it would seem.

Burra Maluca wrote:[
Yup, my little red dragoness has been busy creating a hoard of that stuff!

I think she's done rather well...

Now you just need a miniature of Bilbo Baggins, sneaking away with a glow stick...

A stick and a spill plane (or probably any plane that can make curls) quickly makes firestarter that shouldn't make the fly ash that paper and cardboard can create correct? I've used a small knife to make feather sticks as well, where you don't pop the curl off the stick, and instead carve them up into a little row on the stick, so you can light the end and stick into the burn tunnel so it burns like a wick.

I'm still using a heavy duty, cloth bag I received for donating to an environmental group back in the late 1980s or so, still going strong now after 35+ years as my primary shopping bag. I keep it in the car and enjoy making cashiers roll their eyes by telling them my bag is older than they are.

While there are a lot of people who are fans of kombucha, to date there are no controlled human studies showing any health benefits, while there is a long history of liver damage and other issues related to its consumption, including intervention examples where people were quite sick when taking it, got better once they stopped, and then got sick again after restarting the drink. Perhaps all the negative issues were due to the ease of contamination when making it, but to date there's only been evidence of negative effects in people. Maybe it's treated as a supplement, which allows it to avoid proper regulation? Those who are selling it certainly push health benefit claims, but they aren't backed by any real proof of such: