William Bronson

Very cool.
Did he show how to get one of these blocks that first inch or so off the ground?
Digging under might work, but this method seems to rely on a hard smooth surface for the pebbles  to rest on.

It looks like you already have the means to create a small hot, fairly efficient fire.
If you create a "damper" right above the firebox, to force the exhaust into the oven, and create an opening from the lowest part of the oven into the chimney.
Ideally you start the fire with the "damper" open to get it going, then when you close it the exhaust travels into the oven, gathers in it from the top down until it reaches the new opening into the chimney and travels out.

I can imagine tropical roaches might become a problem in a place like Florida.
I remember encountering flying"palmetto bugs" in Savanna Georgia.
They are considered adventive
But I encountered them 20 years ago.
The thing I don't get is the horror movie scenarios repeated in the face of evidence that breeding tropical roaches in the states has been going on for years, without them taking over.
Especially here, where we often champion  the uses of  "invasive species"  that others pillory.
I think its because they are roaches.

African cockroaches are ideal because of their exotic nature.
They are not going survive our winter here in Ohio.
The dubia roach is already common throughout North America, being bred for and by lizard and amphibian enthusiasts.
If they were going to take over ,it would already have happened.
Crickets are said to be stinky and noisy, mealworms are kinda fussy about conditions,and I have found BSF actually stink like nothing else on earth, despite what I had read to the contrary.

I have put some thought into this,and if I had the the gumption, I would use discarded freezers/ refrigerators to house them.
A slotted pipe , leading to a drain to remove excess moisture,would be  covered it in wood chips.
A a second pipe could lead to freedom-a bucket of veg oil/water in the chicken yard, for occasional treats.
A thermostat controlled light bulb would probably suffice for heat, along with the decay of the food scraps,allowing the operation to go on in a hoop house or shed.
I might seeks out discarded milk products to culture lactobacillus on, and add that to the mix.
A garbage disposal could be used to prep food scraps for the roaches, and maybe grind the harvest into paste.
In addition to the roaches, the fras, bedding and decayed food should make an unique and powerful plant food.
Marketing it for weed growers seems like a natural fit.
Drying the bugger whole would make storage easy.
Smoking them could  poke two turds with one bonekill two birds with one stone,making them storable and extra flavorful.
Done correctly it might be a means of sanitizing the roaches, to kill any parasites or disease organisms.
This might mean feeding the roaches chicken poop would be ok, but I wouldn't count on it.
Smoking is a low heat process, after all.
Still, a hotplate smoker is easy to build and is also a way of dispatching them without smooshing them.

From my experience feeding chooks mealworms, they would probably go will over the whole bugs.
Drain that bug fridge to a comfrey bed, to soak up those nutrients.
Turn the chooks loose in the roach beds after harvest, to churn the fras/ bedding mixture.
In the spirit of guild planting, maybe dump crickets, mealworms, BSF, red wrigglers,pill bugs,and dubia roaches into the same container, and observe what happens.
BSF are notorious for overtaking worm bins, but could they deal with dubia roaches or even mealworms?

The thing that excites me the most about blatti-composting is the potential to get the most out of food waste.
My chickens are spoiled and often pick over the food I scavenge.
They seem to prefer the insects that spawn from the rotting food to the food itself, so why not accommodate them?
I can get more scraps than they will eat, so why not turn these scraps into their favorite food, and store it in that form?

So yeah,I think raising roaches for food is a great idea.
Mind you, I don't want to eat them , but I do wish I had the wherewithal to try it at my citystead.

Hah! That stuff is the worst. I pull it out when ever I see it, and encourage the ground ivy, dandelions, plantains, alfalfa and clover to take its place.


Ok, I have ask, you are just messing with us, right? That looks like grass to me, but I don't really know grass from myass  rear end, so I might be seeing a joke where there ain't one...

I believe most insulative fibers work by capturing air between the individual fibers.
Mixing them into a cement would preclude this.
Unless these fibers are hollow in structure,I don't think they will add anything to the insulativeness of the mixture.
They should help preventing  cracking.

I've used rockwool to re-enforce refractory mixtures to good effect.
I've also coated batts of  rockwool with a stucco-like refractory/perlite mix.
The idea was to give the rockwool a durable hot face.
It stuck quite well, but I haven't fired it yet.

Prickly pear!

This pig waste lagoon problem is the human waste problem all over again.
Adding liquid to animal waste leads to putrefaction
Adding carbon to animal waste leads to compost.
An oversimplification if ever there was one, but potentially useful.

With this in mind, can the deep litter method be applied to pigs?
Assuming no retrofitting , they would be pooping into a pit of wood chips, but not have any opportunity to root through them.
Turning the chips would be necessary.
A second smaller population of dedicated rooting pigs could be used.
Would their lives be worse for rooting through and underworld of fallen food and feces...
I can't really continue down this line of thought, sure it might be a solution to industrial quantities of  pig waste,but it just heaps misery on top of misery.

I have to assume all the pigs are allowed to root through the wood chips- that would be at least a better outcome.
Drain way excess liquids,into more wood chips located  where the lagoons used to be.
Seed woodchip beds with composting worms, mealworms, Black Soldier Flies, oyster and king stropharia spawn.
Fine food for swine, and great decomposers.
The former lagoons could be covered in inflatable structures.
The power to keep them inflated could come from solar, the payoff is keeping rainwater out of the still cooking compost.
Ideally air would be pushed down into the lowest parts of the pile, keeping the whole thing aerobic.
Tied to temperature probes, and we might be able to cool off hot spots before they are a problem.
The edges of the dome could set just outside the edge of the lagoon, allowing the condensation to drip down the edge into surrounding landscape.
This water should be rather clean, having passed through the wood chip bed, evaporated and condensed.
Excess heat could be passed to the pig pit, when needed, or concentrated into hot water(distilled even) via a heat pump.
I imagine you could grow feed inside these same spaces.

So this looks a lot like aquaponics, because it attempts to do the same thing:stock animals densely, and recreate the natural systems that normally cycle their waste, in a compact form.
I think this is common to all animal husbandry to some degree, as the alternative is, well it's hunting free ranging animals.
As soon as you influence their movements or their food source, you are somewhere along the spectrum. You are betting that your efforts can improve upon nature, well at least for your own purposes.

Clearly shit lagoons are not an improvement,  but a pig pit might be.
You would at least be attempting to be responsible for the shit you piled up in one place.

David Tenant is probably my favorite, but I was in-doctornated during the reign of the long scarf, and he is my doctor for life.

You see when you are a goofily dressed chess club kid and you see someone like you saving the day through smarts, determination and sheer shenanigans, you will probably imprint pretty heavily.

I've no homestead experience, but lots of diy building experience.

I myself need a big, cheap waterproof space to work in,so here are my plans.
I plan to  build a high tunnel.
I will actually frame it in wood.
Framing with dimensional wood is easy,and lumber can often be had for free.
The posts will  be anchored in  gravel and fieldstone, contained in free draining buckets to keep the soil out and treated with borox.
Inside I will tamp the soil, lay down pallets, cardboard, 6mil plastic,more cardboard,then a hardboard floor,taped at the seams.
I will bait in the space inside pallets,with peanut butter/Portland cement.
The plastic sheeting of the roof will be protected from sun and wind by used carpet,though rolls of used carpet are increasingly hard to come by.
I got this idea from some here on permies(Alder Burns: https://permies.com/t/83958/Tiny-House-Advice-Requested#695157), and it has worked great on my chicken coop.
I never did as he did, further protecting the carpet with mud-n-stucco type stuff, but fallen leaves do form soil on the surface, and things are starting to grow.

If I was going to stay there, I would build a
foam structure like a hexayurt in one corner.
The insulation plus body heat might remove the need for space heating.
Cooling on the other hand...


If I needed active heating/cooling I might:
-build a RMH
-Keep an uninsulated tank of heated water in the insulated hut.
-Run an RV air-conditioner off of ground mounted solar
- Run an air  to water heater exchanger  to/from a shaded water supply.
-Run a trickle of water over the roof for evaportive cooling.
No indoor flames without constant supervision.

Bed might be a hammock or a zero gravity chair.
Cheap, portable and  anecdotally comfortable. Off the ground for air circulation.
Phones and lights on solar, heavier  loads on propane powered generator.
I think running now generator on propane
could help avoid many mantainence issues.

Pee diverted to the landscape, poop diverted to vermicomposting.

If I did live like this, I'm sure it would affect how my actual house was built,having experienced a different way of living.

I can imagine adopting the hightunnel as my home, or running back to the city...