Ben Brownlow

Howdy y'all- Ben here at Dancing Rabbit. Exciting to see us on Permies! Ya might be interested in knowing that DR is hosting our first PDC this summer, through Midwest Permaculture. Though as a community we've been slow to start into agricultural projects, we do have a couple of food forest projects, a silvipasture in development, many gardens across the community, a vineyard, hoophouse, and rotational grazing in effect. As a member of an agriculturally based subcommunity, we are always interested in having folks come through who share our interest in permaculture design. Here's a link to the PDC: http://midwestpermaculture.com/pdc-dancing-rabbit-ecovillage/ and another for my subcommunity at DR: Clawing our way to sustainable There are many, many opportunities to learn natural building here as well. I'm pretty sure we're the folks that Joseph sold grain to...

Howdy. We've been on the bucket humanure system for three years now and I'm thinking about switching to a moldering toilet design. My reasons are 1) transporting buckets of poop across our land to the composting site feels like a disease vector 2) I'd really rather be doing something other than hauling poop 3) our outhouse is outside, so when all our buckets are maxed out in freezing weather, I have to bring them inside for a day or so to be able to empty them. Of all the simple, low input-type composting crappers out there, the moldering design appeals most to me. I envision an open, ventilated pile that could be sealed off with glass or poly-carb in the cold months to encourage composting to continue. Anybody out there have experience or feedback on this type of simple, passive solar design? Ideally I could stack BSFL harvesting into this system as well. I also want to choose a design/location that nullifies any threat of ground water contamination. Holler at me, or better yet, post some images or plans you may have.

There's a pretty good book from the '50's called Weeds and What They Tell Us that I read at some point last year, or maybe the year before. The internet says that ACRES USA sells the book. Its probably cheaper than a soil test...

Been using chickens as my go-to rat composters. We just lay 'em out on a log and chop 'em a little with a hatchet before tossing the little bits in our barnyard with the table scraps.

We just drill holes in some chunks of oak and mounted the blocks under the southern eaves of our toolshed. After one season, mason bees began to move in. We get the chunks from a local pallet mill for free.

Forestfarm has one too, I believe. I'd love to get one of these for our chicken yard.

We have a rusty cast iron pot that we smash the seed pods in with a pestle (just a chunk of wood, really). We also pack 'em in a pillow case or burlap sack and let our five year old beat it with a stick. We do this to supplement our poultry feed, but goats will just eat them pod and all.