Richard Gorny

Hi Vern,

1. I have made a hole in the top of the IBC tank
2. I glued 1/2 inch elbow to the hole
3. I glued a short piece of 1/2 inch pipe to the elbow
4. I glued another elbow to the pipe
5. I glued a long piece of 1/2 ich pipe to the elbow. This pipe is vertical and ends about 5 inches above the top of the upper IBC tank.
6. I have secured this pipe to the upper IBC tank
7. I have put a gauze on top of the pipe, secured with rubber band. It lets air our but stops bugs from getting in.

For many years I've been playing with making my own seed starting and potting mixes for seedlings.
With permaculture ethics in mind, I deciced not to use neither peat moss (destruction of wetlands) nor coco coir (imported from thousands miles away).
I was focusing on a local resources on my land, which is mostly sand, as well as on compost.
A classic permaculture recipe calls for "sharp river sand + sieved compost" mixed in various proportions (the smaller seeds, the more compost), but I was not successful at all using this recipe.
In some areas, people vouch for soil from mole mounds, since the mole made all the work for them - the soil in the mound is already "sieved" and since it comes from deeper layers of soil, it is also free of weed seeds. In my place however, it is mostly a pure sand, so not very useful.
In the end, I use currently almost pure compost coming from two sources - my fast, hot composting operation and leaf mold compost that takes years to finish, both sieved. I also add worm castings to the mix sometimes. It works well, but there is definitely a room for improvement here.
What is your favourite home made seed starting and potting mix recipe that contain only ingredients available in your garden or on your farm?

Great beaver story here Mark, waiting for the next chapters.

I have beavers on my land and in the neighborhood, but very little time to actually observe them. From time to time when I find some time just before the sunset, I go for a walk and then I meet them and take some footage with my phone. It is not a good quality, but still ... a beaver is a beaver ;)



[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYzKGi994[/youtube]

And here is possibly the shortest beaver video ever ;)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W8w6CiH5iE[/youtube]

The links work fine.

Personally, I would move questions related to salary to the end of the questionnaire.
I would prefer to know  your expectations and duties first, before declaring my expectations.
Apart from that, awesome :)

paul wheaton wrote:I just noticed that this thread has more than a quarter of a million views.

It's most definitely worth it.  I think out of all threads on permies.com, I share it most often.

@Nancy Reading Interesting, I have mosttly pines, birches and some alder and adlers are the less prone to damage from wind. Each winter I lose some pine broken by wet snow and some birch due to wind, but I have never lost an alder yet (talking about mature trees though).

Eino Kenttä wrote:Did anyone try to pollard alders? Does it work well? We'd like to try it, since our place has a bit too much deer pressure for coppicing to work (we think) and alder is native, common, fast-growing and a nitrogen fixer. We've tried to set up barriers (made from spruce branches) around a bunch of small alders terribly mistreated by the deer, to try and get them tall enough to be safe from the roe deer at least.

Did you try it? If yes, did it work? I'm about to pollard adlers in my forest garden, so I am really keen to know, thanks.

Not sure if I have understood questions well, but I will give it  a try anyway.

For me, on any social media, the answer to the question "who do you believe" is based simply on this person's real life acievements.

If I look for gardening advice, I want to see this person's garden and harvest.
If I look for advise on RMH, I want to see this person's stove.
If I look for a permaculture design advice, it would be nice to see some of designs, etc.

Sure, metrics mentioned above are nice and all, but not as strong as proofs of what the person really accomplished in order to be a source of credible information and authority on the topic. SKIP would be the closest one, but it is not exactly what I'm looking for.

Exaggerating - that's probably why Paul values Sepp Holzer so much and gives him a 10 on his Eco Scale, right? :)  

"What are the values of each person?" is a bit more difficult. One can be a great gardener, builder, designer, and an a-hole. Here, I simply tend to believe more these people whose values seeem to be closest to mine. Another story is to know whether what you read on the Internet is true in real life, and that's where the metrics suggested above can help.

In my opinion these metrics surely show the level of engagement of the person on permies forums and in projects. I can say that it is positively correlated with willingness to help, and guarantees civilized discourse.

Happy Thanksgiving to all permies and especially to US folks, and, last but not least, to the permies.com members and staff .

PS. I have heard that your chickens are thankful today that they are not turkeys ...
PSS. Sorry for the above, could not resist

I just punch spaghetti squash on top, making the way for the hot air to exit :)  No explosions so far :)