Ed Zaborski

Great post Alicia. Just want to point out, though, that you might want to double-check your sources. I think some of the photos in your post aren't of the plants you describe. English Ivy is actually Bougainvillea, and the last photo isn't spider plant.

English Ivy (Hedera helix)


Spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum)

The new look looks great! Some of the threads have so many posts that they are divided into several pages. For these threads, it would be handy if the navigation buttons (previous, 1, 2, 3, next) that appear at the top of the page were also available at the bottom of the page, since that's where the reader will be when he/she is ready to read the next page. The permaculture principle of positioning elements to maximize functionality!!!

Regarding earlier posts discouraging the planting of currants: although currants are the required alternate host to white pine blister rust, varieties are available that are resistant -- including some black currant types. See Cornell's minor fruits webpage on Gooseberries and Currants: www.fruit.cornell.edu/mfruit/gooseberries.html

Any idea what time downloads might become available on Friday?

That was my conclusion as well -- for some reason, download was being terminated prematurely, but was being reported as successful. Attempting to open such a download would result in the "corrupted file" report. As I reported earlier, I finally succeeded with a download of size 16,936 KB (=17,341,647 bytes).

I am downloading using the most recent version of Firefox on Windows 7, and I open PDFs with PDF-Xchange Viewer.

The only other time I experienced this problem was with an earlier download of Erica's plans for the Annex 6" RMH. Never on any other site. I suspect that the problem is somewhere on the server side -- maybe something to do with the high traffic, maybe not. Hope your techies can track down the issue.

Hey Paul - congratulations on a very successful Kickstarter!! We're all eager to see the results come October. In the meantime, how will we find out when/where the free candy (like the 2012 DVD downloads) will be available? I have to travel to the local donut shop for internet access, and I'm worried about the short window of opportunity for downloads -- especially after the hassles with the latest free candy download (Erica Wisner's Rocket Mass Heater Manual). It took two days and more than two dozen attempts to download a 16.5 MB PDF file. They don't have good pies, so I'm eating way too many donuts, and I'm afraid I won't be able to get back in my car!

Finally succeeded... I think. It is not Erica Wisner's Rocket Mass Heater Manual, "20 pages of assistance on building the rocket mass heater". It is actually 32-page Chapter 4, Operation and Maintenance, of Erica's 2013 Rocket Mass Heater Builders Guide. Size is 16,936 KB. On first glance, it looks useful, once you've got your rocket built. Will have to wait for the kickstarter candy for detailed building info, I guess. Well, back to the maple sap! Cheers, everyone!!

In the middle of my 7th download attempt this morning. All downloads "complete" but are corrupted and will not open. The file size for every "complete" download is different -- ranges from 16,891 KB to 16,935 KB. Also, download speeds are quite slow -- 20-60 KB/sec. I tried downloading over a dozen times yesterday afternoon, but gave up when the download kept freezing one-tenth of the way in. Keeping my fingers crossed, but I've got maple tree taps to attend to. I've using quick and dirty dry-stacked brick rocket stoves for the boil. Doesn't work too bad, but I'd like to build a proper insulated rocket for next spring. This manual would be a great help -- if I could just get it downloaded!! Also looking forward to the kickstarter goodies (hope we don't run into the same download problems).

Thanks Cassie, Paul and all the other Permies for their great work!

Welcome, Darren. Can you tell us how your new book builds on, compliments, or differs from Bill Mollison's Permaculture Design Manual?

I wonder if the folks who've already started the course could say a little more about how the course is executed.

Rick, you say that the course is served up in 4-hour segments a week. Are they only available for a limited amount of time (hours, days, the whole week, the whole course), so that you have to stay on top of it, or can you go at your own pace (faster or slower)? Obviously to get the most out of the question and answer sessions, you'd want to stay on top of it, but sometimes things come up -- I'm wondering what the implications would be if you were "absent" for a couple of weeks.

Does successful completion of the course involve assignments of some kind? I'm guessing that some kind of design project is involved at the end... are there weekly assignments?

In general, I guess I'm wondering how "flexible" the time commitment is...