Mike Heywood

Miles Flansburg wrote:Hey Mike, do you have any trees, branches or wood chips available?
You could do a hugel bed inside the straw beds.

Nope. nothing of the sort. Anything I'm going to do I have to bring in at a cost. So far I have not even managed to get any bales, and the guy I'm borrowing a truck from is a couple weeks from being able to help.

What is with the agricultural zone information? I'll have to go look that up! I have a guy who will sell me a bunch of tomato and pepper starts, so that will be good. I guess I'll try some strawberries, some blueberries, maybe, and some corn. I am kind of a fan of looking for indigenous food crops and I would love to try that, but I have no illusions that I will be able to live off my quarter acre, but if I can get some good stuff going, it will help. I'm stoked to learn what kind of trees I can plant to establish that food forest idea Jeff Lawton talks about and make that happen.

Edit: I found the zone: 8b! Now to figure out what that means.

I'm not much of a cyclist, really, just sort of a dabbler. Or maybe a wannabe. Living three miles from most of local civilization apart from the local gas station and Subway (that killed off the ma&pa deli, but that is another story for another thread, right) it has been hard to motivate for rides longer than a couple miles here and there, and only braving the one pinch point under the railroad bridge at 46.169566,-122.914977 once to go hang out at a friend's house. That bridge is between me and the few places I'd want to go, so I'm like scared of it. Plus I got this degenerative disk thing going on in my back that bugs me if I ride for more than a couple three miles. Despite that and an atrocious writing style, I am a fan of bicycles, and I am certain they are the only way going forward we can get people around, but only if this weird fascination with living ten miles and more from where we work doesn't work itself out.

Here are two of my wife's creation at work.




They really do work that well.



[edit: embedded the video]

I am about forty miles north of Portland Oregon in the lowlands off the Columbia river. We have it in mind to put together a bunch of straw bale raised beds to start our gardening adventure, kind of based on stuff we have seen Rob Bob do in his garden on the other side of the planet. Cannot really afford a lot of books, but happy to wile away the hours watching how to videos and reading web sites. Gonna start when we get some funding in in January or February, which aught to be enough time for the beds to kind of cure before planting in maybe April?? Any advice would be great.

Also, what to grow that will be good to eat and perhaps good to preserve that does well around here. Zukes seem like they do pretty good. At least I see them offered free on the road sides about half the year. But what else?

My wife discovered these all on her own and has now made herself one plus three more for gifts. We have used it on several different meals and I can say it works very well indeed for really hot stuff or even for not so hot stuff. We are real happy with how it works making yogurt.

After I told her about this discussion, she did have me download the book mentioned above. It is funny to me how all this stuff is known to the folks of yesteryear but a revelation to us.

Yes! Go for it.
I had to start making my own mayo at home since I could not find any that had no sugar.
I'm not on a paleo diet, but I did give up flour and sugar, and I am amazed at what a massive variety of processed foods have sugar in them, and half the time they hide the sugar behind funny names.


I have to come back and add that the vision of a cave dude whipping together a mayonaise to spread over his onions and roast megadon. By the way, that is a delicious meal, with some salad and maybe some yams and a nice piece of fruit to finish. You'll have to replace the megadon with some pork or maybe goat due to extinction.

But will they indeed start to grow without special preparations? edit- Cool!

The beauty of the roadside stand. I got them for a buck a pound and they were massive!

I'm not too set on having the trees produce good fruit as much as having a screen from the sun or whatnot. Fruit would be a bonus.

In short, does it work?
I am getting my kids to drop their apple cores from these delicious honeycrisp apples I got a bushel of out by the fence, and want to do the same with whatever pears come across the plate, but I really have no idea if this will work. I presume it has to work in nature from time to time, or there would be no trees, but are modern apples too hybridized to grow, and is it simply not a good deal to put trees there?

Yeah, I'm pretty new to the whole permaculture thing, and all I'm doing so far is going without shampoo, but the whole idea really rings true with me.

Right now wind and rain are pounding the back of the house which faces south in a narrow valley just north of the last bend of the Columbia river in southwest Washington. A few trees there would be nice for buffering, and apples are yummy.