Kathleen Sanderson

My place used to be a small dairy farm, and had to be able to handle big trucks coming in and turning around. The areas for that purpose are graveled (heavily and deeply, to handle the trucks), but most of the time you can't see the gravel because of the grass growing through it. In one area, you can't see it at all, and in two other areas the grass is still a little thin and when freshly mown, the gravel is still visible. One of those grid systems could serve the same purpose; I don't know which costs more, is more easily found locally, or is made of more sustainable materials. Properly done, though, a gravel area lasts a long time, and it will allow grass and clover, etc., to grow up through it. We still have a big truck turning around here weekly (the garbage truck - we are at the end of a dead-end road), and it's been at least fifteen years since gravel was last added.

M Pearson wrote:This is one of the "issues" I have with the focus on gardening here :) Not that there's anything wrong with it, but my diet is quite beef heavy. I would have to raise a bunch of cows and grow maybe 5 tomato plants a year ;) All the gardening just doesn't really fit my lifestyle haha.

That's the same problem I have! We need a permaculture focused on livestock. Not that I don't love fruits and vegetables - I do. But I *feel* much better on a meat-based diet. So the plants need to be raised to feed animals. And for other purposes that plants are good for, like building materials, firewood, wind-breaks, beauty, wildlife diversity, fiber, and so on.

At going-on-seventy, and (even with the better diet) a bad back, I'm not going to be doing much, but the information should be there for younger people to make use of. Regenerative ranching and farming is a good beginning, but probably not the be-all and end-all of what can be done.  Silvopasture - using tree crops for shade, soil improvement (legumes fixing nitrogen), erosion control, shelter, and livestock feed - is another step in the right direction.

I see I posted to this thread a couple of months ago. Wanted to add this - there's a guy in Arizona who owns a couple of nursing homes. He changed the way he fed his patients to ketogenic or carnivore, and A LOT OF HIS PATIENTS GET WELL AND GO HOME!!!

It can be difficult to get anyone to change their diet. It's often even harder with an older person, who has a lifetime of habits, and dementia can increase the difficulty by an order of magnitude. But it is well worth the effort, if the person is someone you really care about.

Andrew Welser wrote:

John C Daley wrote:I am amazed at the expectation of some people who wish to invert the seasons and refuse to put a jumper on in winter.
No wonder the world has trouble with fuel bills and climate change.

I work HVAC for a campus that has some office space, and every season change we get a few people requesting set-point changes to their office where their heating set-point is higher than their cooling set-point: I.E. they want their office cooled down to 70*f in summer, but heated to 75*f in winter! <shaking my head & facepalm!>

We've had serious issues with this kind of thing, with my daughter not being able to regulate her temperature well. One hot day, I wasn't thinking, and took her to a doctor appointment without a jacket - the inside of the clinic felt cool even to me, and she had goosebumps and was shivering, and on the edge of getting blue lips and fingers. Now I try to always remember to put a jacket on her when we have to go to town.

One thing I forgot to mention - hot water bottles. Take one or two to bed with you at night. I've used quart canning jars (wrap in a towel, so you don't get burned), but currently we have the red(ish) rubber hot water bottles. You don't need to wrap those in a towel unless you fill them with boiling water. I put one by my tummy and one at my feet if I'm really cold when I go to bed. (I cannot get to sleep if my feet are cold.) Alternatively, if you have a dog, take the dog to bed with you!

We heat mostly with wood (with supplemental heat from a couple of electric space heaters, as needed). So the living room and adjacent spaces - and the attic, where I sleep - are usually plenty warm (the attic gets too warm - I prefer to sleep in a cold room), while the peripheral spaces are cooler. We wear more clothes in the winter - usually I will have a sweater or sweatshirt on over a turtleneck, and sometimes if it's really cold, I'll add a light jacket and a hat (we live in a very drafty old farmhouse, so even the woodstove can't keep up on the coldest days of the year). My handicapped daughter has lupus and has a lot of trouble regulating her body temperature; she will keep piling on shirts and sweaters until she looks like the Pillsbury dough boy (I've counted up to twenty shirts when undressing her). She still wears layers in summer, but not usually that many. I'd really like to trade bedrooms with her - she'd be warmer upstairs - but she's also autistic, and extremely resistant to change. (I suggested the change to her just now, and she shook her head, said "Unh uh," and left the room. Forcing the issue would lead to massive screaming.)

I sit at my desk a lot, and have a heated footrest, which also gets my legs up to a comfortable level (I'm short). Keeping your feet warm is one of the most important things you can do. And keep your head and neck warm, so wear a hat indoors, and shirts that cover your neck - or put a scarf on (take a look at how medieval people dressed). I also have a heated mouse for my computer, and that makes a lot of difference, too. I had gotten a pair of heated fingerless gloves, but those have to be plugged in, which is kind of inconvenient. I've had to replace the heated footrest once (after a couple of years of constant use in the winter), and need to buy my third heated mouse - they don't last as long as I'd like. But it's well worth it to have warm feet and hands.

In summer, I keep the house warmer than in the winter - it's currently 75 F, according to the thermometer on my desk, and can go up to 80 F. In winter, it's likely to be 65 to 68 F in here. We managed okay for four years without AC, using fans and the shade in the back yard. But I have to admit that I'm thankful to have it, especially in a heat wave like we've just had.

This topic is interesting - I've been considering starting to filter our well water (we are on very porous limestone in Kentucky). We have a sinkhole, small, in the back yard, which collects runoff from the hillside hay field behind us and sends it down into our small pond below the house, but I'm fairly certain that some of that gets into the water table, too, and from there to our well. However. As you might guess, our water is very high in calcium, which clogs everything up. Takes longer to clog things up if using cold water; heating the water seems to precipitate the calcium out really fast. (We need to run vinegar through our HWH periodically, and I just threw out a coffee maker that was less than a year old because I couldn't get the inner workings cleaned out enough for it to work properly again, even after running full-strength vinegar through it twice - and have been doing so regularly since we started using it). So, I've been dubious about how long a filter would last, considering what's in the water. We are fine with the water as-is - it's not making anyone sick, and tastes just fine. (No, I haven't tested it. Probably should, and would if we suspected it was causing problems.)

On pre-filtering water, I think I would use either paper coffee filters or milk filters meant for home dairies. The coffee filters are tighter and will take more particulates out of the water (and are also a lot less expensive). That would get your water cleaner, I think, than running it through a piece of cloth. And more sanitary than reusing the cloth, no matter how well it's washed. (I know some people don't like to use paper coffee filters, though.)

Strongly agree that ventilation is the most important thing for chickens. We had chickens in the Interior of Alaska (the coldest part of the state, and one of the coldest inhabited parts of North America), in a somewhat drafty little barn (shared with a couple of goats and a few rabbit cages), and while we did lose a few combs and even a toe or two, the birds survived and continued laying. If I was back there again (I'm too old to like seven months of snow-on-the-ground!), I'd probably build a tighter small barn, and give the chickens not only more bedding, but no roosts in the winter, so they'd have to sleep with their feet on the bedding pack, which self-heats. But I would also put some kind of heat-exchanger ventilation system in it. We didn't have that option back then, as we didn't have electricity where we were living.

Later on, we lived in central NH for a number of years, and had some chickens who decided that their roosting place was either in the trees across the road, or in the branches of the big ancient amur honeysuckle bush next to the house. Even through thirty degrees below zero, with snow, or rain in the summer. I don't remember ever losing a hen to the winter, although the owls picked off a few of them.

If you have really cold winters, select chickens suited to the climate - large-bodied and small-combed. I don't like feathered feet, myself. Some people recommend them for cold climates, but in my experience with some Light Brahmas, the foot feathering just collected ice balls or mud balls, depending on what time of year it was. And they lost just as many toes as the hens who didn't have feathered feet.

If you don't live in a climate that gets really cold winters, then the only factor you need to worry about is ventilation. Keep them dry and out of the wind as much as possible, but the three-sided sheds, with one side wire, talked about in the book mentioned above (which were used in, IIRC, Vermont or upstate NY), are completely adequate. If you are where it gets really cold in the winter (way below zero, F), you can build the three-sided shed, but have shutters to close at night in really cold weather. Just make sure to open them first thing in the morning.

Also, use deep bedding. Someone I used to know who had a farm in upstate NY would completely fill her hen-house with leaves every fall. Filled to the ceiling! Then throw the hens in and let them pack it down. Clean it out in the spring, and there is some of the best stuff for the garden that you ever saw. (Have a few bags of leaves stored to add if they need clean bedding, but don't clean it out until spring.)

Another very helpful thing is to have a heated waterer, so they always have water to drink. They can get by with snow, if they have access to the outdoors, but they'll do better with water. (Again, we didn't have that option when we were at the off-grid place in Alaska - I would take hot water out to all of the animals twice a day. You really don't want to have very many animals if you have to do that.)  

We don't currently use any major solar, other than some small rechargeable items with built-in solar panels. I want to change that. My plan is to start putting up solar panels next year, then add batteries, inverter, charge controller. Then, as various appliances need to be replaced, I want to replace them with 12v. Eventually we should have the whole house running on solar, or close to it, leaving the grid wiring in place if we still need it for a few things (like the two window AC units that keep us cool in Kentucky summers). Most of what I want to replace won't even be wired in - there are plenty of rechargeable lights, fans, and so on, that just need to be plugged in once in a while.

What I'm thinking for refrigeration is to replace the frig with a good-quality ice chest, a large one, and keep it cold with gallon jugs of ice from our chest freezers. (Eventually, we'll replace the chest freezers, too, with a 12v freezer.) The first few months that we lived here, we got by that way - I had brought a small chest freezer with us, so was able to keep jugs of water frozen. That ice chest wasn't ideal, because it was a cheap one with no insulation in the lid. But it did work. Now we have two chest freezers,  so making ice for an ice chest isn't a problem. I've been researching ice chests, and there are some nice-sized ones that will stay cold for several days (and they don't cost nearly as much as buying a new refrigerator!).

I don't know where you are, but we have a sinkhole in our back yard - not quite bottomless, but close, LOL! My nephew dropped one of my old galvanized feed cans (30 gallon garbage can) down the hole to stop it up somewhat because we had young critters in the yard (puppies, goats, calves at the time). Unfortunately, he put the can in the hole right side up, it then filled up with water, and can't be removed. So that's one way NOT to do it!

What you have planned sounds like it should work, as long as your hole isn't the bottomless kind.