Joshua Myrvaagnes

The other thing about the Pauly Appleseed solution that I don't like is that it seems to let people off the hook for thinking and examining their part in anything else.  It's almost like the idea that rotational grazing will save us.  It will help, but we also have to stop polluting.  

If you keep heating your home with baseboard electric, flying in airplanes, driving an internal combustion car, and funding war with your tax dollars, you're contributing to the problem.  It doesn't really offset it that you planted 100 tons'-worth of trees.

It is slightly better than the "let farmers solve it for me, I'll just buy rotational/grassfed beef, end of story."  If you're planting with your own hand you're at least involved bodily as well as mentally and monetarily.  But it's not really better than the rest of the solutions in the Better World book, and I think it's a distraction.

For a person who's trying to stop harming other people, it isn't really a way to make progress.

(It's almost like carbon offsets, planting trees, which has a whole lot of problems.).

If i had a choice between 300 million Americans reading the book and thinking things through, on the one hand, and 300 million Americans planting 5 apple seeds a day, I'd choose the former.  

Then there's also the "if it needs an intervention it's nature's away of culling" line of thought.  I found that on the Reverence for Bees podcast thread, and they were talking sheep there.  I just couldn't bring myself to let the dumb drake die though.  We were going to cull him weeks ago and just didn't get to it.  And I don't think we can eat an infected animal.  I hope he pulls through.

from the internet (haven't tested it but found research confirming tea tree oil's effectiveness, and seems plausible)--this was for sheep but I think it would stress a bird less than lice shampoo:

https://www.facebook.com/wildwoolshepherdess/posts/home-made-natural-recipe-for-flystrike-in-sheep-one-of-the-worst-things-you-enco/2663679806992771/

Neem Oil: roughly  1/3 of the container (naissance 5L refill]. [5/3 L==1.7L=7cups][captain jack's 70% seems the closest approximation available in the USA]
Eucalyptus oil (a few drops)
Tea Tree Oil (a few drops)
Apple cider vinegar (a few glugs)
Washing up liquid (a few squirts to emulsify)


I wish I'd thought of neem oil before.  Drake got maggots and we didn't find anything on permies about a natural solution in our hurried search.  So now I'm posting this recipe on all the threads of flystrike for the next person.

We did try the diatomaceous earth but there were still maggots and eggs after that, and we needed to give him a wash.  We'll see how our drake does.

from the internet (haven't tested it but found research confirming tea tree oil's effectiveness, and seems plausible):

https://www.facebook.com/wildwoolshepherdess/posts/home-made-natural-recipe-for-flystrike-in-sheep-one-of-the-worst-things-you-enco/2663679806992771/

Neem Oil: roughly  1/3 of the container (naissance 5L refill]. [5/3 L==1.7L=7cups][captain jack's 70% seems the closest approximation available in the USA]
Eucalyptus oil (a few drops)
Tea Tree Oil (a few drops)
Apple cider vinegar (a few glugs)
Washing up liquid (a few squirts to emulsify)

When the opportunity arises…some ideas:


- [ ] Your yard if you have one
- [ ] Your relatives’ yard
- [ ] An abandoned lot
- [ ] A spot in a park you can make look intentional (put hardware cloth around )
- [ ] A place where a street tree has died
- [ ] Weedy patch by train tracks
- [ ] Edge of a parking lot
- [ ] Toss out the window of your car as you drive


Other ideas?

for Hawaii, what about a solar chimney effect, like the big canvas on a cable shading it but also with a hole in the top to allow air to flow up?  thus cooling the outside of the house but not drawing smoky air into it.  Not a replacement for fixing the ecological issues causing the fires, but at least it would be more comfortable.

As for general responses to the podcasts, I am not sure that replacing the trees that had been cut down in America and restoring the grasslands via rotational grazing is going to compensate for all the extra oil burned.  it helps mitigate and it is necessary, but it isn't sufficient to reverse the problem.  Putting more organic matter back into the soil than there was 500 years ago would work, but. this wasn't specified in the discussion.  Greening deserts that have not been sequestering any significant carbon for the past thousand plus years might be more impactful.  

"When the opportunity presents itself" is a concept that could use some more explanation.  I find un-planting more effective--oaks have started to volunteer all around the land here but most of the seeds I've planted or tossed have been returned to sender.

I think more on growing a large garden for what you eat, start to finish, would be useful, maybe a whole video? a kickstarter?  I have been trying my darnedest to reduce my footprints and  have made a lot of progress but there have also been obstacles and comedies.  I'm remembering that what would make the biggest immediate impact is if I got a good acorn processing game going, since there are millions of calories of acorns growing all around me (except last year with the drought), and I have just never managed to leach them to the point of being palatable myself.  (One time I did find a tree in the city that had sweet acorns, I've got to get me some of those to propagate out here).  I could also feed acorn flour to the ducks, but acorns are too tough for them to quack open.

Abraham Palma wrote:"what do you mean by that exactly? "
Earthworks for your pond:
It's digging on contour around your pond so any water, be it rain be it runoff from your system, that reaches the ditch will go to the pond. This works best for floods, when these 'swales' can't infiltrate the water and most of it goes to the pond.

Yep.  And that brings us to the next ones:

1. the land is flat flat flat flat, and sandy dandy dandy dandy sandy.  Swales are unlikely to work.  Hugels maybe.
2. even on the sloped part on the far field, the water doesn't pool up at all but slurps down into the sand before it even starts raining
3. wind wind wind wind wind in the early spring--so drying
4. weirdly large amounts of moisture off the river, lichen on everything and mildew in the basement, even while not much percolates to the ground/collects in the form of dew to stabilize things during a drought
5. late late frost unexpected wipes out the oak leaf tips, the flowers on the chestnuts and all hte fruit trees, not that we had any of those but if this happens again when we do then oh crap.

Oh, the problem of no apples whatsoever during the drought year was not a problem this year--thankfully one tree has produced a heavy set!  and they're delicious.  They definitely look diseased and spotted and such, but they taste great and the ducks love them some apples.  Weirdly, the tree that did this amazing yield this year is not the one I pruned heavily, and that one looks thick and the one that I didn't prune looks kinda open and airy.  I am confused.  These were existing orchard-style trees with lots of black stuff painted on them and a ton of woodpecker holes, long neglected, a neighbor said they did produce though.  Just 4 of them on a slope.  The one downslope was the high producer this year.  The few from the uphill one (one that I didn't prune either) are definitely the tastiest and reddest.

1. There’s no duckweed around here, only lilies, and they’re poisonous to pigs (don’t seem to be nourishment for ducks either)
2. The duckweed I brought from the city died, I probably gave it too much nitrogen
3. The other duckweed that seems to have appeared magically in another random container died too—it spilled when I knocked it over in the dark (not rudolf’s fault this time)
4. A bunch of ducks died, by tangle in the fence, by tangle in the fence electrified, by I have no idea what, and by Rudolf.
5. Then one by limberneck—but only long _after_ I’d gotten rid of the maggot bucket in panic that it might be causing them limberneck (but the ones that died in that spell didn’t really have the same symptoms—they just did that duck thing where they’re fine one day, sick the next, then dead, or fine, sick and then fine, and you never er freakin know which it’s going to be, and by the way aren’t ducks a bit overbred if they’re this fragile that this many things can kill them???)

Thanks..

John C Daley wrote:Leaky pipe is useless

Not if it is good enough to get water away from the barn, I don't really care where it ends up.  irrigating the landscape is fine.

Can the dog be trained?

He can, he simply chooses not to be most of the time

Can you buy some pipe?

I can, but I'm cheap
How much do you need?
250'/ I guess that's about 80 meters