Doug Barth

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since May 19, 2014
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Recent posts by Doug Barth

As I haven't gotten to reading any of the starting chapters of BYOPP, I have to catch up with what we've done so far. I'm looking at the previous posts people made 2 years ago when the BYOPP book first came out. I'll try contacting some of those people and see if they're interested in the accountability partner side of things.

When I dug into the soil after tilling the area (tilling helped get rid of rocks and loosened the soil for me), I almost immediately ran into the anaerobic decomposition of grass. Back story, when my builder was putting up our new garage, he dumped the gravel/dirt into this garden area, covering this grass. The grass under the dirt was shades of brown with the wonderful smell of anaerobically decomposted plant material. The anaerobic situation left spots of the soil off color. The clay soil was really clumpy.



I decided to put the plant material in the sun for a day for two to get rid of the noxious fumes and dry it out so it can decompose aerobically.





After that, we broke up the roots and clay balls. We planted the new garden in, put worm compost on the soil, and put mulch covering the soil. I haven't taken pictures after the mulch.





My wife went to town on the old garden to get it up to snuff. Removing those pesky grass plants.








8 months ago
Hello amazing permie people!

I am a long time permie who started his life-long pursuit in permaculture at a Skillshare presentation in 2012 leading to the online Geoff Lawton PDC in 2013. I ran across so much knowledge, and so much excitement. I did feel more hopeful. I loved it so much when I came across Paul's podcasts. He's great to listen to. I've contributed to every Kickstarter that he's had. Then covid happened. I wanted to do some things that I've wanted to do for a long time; take Elaine Ingham course and take classes out of the Monroe Institute. I'm so glad I did both! Elaine is awesome. I went through the foundation series and went on to become a soil lab-tech. I also took Helen Athowe's master gardeners' course here on permies. Wow! Holy cow. A huge data dump. She is freaking awesome. I read her book after the course. In my mind, Helen and Elaine are at the top of my list because I jive well with them. Then we get to what I use to tie them together.

I read the Building Your Permaculture Property book. This book and the lessons in it complete the circle of everything I've looked at. The first thing they recommend is to have an accountability partner (who can't be my wife lol). I really want someone in the interwebs to be like, "Oh! He's doing interesting things. I'd like to be an accountability partner with him and I have this project that I'm working on that I could use help with." If these posts grab someones attention, great! But I feel I'm not holding someone on to that. My plan is to use this thread as an accountability partner. Throw my ideas on here. The other purpose is to rekindle all the info I've gathered since starting the journey with the lessons with Helen and Elaine through the lense of the BYOPP book. I'll start with each chapter and its questions to see where I can go with it.

With that said, I have big ideas. Ideas that can't come to fruition until I get me ducks in a row. We want a garden now. We want to fight off the deer. We want to have fresh eggs. We have to deal with the here and now while I'm planning these ideas and how to do them.

Big ideas:
1. Put in a Helen style garden with mowable middles.
2. In the mowable middles, put in inoculated logs (variation of hugelkultur)
-inoculation with biocomplete compost tea
3. Mowable middles will have at least 5 strata layers of plants (including inoculated legumes to fixate nitrogen)
4. Add biocomplete compost and extract to the soil
5. Add an animal system for nitrogen addition
6. Add a coppice system for carbon addition
7. Work the whole plan into a cookbook recipe for any property to become carbon negative (through the lense of midwest hard wood forests which can lead to other ecosystem recipes)
8. Add on a tree soil log system using the same mowable middle system around it.

Here is the entry way to the garden area


Out into the open!


To the left! Solar panels! Make that power.


To the right!


Looking at the soil I'm working on.



Further south: the old garden used for potatoes, garlic, and strawberries



8 months ago
Hello all!

I have a time where I have a use for a rocket heater. My wife and I process sap for maple syrup. We have an outdoor cinderblock set up that was smoky and inefficient. We want to set up a sugar shack. I want to take advantage of less wood to chop and hotter burn of a rocket heater. The wife is skeptical. We live in the thumb of Michigan when it can get really cold.

I would like some help so I'd thought I'd post on the permie forum. I have a head on my shoulders, two friends who can do metal work and masonry, and an outside workshop so I don't burn down my house. The work I want this heater to do is boil sap at a really good rate, prewarm a different batch before adding to the really hot plate, move the finished syrup easily to a pot, create a shortcut for the vent for first burns to bypass heating the mass, and, if I can, heat a bench so us humans can warm up directly while working on the sap. At the moment, I'm looking at a batch box rocket mass heater since I can add twice as much wood to get it going hot. A regular j tube heater is easier to see in my head. I have a harder time with a batch box rocket. The sugar shack is uninsulated. I know recommendations for these outside systems are 8 inches diameter insulated risers and vents which is a taller riser which makes it higher and that could be harder to boil the sap.

Any recommendations for designs or pointers? Thanks!
1 year ago
I thought I would put this here instead of the new thread. When I think of things, I think of batteries. Storing carbon in the soil, storing electricity for a house, carbon stored in fossil fuels, and storing nutrients/carbon in a newly planted tree are all batteries. So what is Paul trying to build? A heat storing battery.

What else could we use this battery for? Livestock! For my purpose, I have ducks. I was thinking of rotating their coop/paddock around my wofati green house in the winter. How would the heat get to the coop? I don't know. A small or large pipe? With a fan? I thought it would be nice without a fan. Paul does talk about a vacuum rod that transfers heat. The rod could just stick in the mass or protrude into the greenhouse.

The animals don't have to be in a specific spot, just where this could work. Am I crazy or is this a good idea?
4 years ago
I second the putting in a part for people with a high water table. That's me!
4 years ago
I was so excited about this project. I listened on the podcast and I became enamored with the idea. After the project was put on hold, I still thought about it.

Paul, this project is a home run. While I live in a convention house in the country, raising plants in the winter means growing lights and big electric bills (really it would drain my Powerwalls for something I don't want to put it towards). I would love to implement the grey water system.

Concerning the grey water or asking questions to answer in the movie, how would the grey water enter from the house? I'm assuming black water is a no go and still for willow feeder or other things you talked about in your book.
4 years ago
I love the barefoot idea. I feel usually too busy with kids. Going out with them barefoot would ground us. I'll wait until it is spring. We got our first frost last night.

My other recommendation is just sitting and watching. We can learn so many things by relaxing and observing. I feel like it is a great tool to have.
5 years ago
Hello permies! We had a lot of water flowing into our pond this spring. The sides of the ponds were overrun with water. Now, the ducks laid eggs last year on the shore and random nests they make. With the large amount of water everywhere, we are finding eggs in the water.

My wife says they are not good anymore. I go back and forth on it. The water is COLD. My hand is ice after collecting these eggs. But the eggs have a permeable shell.

I don't know which way. I don't want to throw them away. There is the egg test to see if an egg is good by seeing if it floats in water. But the wife says the junk in pond wouldn't show up.

What do ya'll think?
7 years ago
Thanks for the info! Are there instructions for a shippable core on the internet?
8 years ago