Clinton Caffrey

Hello, I have some land in Montana that is fairly steep and currently mostly wooded with fur and under story brush. My plan is to thin the furs and inter plant with nitrogen fixers and fruit/nut plants to makes strips of forest on contour with pasture in between. My question is how far apart should I make the forest rows? I think in the hot drying summers some shade would really help the pasture but don't want everything so close that I lose pasture production. Not sure if I should start a different thread in the cattle section but here we go anyways. I have attached an photo showing my planned lay out. Green is road and planned buildings. Blue is natural water. Red was my proposed lanes to let the livestock to water with rotational grazing perpendicular. Total Acres is around 7. Any Ideas? thanks

If you want to see the wonderful effects that trees have on the desert take a drive right now in the desert south west. I keep meaning to stop and take a picture, but you have really nice green grass under the trees and desert nothing out of the trees influence. It seems that most "wild" mesquite grows in the flood plain regions of rivers and washes and would do fine out of the swale.

I don't have anything to trade but I would gladly pay for some.

I am also in central AZ and I am planing on grafting on later blooming varieties of apples to see if that helps get more flowers past the frost.

Well I thought I would make a test rocket to use as an outdoor cooking area, and show my wife that it really does work and is safe. It rockets fairly well but when I put longer sticks in they burn up and smoke out the burn chamber a bit. I Cast the burn chamber out of cement and perlite with a little furnace cement. The riser is just cement and perlite. The rise has developed a vertical crack the entire length so will have to see how it holds up. The burn chamber is 7"x 6'' by 10" deep. the burn tunnel is 6' and from the bottom of the chamber to the top of the riser is 40". Any comments/ideas for improvement? I forgot to add that I used 6" duct for the center of the riser mold and did cut the top off at the concrete.

Thanks, I will go start some more reading. I started the form to build a stove for out side cooking use and as a test run. My floor is slab with 2x4 on there side(to raise an old addtion to the height of the rest of the house) so I think the weight should be ok. MY original idea was to put ceramic wool on the bottom and back sides to keep heat away from walls/floors. The only problem is with kids I have to have some kinda door for the fire.

Hello I have been reading a lot on this site and want to say thank you for everything. I've been wanting to build a stove with the limited space I have. I would like the efficiency of the rocket stove but my wife does not like the open flames with the small children any ideas on how to put a door more like a traditional fireplace. From the photo I have about 26 inches for width and maybe 5 feet long. I want to keep it off the wall far enough to still use the outlet. Thanks
I was wanting to do something like this http://www.firespeaking.com/portfolio/the-cabin-stove/ but with a "bell" or barrel and instead of the J with the chimney going up, route it through a bench/mass and exit out the side of the house.