Phil Stevens

There is a relatively fast-growing and abundant native tree here called houhere or lacebark that has edible leaves and flowers. The leaves are best when young, reminiscent of mallow, and it's usually easy to spot the lighter green shade that indicates tender new growth. They're evergreen and will have 3-4 phases of new growth in an average year. The flowers are mild and sweet and come out in profusion in late summer.

Every tile floor that I have installed has used coloured grout. The darker, the better. That way dirt and staining are less of an issue.

My kūmara patch produced lots of winecaps this year. They mostly shut down as autumn progressed, but other mushrooms were popping everywhere, including some big basket fungi. When I was digging the kūmara I must have unearthed at least a dozen "eggs" that were probably on the verge of bursting to create baskets...too bad, but the harvest was the priority.

Rico Loma wrote:Agreement among us all that certain situations require housing of  some sort.
Predation is my primary concern as John most emphatically says.  Losing a chicken or two is part of the game, yes.  But I must draw a line in the sand..... I have experienced wholesale chook massacres, only from skunks or raccoons.  Another critter notorious for that bloodlust is the weasel.  A fortified coop is essential when these marauders are on the prowl.  

Mustelids are the worst. I've been lucky so far, but not far from me someone has lost dozens of birds to what was probably a single stoat. They get in through small gaps and go on a killing rampage, hardly eating any and leaving behind ridiculous waste.

I used to let the chickens free range. We lost a couple to hawks but usually they were good at scurrying under trees when the harrier was overhead. I had to go to some lengths to improve the fencing around places I didn't want them to go...gardens and neighbours in particular. Then I excluded them from about half the paddocks because that was easier than trying to fence the orchards.

After a couple of years with chickens only roaming the south half of the property, I began to notice a marked difference in the pasture cover. The plant mix under chicken pressure was less diverse, more dominated by grasses, with fewer herbaceous plants. And the closer you got to the coop, the more denuded everything was. This observation, plus the ongoing problems with strays, led me to curtail their freedom and now they are once again coop-only birds with lots of cut and carry green matter. The pasture recovered and now I let them out once or twice a month for an afternoon ramble.

Rico Loma wrote:John , the small rough cut scrap wood we see in a lumber yard. Half inch by two inch are called stickers

In NZ they're called fillets. Possibly in AU too.

To be honest, ten years ago I would have gone to considerable lengths to design a robust and resilient solar hot water setup. But now the price of photovoltaic has come down so far that I would just put up more panels and send the juice to an electric hot water cylinder. Resistive for low-tech durability, or a heat pump if you really need the efficiency. No faffing about with circulating pumps, optimum levels for a thermosyphon, drainback and bleed valves, pressure considerations, or worrying about freezing in the winter (not here of course but certainly where you are). Just solar power sent down wires to heat something up.

And a lot less plastic. Just my two cents.

Gray Henon wrote:18,700

Did two burns since the last post, the smaller of the two (pictured) consisted of some starter brush and around 1.5 cords of bone dry yellow pine out of my wood shed.  I decided to char the clear splittable wood in my shed and replace it with knotty wood that won’t char well.  I also placed an eight foot section of old six inch stove pipe on the ground from the edge to the center of the pile.  I used the pipe to light the pile right at the core, where I typically have trouble getting a complete char.  I figured lighting the pile and ducting air to the center would help.  I did indeed get a more complete burn, But, hard to say if it was the pipe or the bone dry pine.  Almost certainly one of our hottest burns ever.  

The second pile contained a large amount of kindling sized cherry and maple, also a first.  On top of that we added a massive amount of bamboo from winter feeding.  Maybe one of our longest burns ever.  Got a really nice complete char and an enormous yield.  Looking forward to the numbers on this one!

5/24/26

I can feel the heat coming off the photo, I swear...

When I build a pile, I've found that having a hollow core really helps with the quality of the burn. What I like to do is use some of the bigger lengths to make a sort of jenga tower/log cabin framework about 1 m square and as tall as about 1/3 of the intended pile height. When the "walls" are complete I lay long pieces to make a "roof" and then build the pile around and over this. What happens is as the pile burns down from the top and eventually collapses into the middle, there isn't a mass of unburnt pieces at the bottom. This makes for a more complete process.

Yep, perfect.

Jay Angler wrote:"Unsightly Stump" is in the eye of the beholder.

If you know someone with a chainsaw, have them chainsaw out the middle of the stump from the top and you have a natural planter! If you don't want to plant into the hole, fill it with sawdust and give it regular doses of Fertilizer P, and it should rot faster.  And yes, I expect the right kinds of mushrooms would happily live on it!

I can confirm thanks to years of controlled studies that peeing on stumps does indeed make them go away faster. It's like magic, only slower.