Pascal Gelling

I've read the same thing in Carol's excellent book and also wonder about the storage types. I recently ordered the variety Blacktail Mountain that she mentions in the book as being able to be stored for 2 months, but is more importantly also the earliest watermelon around so great for climates with short growing periods. I'll try it next spring to see how it works here in the Netherlands for outside planting.

Cleaned both the washing machine (that was there a long while) and a 'new to us but just bough second hand' dryer. The dryer just needed a little bit of cleaning some dirt and dust away (except for the exhaust duct but that is a different BB) but the washing machine sure needed more because of it being build in and the sides not seeing much light of day.

All the cleaning was done using a cloth with some hot water and soap and a broom for behind the washing machine.

Since this BB requires a lot of pictures I combined them to keep an overview of the actions required.

Here is my charcoal storage system. Have done this already for a while a couple of years ago but had stopped doing it (I went on with just putting the coals together with the ashes meant for the garden). However it's always handy to have some clean charcoal on hand so this BB is a good way to restart a storage bin.

Here are my images of my wood ash system. I have several of these metal cans that I fill up over winter. To get far more storage out of them I frequently pack the ash down with the top end of a heavy hammer.

We've got two sheep that stay in this shelter during winter with an area to go outside. Every week I put in straw so their shelter stays nice and clean and warm.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Hi Paul. So I heard you talk about this RMH somewhere in Scotland (during the backathon). I was curious, because Montana is too far away from me, Scotland is closer. In the second backathon live (which I did not see live, but afterwards) you mentioned it again. And you said you wrote a thread in which there's a YT video. I found this thread.

I watched the video. I went to their YT channel. Then there I followed the link to their website.

It is still a little far for a bicycle trip from the Netherlands ... in the most Northern part of Scotland ... but this is an ideal spot to visit! It's a permaculture site (a 'croft', that's what you would call a farm), but they have 'camping pods' too. And the site has a wonderful view on a Loch!
Caithness Camping Pods

Hi Inge, if you want to see RMH's working in real life there are also many to see in the Netherlands. I've seen several over the years built by a group called MasConMenos for different eco community's but there are also other Dutch people building them like for example Peter van den Berg. Most of the builders from MasConMenos live in a community in the northern part of Groningen called StaatjeVrij where you can find several RMH's. It's a place a bit like wheaton labs where they experiment and organize a lot of stuff. https://masconmenos.nl/ https://www.woldwijk.nl/staatjevrij/

This rooster was sometimes acting aggressively to humans coming to feed his flock. So he ended up feeding us instead.

I always slaughter chickens using a slaughtercone and then cutting the head of using a pair of loppers. Since chickens will keep on moving for a while shortly after they die I think separating the head is (on a homestead scale at least) the most humane way possible to do it. Since this way you know for sure it is not alive anymore instead of slowly bleeding to death from a poorly done artery cut or neck break.

I don't have a fancy plucker and just work by hand. After plucking I burned the remaining hairs of and processed the bird further. Organs were then separated in edible and in-edible.

Our animals (pigs and chickens) often get fed kitchen scraps from us and one of our neighbours. In these occasions they were fed lot's of apple peels, cores etc. from processing apples and outer leaves from cabbage processing. Also of course regular scraps like bits and pieces of zucchini, carrot leaves, carrot scraps, parnsip leaves, old bread, washing water from pans of soup etc. etc.

The stainless steel buckets all hold 10L. I've pictured plenty of them to show I've met the 8 gallon requirement.

Today I cleaned 6 nesting boxes in one of my chicken coops. I removed the wood shaving and added them to the deep bedding (wood chips) in the coop. After cleaning I added fresh shavings so the chickens can enjoy a warm and soft nest once again.

Mike Haasl wrote:Next time I'm talking to Paul I'll ask him about this one.  Sometimes he has reasons for things that I'd've never thought of.  Other times making a change isn't a big deal at all.  So I don't want to make any promises one way or the other.

Hi Mike, did you ever check up with Paul why the 15.5 inches length is required? Every year I put up about 3 of 4 cords of wood, all of a uniform size and neatly stacked, but just not to the stated log size because my stove does not accept those lengths. The other BB's requiring to put up cords of firewood don't have any requirements to size what so ever so.