Daniel Schneider

Nancy Reading wrote:What about bacon? Is that pretty similar?

Not really. British bacon is made from the loin of the pig (the back of the pig), while American bacon comes from the belly. This means that British bacon is considerably leaner than American, and what fat there is, is mostly along the edge of the rasher, rather than mingled with the meat as American bacon is. Rashers are also shaped differently than American slices- they're kind of shaped like an ear, though that doesn't make as much difference in the cooking and eating as the fat distribution does. I vaguely remember being able to find something called 'back bacon' occasionally, back before I left the States. If you could find that, it might work as a substitute, or perhaps you might try very thinly sliced Canadian bacon.

I regrow lettuce all the time. I buy lettuces in pots in rhe late winter, cut them about a couple of cm above the soil, and then put the stumps in their pots on the windowsill till it's warm enough to plant them out. I generally get 3-4 harvests from each of them over a summer.

Greg Martin wrote:

It's the last waltz!

Anne Miller wrote:Like someone else said I don't like seeing them unless someone explains what they stand for. Then it is okay to use the acronym in the post. At least for me.

For the longest time, I could not figure out ISO so I asked: In Search Of!

I recently asked this one:

What does "XD" mean?

This one isn't a an acronym, it's the keyboard version of a "grin"  or "laughing" emoji- which subject opens its own can of worms...

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Before most nails in the USA were coated, a carpenter friend of mine used to take a burn a box of new nails with a lump of paraffin wax.  The nails were waxed, and much easier to pound in.  Could be a good story, might not be true, but the gasoline idea seems quite dangerous, people die of exploding gasoline fumes.  It takes so little to ignite it.  Even diesel fuel would be safer.

Steel is tempered by heating, and annealing but I don’t know the sequence to end up with stronger metal.  Probably more work than you want to do to reuse old nails.

Tempering and annealing soften iron, not harden it, so unless you have some case-hardened nails that you want to be able to clench over, I wouldn't do that, myself.

Steve Zoma wrote:It should not be too hard to build a wooden shadow box out of plywood and some lumber scraps. I would put the glass lid on hinges so you can open it, and maybe see what there is for glass options that might cut down the ultraviolent light.

I would use a felt on the inside of the box, probably a hunter green as it would contrast the mittens. To hang the mittens, I would attach wooden clothes pins to the back and just clip the middens in the display arrangement that looks visually best.

Next I would save out some packets of those tiny packages that keep moisture out of electronics and put that at the bottom of the shadow box just to wick up moisture.

I am not sure I would preserve the mittens directly, but if one chooses too, I would use natures leather preserver: lanoline. It's worked for sheep for 9000 years!

I would *strongly* recommend against having something made of wood in direct contact with either the leather or the fabric. Over time the acidity of the wood will first stain, and eventually, degrade them. For the same reason, I'd avoid using plywood at all. Between the fact that plywood tends to be mostly pine and spruce, and the glues used to hold the laminate together, I'd be very concerned about acid or other badness eventually migrating onto the leather and degrading it. Felt, especially dyed felt, could also be problematic, unless you can be very sure it's pH- neutral, and is free from processing/dye residues.  Using a linen thread to attach them to an undyed linen fabric over an acid-free backing board, inside a frame deep enough that there's no contact with the glass would be much better. I can't remember if uv protective glass is recommended for leather and fabrics that aren't coloured (it is for anything that's been dyed, against fading, but I can't remember if uv causes physical degradation of leather),  but if you can afford to have it, it certainly wouldn't do any harm. I agree  putting a bit of oil on the mittens pre- mounting; I'd suggest either a liquid lanolin, or neat's foot oil (a liquid will let you just dab it on, which is much more gentle than having to rub in a cream). Either way, be sure to get *straight* oil, not a compound! The compounds all have additives which are actually quite bad for the leather, long term.  Finally, I think that dessicators would be counterproductive. Leather is, after all, skin, and if it dries out too much, it starts to crack and flake. As long as your ambient humidity isn't regularly very high, it should be fine.

zakk barozzini wrote:Hey all. Figured now is a good time to ask (before next spring).
Last season my Stanley plum fruited for the first time (I planted it 3 years ago). It had a ton of beautiful little plums. When they were about the size of a large grape, they began to shrivel up and eventually drop. Such a bummer. Anyone have a clue what happened? I’d like to prevent this in the future.

* I don’t spray anything. Just compost and wood chips around the base.

Thanks!

Did you thin the plums? Next year, you might try removing a good proportion of the baby plums before they start getting bigger. That way the tree can put its energy into the ones that are left, and not wear itself out trying (and failing) to grow them all to maturity. Our plum tree is somewhere between 50 and 90 years old, and I still remove probably more than half the plums it sets- and even then,  it drops some of them

Mark Krawczyk wrote:


Hi Daniel
I'd agree with Michael and Luke that it sounds pretty unlikely that your oak will resprout with much vigor. I have seen oaks that age and older resprout but they're often rather weak and not nearly as robust as they would be if they were younger.

That said, Luke's right that that oak may have only lived half it's life at this point. I think you'd be best off leaving it and doing any limb removal as needed to keep things safe.

As far as principles that change with your climate, I can't think of any specifically. Deep snow does complicate coppicing since it's hard to cut to ground level. Often we have to make cuts at the height we're able and then make a final coppice cut once the snow is gone but before the buds begin to break.

There's a good bit of info on coppicing and pollarding out of Norway - look up works by Leif Hague and Hakan Slotte.
All the best

I was afraid that would be the case;  I guess I'll just enjoy it as long as I can.  Thanks for the tips on the Norwegian coppicers- definitely going to look them up!

Hej Mark!

We have a fairly old (maybe 70 years or so) oak tree- either English or European red oak- that's not doing so well: there's a *big* crack running up the trunk. I've heard/read that coppicing will rejuvenate a tree and I wondered if it would work on this one, or if the tree is too old at this point for viable root shoots to form. Oaks are kind of rare here in central Sweden (we're at 61.8° N) , so if the coppicing wouldn't work, I'll just leave it alone till it becomes dangerous, but if I could 'reboot' it and give it another 70+ years,  that'd be brilliant.

On a separate note:  is there anything I should be especially aware of in terms of coppicing in the far north? Most of the easily-found info I've been able to find is from England, so it's suited to a much warmer climate than we have here. Will extreme winter conditions require any adjustments in how we do things?

Thanks for any advice you can give. :-)