Ra Kenworth

Bird food dispenser from repurposed tin can:

This is a repurposed corned beef can, using zip ties and a piece of wire that wraps around the can and each end is the attachment to a cage. The two plastic ones give scale of what else I have available, the smaller one being 2". They are handy for a few reasons: they don't break when they freeze (the smaller plastic ones are especially prone to.) They are narrower than the big feeders, so you can fit two of these in the door of a small car cage. They cost nothing as opposed to the plastic ones that are about $5.

Edit: these are the corned beef cans that have the key gizmo for opening on the side, so there was no cutting!

The picture is with these hooked onto the outside of a cage for presentation purposes: I couldn't get a decent picture of them on the doors due to light challenges, sorry!

As per discussion, I was under strict lockdown. There was no spread of the virus in our jurisdiction, and we weren't even free to go get our mail. No cellular reception, at that time, still copper telephone lines, so antique fax or dialup!!! was the extent of digital communications. Harassed frequently for driving to a weak LTE signal that wasn't strong enough for calls, but strong enough for texting, mostly, with errors, , otherwise, life as usual. Gatineau mountains, Québec.

Joe Gill wrote:

My next question is what are you top quicks for your food forest for those of us who live up north in Zone 4 or lower.

I would highly recommend black raspberries as well because fruit is so expensive -- if you like them. The canes are better than red raspberry because they grow in last years canes, they taste sweeter, and the leaves are fabulous antioxidants in tea.

Wild strawberries as a cover crop -- they are great around asparagus too and you can walk on them most of the year.

Also wild oregano

But you can also get these started along places you like to walk and forage them, taking out all the work of maintaining either. I do both, and also started some wild cherries this way and am still looking for wild plums to do this with. I am in the same growing zone or a little colder with a high snow load. For wild planting you want to observe after the rain which areas are wetter and see where things look more fertile.

paul wheaton wrote:
This will be my first year growing parsnips.

I love parsnips but I eat carrot tops a lot, and have been worried about parsnips cross polinating and causing toxic leaves but don't know if my concerns are valid. I've settled for German rooted parsley but although good, I will snap up parsnips from the discount rack at a store if I can.

Do you have any advice about cross polination?

Lawren Richards wrote:Wrote a longer post and lost it ‘cause I wasn’t logged in, but in short: what’s so great about sunchokes? Mine were knobby, small, tasteless, and died off in a season or two. Why do sunchokes instead of, say, potatoes?

I find mine need to be divided and new patches started to get nice ones -- and of course I get really good ones where I don't want them! The best trick I learned was not to over water (assuming you aren't watering, make sure they aren't in a location that just gets too much drainage water or other reason they might be too wet. So let them droop in the summer and don't help them out unless you think it's absolutely essential. That way they are forced to retain moisture in their roots for big fat specimens!

They are an inulin source, so they will fill you up and feed your beneficial gut microbiome, but other root veg are very good to have and turnips are always a good option, and actually do a good job of holding a slope (like if you do raised beds of compost with no sides) as are carrots, German rooted parsley, potatos. But if sunchokes hate your location, that's fine, chicory provides inulin and there are many options from curly lettuce looking chicory to raddichio and they're a perennial too.

I'm sure food prices have doubled since fall in my area near Canada's capital. I am still eating squash I grew in my stinging nettle cutting compost, and all the seeds have been getting shoved into reused paper envelopes and stuck in the freezer door, awaiting the reappearance of soil.

As a good gert I do have asparagus, sunchokes, brambles, strawberries, buckwheat, and lots of medicinals and polinator plants on my tile bed, but I am certainly will prioritize food growing more than I intended along with the home renos i am doing myself, so I guess I will lose those extra pounds! Better find some cruciferous seeds in my hoard for kimchi and my air lock mason jar lids!

I actually just bought a morel mushroom kit. I am pretty sure they pop up on my property but I want to be sure. Next will be oyster mushrooms.

I am really glad when I was laid up I simply let my cultivated nettles take over. In about another month there will be a wonderful spring crop and soon thereafter lamb's quarters. I am happy to go back to substituting meat with eggs especially after hearing rumors of foot and mouth in the food supply elsewhere around the world.

Maybe hurry up and grab my scratchy non pesticide hay bales from the horse farmer near me while I can. In a few weeks they will be pigeon poop innocuoated for growing food and I was only paying $4-5 per small bale.

Honestly I am expecting a big hike in food prices. I've also noticed a scarcity since Christmas -- getting whole peas is now a challenge except in piddly small packets, but I use it mainly as feed for my flock. I am using lentils but soon I will be ordering forage peas. They make better sprouts anyway! I eat a lot of peas and lentils and sprouts from these plus buckwheat. I will be fine, but I will be checking out my new sour dough book. Bread prices are getting too high, but I haven't made a lot of bread since my boy flew the nest.

I've thought about writing but I would produce a collection of Kindle unlimited books and build up a following. Perhaps permaculture subjects with a different pen name than fiction if I were doing it. I would say start now and just start writing, organizing whatever you write, and maybe consider a photographer for books requiring photos and make them ebooks to start.
For fiction, large print is popular and so are audiobooks. I wouldn't produce a physical book unless it was eco friendly and large print. Large print are popular with those with poor eyesight, but also dyslexia and adults learning to read, or children for that matter. I kind of hate the idea of mass paperbacks myself.
Just some thoughts to take it or leave it.

I have a large flock of pigeons in the gatineau mountains in Quebec.

There are hawks. I keep my seniors in cages, plus a few pairs of purebred giant runts, and late squeakers over the winter. The rest are crosses so more intelligent and are free range.

They go in two cotes every night, as they want, and a few stay outdoors even in mid winter. I bought 15 swift pigeons from a local farrier when I was starting out, that had the speed and intelligence to escape the hawks he had which were more abundant on his fields than mine are in the mountains but yes at least cooper hawks will perch in pine and spruce trees awaiting a pigeon pigeon. Hmm couldn't resist! I've lost as many as 65% one particularly cold winter, but I consider it tax, which culls the weaker birds. I also have homers, a few Modena crosses, and lots of giant runt crosses. I find most of the bigger birds prefer to fly for the cotes or hide under something when the hawks are out, but yes, protection is preferred -- I have a crossbreed livestock dog, and I am around and bark when the hawks are out. My pigeons do listen to the blue jays and wait out potential threats.Onky the younger ones are slow to react to human barking -- they know I am warning them, and understand when the dog barks so it made sense. The hawks don't like it either!

Hawks will only take one at a time. Weasles on the other hand will kill a whole flock sucking the blood out of them and leaving them for dead. They will eat through framing to tear apart a well protected coop once they've decided they are getting in so a good dog is the only solution. My dog also skinned the tail off a fox trying to take refuge under a vehicle, and I don't know if it lived, but it didn't return! I've also had a migrating hawk smart enough to go under vehicles to catch pigeons, so when the weather is bad, I only let them out late afternoon for about an hour and watch them.

People's dogs are the worst.

Yes, you need to be around, and no they don't bother flying insects. They are fabulous soil builders and some of them are just plain chummy as are the starlings!
I actually enjoy a chance to watch the hawks in action, and I have almost daily visits from turkeys as well, who poop which the dog considers a delicacy!!

Yes libraries are relevant, but unfortunately they aren't run the best near me. I can't find many books in English and although there is interlibrary loan, not much available in English. Also, it is only open a few hours weekly. It was closed for all of COVID and the three libraries nearby are in Quebec. Oh, even the WiFi was turned off for all of COVID and there's no cellular reception. I pitied the children!

In contrast, a friend of mine in downtown Toronto used the library constantly and their libraries was a refuge as well as a resource for parents and children during COVID

But I have done what some others had done and order used (often library) books. I have a full permaculture library, as well as language resources in several languages, music, DVDs, sci fi and extensive spiritual and science books, as well as diy repair and building books, passive solar, gray water, natural building materials, rocket stoves etc , and of course lots of digital content including a ton of Permies resources. I had hoped to back up all the digital content to discs this winter, but didn't get time. I have the books organized, Ziploc bagged, and am setting up my gutted motorhome as a rolling library with a couple of bunk beds.

Considering any of the libraries require a lot of driving, it's actually a lot cheaper to have all the books I want on hand. I've slowly been collecting classics in large print also.

So I would say libraries are so important I grew my own!

I use sticks, take photos, use a dedicated email to send the photo to myself, add a subject (common name) and a description to the email, such as which saved seeds they are, year, etc., or additional attached photos of seed packet) and it is time stamped simply in sending it so I know when they were sewn.
I can easily find the email by common name, add a reply to add updated photos and comments.
If I am going to write a label anyway, I will use whatever is handy, written with indelible laundry marker which endures rain, or waxed pencil / garage sale quality eyeliner (which I keep with my art supplies), but rarely label these days because the emails are sufficient in keeping things organized, and I am the only one maintaining the garden.

Judith Browning wrote:
I can't find the patches of it I know are around here. I have one survivor in a pot.  

You aren't by any chance in Ontario - Quebec are you? Mine will be poking out in the next month. I'm cultivating it from wild stock and have plenty.