Andrea Bloom

I'm into it!

Please include LOTS of ideas for alternatives to sawdust &/ or where to get lots of sawdust.

Also, include scaling to smaller buckets instead of 30+ gallon cans. I think many of us would rather not have to move full 30 gallon cans and don't want to have to dump smaller buckets into larger cans. Maybe 10 or 15 gallon buckets would work?

Earthbag & roundhouse plans!! And the earth walls webinar will go perfectly with it. I'm excited!!!

Thanks for the reminder! I try to keep the bananas and pears in a different corner of the kitchen, but the other 4 people in my house have a tendency to re-arrange things.  (I have a 3 year old interior decorator who is quite adept at climbing onto counters.)

Thank you for this great info!  These lists really help with planning backpacking trips. I've gone on short trips where friends ate that powdered, dehydrated "in a bag" soup stuff that costs $8+ per meal while I was happily eating cheese, cream cheese, and other things that people usually refrigerate. I'm so happy to get to add new things to my list of great foods to pack.

On another note, I find the shelf life of vegetables list (above) to be VERY conservative, at least in my climate. For example, I can leave small tomatoes on my counter for months. They may start to shrivel a bit (natural dehydration), but they are delicious.

In my humble opinion, in general, people just need to get a feel for what a food is like when it's bad- does it stink? is it oozing? is there visible mold? (For mold, I just scoop or cut that part out and eat it the good parts right away.) Also, learn how to avoid botulism...And then stop being so afraid. Leave vegetables and fruits out to see how long they last in your climate & time of the year.

I'm near Sacramento, CA, so it's really dry and quite hot (108° today, June 18). In the spring, summer, & fall, food ripens and gets over-ripe quickly, compared to winter.  Still, it lasts quite a while out of the fridge. Just try it.

Quick tip- Put some heavier duty cup hooks under the back, bottom of your kitchen cabinets & hang colanders for produce. I have 10 or so & I love them.  Good air circulation & clears off my counter for what else? More baskets of produce, obviously!

Thank you so much for sharing!

I have had tremendous back pain since middle school. Unable to stand upright many mornings over the last 30 years. I have dabbled in elastic corsets and found small periods of relief after breast reduction surgery, weight loss, etc., but it has always returned and I've only exacerbated it by getting hit by a car while on my bike, 4 pregnancies of big babies, etc. Your post struck a CORD (pun intended) with me.  Come to think of it, my wedding dress had a corseted top and I felt amazing dancing all night long.

You have motivated me to pull out my sewing machine and try again to ease my burdens.

Thank you!

FYI, the link to make our own pattern appears broken.

I'm super stoked about this book.  I'm hoping it will give me advice on connecting grey water sources to my existing drip system without having to disconnect the drip system from the municipal water supply.  

I'm hoping to get a gray water system from my bath tub to under some avocado trees, too - those suckers use like 25 gallons/day each, so there's no way I'll plant them until a free source of water is in place.

Thanks for visiting these forums!