Nora Melley

We have a real tick problem, and have been talking about getting guinea fowl for a while. We found out today that our dog has Lyme's, so we're making this a priority. We only have half an acre, and there's a tidal creek as one of the boundaries (the other sides are fenced). I worked on a farm for a while that had guineas, and I know that they're pretty damn dumb. Do I need to put up some sort of barrier so they can't get into the creek? Or will they stay away from moving water?

I've read that if I get keets, I should keep them penned for about 6 weeks - meaning they probably won't be much help with the ticks this year. There's someone nearby who is selling 6-9 month old birds. Will birds that age be too difficult to manage?

We live in a house built in the 1920's, in New Jersey (suburban Philadelphia). We bought it a couple of years ago. We have an oil burning furnace that was installed in 2004, and we installed a wood burning stove in the dining room / kitchen last year. We have been having a lot of trouble with the heater, and it seems like it might be time to replace it - but I would really like to get away from oil. There's no natural gas on our street. Geothermal would likely be problematic, as we are on a creek and the township probably won't issue a permit. My long term goal is a rocket mass heater in our living room to heat that half of the house, but we need to do some renovations first (knock down a wall to combine the tiny living room with a tiny bedroom). That isn't likely to happen soon.

Energy systems tend to confuse me. Give me a plant or animal any day. Perhaps there is an easy solution I'm missing? Or maybe it's an impossible problem.  But if anyone can solve it, all of the smart people on the permies site can.

We bought a small property last year, and we are slowly trying to make it into a tiny homestead. One area that I would like to start planning is energy. We have a tidal creek in our yard. It's not saltwater.  We're near Philadelphia - it flows into the Delaware river. It's pretty slow, but on average the depth change is about 6 feet between high and low tide. I'm a complete novice with energy systems, and I'm overwhelmed trying to research this. Does anyone have any advice (even if just to say it's not possible and move on to other things)?