Hugo Morvan

Hi Nancy, i know what you mean, not using it for shredding wood into woodchips. Mostly i use it for now is wheatseed work.
Are these pictures sufficient for what you want to know about this machine?

Thank you for your replies people. Left me feeling a bit  down to be honest. I have to undo all my permaculture plantings, making use off the south facing walls to grow rosemary up to doesn't seem to have been a smart idea in this light. My fig tree can hopefully stay. Keeping grass long to protect the soil from drying... Nope, that was stupid, i should have used citywater and keep it green. Ten meters of gravel and cement all around my house, doesn't sound very cheerful to me. But some people might love it.
 
I can also do do things ,clean gutters, take foliage of the roof, arrange pressure pump to wet the rafters and wooden barn door with stored water if fire might occur, lay all citywater hosepipes ready to be able to go everywhere around the house.. Remove mulched areas away from the house, remove fire wood, wood  and gas tanks, check that i have enough buckets, buy sand, there is a under roof layer, to keep water out, i took a bit inside to see if it would burn, it is very dangerous, i need to cut that back. There are nests of birds that might not have young in them there as well i can remove. Get masks and goggles ready, make important stuff bags to take away if it gets too dangerous. Oh the youtubes i've seen!

I'm even thinking of blocking the downpipes with tape of the gutter so that water will stay in it when i wet the roof and flying debris from the forest landing on the roof gets extinguished immediately. But if i do it too soon then i might have a problem with rain.

It's all little bits i can try to get done, and speak to my community.

It's so crazy, we've gone from having a dam keeping the land wet in summer with a million liters of water to a situation where that's almost made impossible by a government claiming to care for us and now we do not even have a proper fire van filling point or balloon that was promised. All that in a matter of a generation or two.

Couple of years back, looking in despair at a heap of rye i had to zip off the stalks my hands hurting after a few i cracked and did a ruthless thing. I plonked them into the electric shredder i bought to make wood chips with of smallish branches. I was extremely bemused when after inspection i learned that most rye seeds seem to just severe of the stalk intact.
Since i've learned wheat does just fine and lately i've had a go at spelt wheat.
That was more challenging, because it seems to have two small seeds in one pocket of which the smallest seemed to break in two. As i didn't know what else to do with the harvest i carried on. After some sifting i'm left with the chaff and seeds. Which i seperated in water to just see if i could. And yes the heavy seeds sank and the chaff which sometimes contained seeds floated. But i decided to just keep it together, the chaf and the seed in a container. I hope the chaff functions a bit as a condensation sponge if weather turns funny so my seeds will be kept save. I've done a little sprouting test to see if i hadn't damaged the seeds, but they seem fine, see photo.
Come rains this autumn i can just seed an area with it. I've got a lot more than i started with and a neighboring cattle ranger seems keen to try some as well for calves with start up stomach problems. It's a landrace grex consisting of 4 ancient varieties, so naturally it will over time adapt to the bad soils i grow on.
Without further mutterings and elaborations i leave this topic to the odd wanderer of the interwebs who happens to stumble upon this topic somewhere in this space-time continuum. And i hope you will have a lucky shredder too one day, because it's a time saver i am very fond of.

We're experiencing serious drought and heat domes that are pretty shocking in European standards in France. The area where i live normally doesn't get affected much by forest fires, but the second heat wave is arriving, the brush is really dry, the leaves in the forest are still green so far, but it's only beginning of july so if serious rains do not come we're seriously at risk.
As i said we're ill prepared here. In the village where i live we have no water for the fire brigade. They come with a minute of water worth and have to go and get it in a village closeby. And then they have two storage trucks going making sure there is water to work with...But what if there is fire in 3 villages?
But i live next to a big forest and i start to be worried about it. I wrote to the old people living in the village to come and meet up to discuss, but it would be good for me to hear of things people do in other places where they're used to living with forest fire phenomena what they do and have done. Because one tip can already save a house and change a life big time for the better.

I like this idea of painting the roof. It gets freaky hot in my house. Does anybody know if it will badly affect cement fibre 'slates'? The community was painting the roads with chalk paint to stop the road melting too much and heavy tractors and wood lorry traffic.

I visited a garden of a lady who had deliberately planted it all through her garden and she said it did a great job of making the top soil loose. It disappeared a bit as the shrubs provided more shade
I manage to keep my mints contained in a few places. It always escapes again, but a few times ripping it out to make tea keeps it in check.

They have very hard coating and those shells seem to dye the seedcoat. If they're under developed or soft i'd worry, otherwise, good start for a landrace, plenty of diversity to chose from on this globe.

I'm in France too. I used this kind of drill bit to get through the IBC. This flows out to my little natural pond and the second photo shows how i empty into the y shaped funnel so if times are lean rainwise i can still keep the pond filled without having to pump. The IBC is sitting on an underground reservoir the farmers made coming from the stables. water and manure to feed the tomatoes in summer. You might have one of those handy..
These kits do not really stick for long on these food grade IBC's as is visible on the photo, but i am a bit sorry i put it on, when rainwater comes it's so abundant a bit of loss is no problem whatsoever. I have other ones, they fit tightly. The drill bit is a few mill smaller than the pipe, i managed to push it in, it sealed well. But with these black cattle drinking bassins you have that might be more difficult, because they are made of a sturdier plastic. Some balm or grease might be necessary then, but it might tear your bassin. So that would be a big shame. Then better some leakage.
I don't think making a V shape and then catch it into a gutter will do. You can but it will leak a lot i dare predict.
My friends have a greywater system with yellowflags and reeds which works great, two bassins lower it's very very clean. I have these black bassins as well and they are so much better than IBC's. They are small ponds with snails and waterbugs and floating green plants for most of the year. Don't let a dog that is chemicxally treated for fleas swim in it. My ex gf did that two years ago and cried because every bug snail and plant died and floated to the top. The black bassins are very handy, because you just plunk a watering can in there instead of waiting for a slow tab endlessly like with IBC.

Here nettles just keep coming back up. It's a tractor pathway. Passes twice a year. I've given up fighting them, just eat them now. So i take the tops off as far as i can reach without getting stung and then scythed the rest down and raked it up to make a fermentation with to feed some other plant that need it. I plan to get the white clover seeds in the second pic and spread those over there so it can keep going longterm. I'm eating and scything another layer soon when i need veggies soon and hope to keep the system going like this. Don't see why not if it doesn't stop raining.

Now it looks like this. i found Aspen root stock, Eleagnus, Dogwood worked well, the Broom withered. I consider a succes even if only 5% takes. Aspen was 100% and Eleagnus 20%, Dogwood 10%, so hopefully over summer it will make the roots i want for autumn replacement and a fresh batch. It's mostly to try to get a syntemperate food hedge in place, and these will serve as chop and drop. Pure experimentation, pure fun.