Richard Henry

I live just west of the Catskills in a 200+ year-old farmhouse.  My father updated much of the insulation in the late 1960's.  That seems to be holding well, but a couple of notes.  Yes, the fireplaces are an energy hog.  They have large flues and the air exchange will suck air in every tiny crack or around doors and windows and cool the home.  Suggestion:  While living in Denver, we had an old parsonage with a fireplace.  I walled off the throat of the fireplace and installed stovepipe up the chimney.  This adds a firewall to any leaky portions of an old flue and allows better control of air infiltration.  I used two flue dampers to allow better control of exhaust air, it seemed each time I did that, that the heat retained was well worth the extra management time expended.  A relatively simple method to improve the warm "feel" of a room is to line the walls with construction aluminum paper (aluminum foil if you feel flush).  The aluminum tends to reflect infrared energy from all heat sources including your body back to you.  Since the oil heater in that parsonage was a glutton, I installed a point hear source by hanging a heat lamp on a pulley over the most comfortable section of the couch where we could snuggle in comfort even with the rest of the room frigid by most measures.
Much of that tech was developed in an old and dilapidated trailer during our first winter on our own land. There were mornings when we saw thick frost on the outside wall along our hallway towards the stove.  That was not too far from our farmhouse, but in the colder valley over 40 years ago.  My parents were still alive and in the farmhouse at that time.  We had little money, but we made it through.  As an example of how cold the site was, I had to sprinkle the garden in August to protect it from hard frosts.  Occasionally, I had to bend the hose to allow ice chunks to push out.  If the old insulation was blown in, it may have settled.  Use a cheap remote thermometer to check the walls for differences in temperature.  If the top is cooler, consider setting up a ceiling fan of any type to push heat back down towards the shivering bodies.  That way the rising heat of the room will be recycled a bit before serving to heat the cold upper walls.  If you have access to inexpensive newspaper, harder to get now than years ago, make temporary inner wall chambers of cardboard and loosely wad up the paper sheets and place inside.  That will provide some additional insulation.  It is possible to place foam panels of virtually any type (preferably closed-cell) in windows at night.  Excellent privacy screen and it is amazing how well it works to reduce drafts.  In one Denver home, we had metal frame windows and placing foam (recycled from maintaining a filled freezer from NY)in the window frame literally stopped a draft I had assumed was an invisible hole.  
Never fear to try any idea, no matter how hair-brained it may seem at first. That is how you learn what works and what does not.    

Wow!  I am glad someone has an easy time planting peach trees.  I live in Upstate NY and the plant zone maps claim it is fine for peaches, but the winds I get seem to sear them to the ground.  I expect using peach trees for wind breaks up here would be futile.  I find lilac more useful as they flex easily and eat energy from the wind.  Those peaches that survive the wind have fallen to the deer.  While there are thousands of trees of all sizes around my farm, the buck deer seem to prefer my isolated fruit trees to strip the velvet off their horns.  While performing their beauty rubs, they strip the bark to the heartwood and then disease slips through the cracks.  I have finally decided that, for many trees, I need to set solid locust posts with chicken wire and hardware cloth to ensure my fruit trees' get the personal space they require.  Thanks for the brown rot hints, if I plant some more peaches, I will add that to the protocols.

I notice some leaf and twig litter in your photos.  Treatment of brown rot should start with cleanliness.  Ensure all cherry tree litter is removed.  When pruning, ensure all cancers and obviously diseased branches are removed.  Pruning of dying wood should not lead to additional issues.  Brown rot is a fungus, so copper fungicides or pyrethrin w/sulfur are useful.  While Northern California is not subject to snow everywhere, it can fall and if it is wet or near freezing, breakage of main trunks. One of the last wet snows around here broke one major section off, but did not appear to really harm the remaining sections.  
Note:  Pyrethrin is a natural insecticide/fungicide from chrysanthemum flowers.

I would second the suggestions to clean and re-silicone all interior seams.  Some silicone caulks may cause allergic conditions.  I suggest using a caulking tool.  They are really cheap and the one I purchased has an angle that looks very close to these panels.  Nice addition, the tool can double as a cleaning tool for the seams, place a small cloth over the angled head and use it to ensure the glass is as clean as possible.  The water pressure will be pushing the caulk into the seam if installed on the inside, so it helps to keep the aquarium from leaking.

I remember reading a book on aquiculture back in the 1970's where a catfish pond used a drum of rock with a waterfall flowing though the drum.  Could not locate anything highly similar, but did find a similar setup with photos if you are interested.  https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showthread.php?36550-55-Gal-Drum-Sand-and-gravel-filter-DIY

Several years ago while deployed to a disaster, I erred in attempting to eat some under cooked broccoli and dislocated my jaw.  A co-worker loaned me his Champion commercial quality juicer.  That was a life saver.  I was able to cold press fruit and vegetables and then mixed the masticated pulp with the juice and ate - did not have to attempt to chew.  I was so impressed, I tracked one down to use at home.  Here is a site I found where one could be viewed and purchased.  Yes, it is expensive, but this puppy will laugh at raspberry seeds and keep on rolling.  It can be used for multiple things including wheatgrass juicing.  https://discountjuicers.com/championcomm.html

Back in the day (yes, I am nearly as old as the dirt I study), the most common freezer wrap was freezer paper and freezer tape.  It is a heavy duty paper with a wax coating on at least one side to reduce moisture transfer.  One of the common shopping bags we use for cold items in warm weather is made with an aluminized lining.  They are very rugged.  Perhaps it would be useful to identify how one wishes to store frozen items: meat; specific vegetable; or time of storage (that is one I like).  Wrap different items in freezer paper in a container, stainless would be wonderfully efficient here, and then remove from metal container and place wrapped item in a specific heavy duty cold bag.  That way, even when removing from freezer, the wrappings would be less likely to loosen and it would be possible to haul the whole bag to where the items could be easily removed before returning the rest to the freezer.

One issue I have with a freezer is that it can lose power occasionally and then everything starts to thaw, refreezing when power comes back.  I have also had a child fail to ensure the freezer is properly closed (imagine that!).  Transferring frozen items into a secondary cold bag would add a bit of safety buffer and possibly reduce moisture loss and resulting freezer burn.

Just a thought.

You are aware that linseed is an oil, correct?  I suspect that the linseed may be reacting with your walnut oil and dissolving.  Water color might resist the oil by not mixing.  I am not a painter, but I have worked with environmental sites where oils were involved.

Well, I grew up on a farm where the dairy held up for 4 to 5 years after my father ruptured 2 discs in his back working a night job so he could keep farming during the day.  After that, the cows were sold off and my father purchased the first hydraulic backhoe in central New York State.  We never stopping growing gardens, however.  We grew at least 30 to 40 bushels of potatoes until I was nearly out of high school.  Then potatoes dropped to a few rows in a large garden.  I was given a rototiller around the late 50's and ran those until after college.  I read Rodale's Organic Gardening religiously and then took off to Colorado to work as a geotechnical engineer.  After I married, we moved back to Denver for a few years and I kept gardening when possible.  We bought a house on an acre of land in a village and I turned an old trash spot into a garden using tons of leaves and grass clippings.  When the parents passed and the kids graduated, we moved back to the farm where I continue to garden and have found deer far more of an issue than when we kept dogs.
I remember the Jim Crockett's Victory Garden from when I was a teen and could see PBS shows occasionally.  For the poster who remembered the Victory Garden shows, here are some publications:     Crockett, James Underwood. (1977). Crockett's Victory Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-16121-3.
   Crockett, James Underwood. (1978). Crockett's Indoor Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-16124-4.
   Crockett, James Underwood. (1981). Crockett's Flower Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-16132-9.
   Morash, Marian. (1982). The Victory Garden Cookbook. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-50897-9.
   Wirth, Thomas. (1984). The Victory Garden Landscape Guide. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-94845-6.
   Thomson, Bob. (1987). The New Victory Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-84337-9.
   Wilson, Jim. (1990). Masters of the Victory Garden. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-94501-1.
   Weishan, Michael and Laurie Donnelly. (2006). The Victory Garden Companion. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-059977-5.

A site on IMBD still hosts some newer episodes.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1065739/episodes/?ref_=tt_eps_yr_sa

I hope some folks enjoy.

I'd support this. Since the audience is all over the Eco-scale, I hope it helps convince them it's better than an outhouse. I'm especially concerned it proves the pathogens are gone in the final product. But how to test that?

The gas from the system could be tested by collecting it over time and sending it to a certified environmental lab.  The same would be possible for the effluent.  I suggest the collector be someone with experience at taking water tests for hazardous waste sites.  Contact with the lab is a must since they should be sending a trip blank (distilled water sample that just travels to and from the test site; a comparison sample - a sample of what is entering the digester and a sample of completed compost to allow full comparison of starting conditions vs final product.