Marc Dube

I've had an ant hill severely damage the bark of an apple tree. The ants made a nest right beside the trunk and the mound came up maybe 6 inches. I checked it out after maybe a year and a lot of the bark touching the mound was rotting and sluffing off. Similar to burying a tree to deep.

An average year is 3-5 inches May-June, next to nothing July-Aug, and 3-5 inches Sept-Oct.

Snow is hard to measure as it depends where it drifts up 100feet apart can have 3 inches of snow where grass catches it, then 4 feet where it drifts up.

I've listened to Paul and others preach about how glorious Hugels are in dry cold climates. That's exactly where I live and am contemplating building a Hugel 7 feet by digging 3 feet down beside it exactly like Paul describes.

What I'm mentally wrestling with is where exactly does the moisture come from? A lot of our moisture comes from snow melt and if there is a trench 3 feet below the first layer of wood how can that snowmelt be utilized?

I'm concerned that it will become a bone dry berm without irrigation, especially in the windy area I live in.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Hi all. We found a few packages of ground venison in the back of the freezer. It's probably 3 years old. No sign of freezer burn.

I was thinking about browning it in an oily pan first, with onion and garlic, to see if it smells fresh enough to eat. No salt. If it seems edible, I'll use it as a base for something in a sauce. If not, the hounds will get a little extra on their meals (hence no salt).

What do you think?

I think your plan is sound. I wouldn't hesitate to eat it.

We cut up all the chickens we butcher so we end up with large amounts of drumsticks too.

Place in crockpot with bbq sauce and put on low for 6 hours. Meat is falling off the bone and the sauce soaks right in.

Coat with homemade bread crumbs spiced with whatever you like, we go with a chicken spice heavy with paprika, bake until crispy and done.

Smoke at around 250 for 2 hours, wrap in foil with bbq sauce and go another 2 or 3 hours.

The best piece for soup.

Awesome! Thanks for keeping us updated and I'm looking forward to your final results!

The last couple years we have managed to grow and keep enough to keep eating our own for 9-10 months.

We have been doing ten 30' rows every year mulched heavily with the deep bedding from the chicken coop. They store from October to June in a cold room in the basement.

I've spent a bit of time thinking about TEG's but never thought of combining it with a rocket stove.

It might be well suited to putting the TEG on a mass that is heated, the other side of the TEG needs to be kept as cool as possible as electricity is made by a temperature difference from one side of it to the other.

So one side would be thermally attached to the heated mass and the other side needs to be cooled as efficiently as possible. Possible ideas are large heat sinks with fins to catch airflow, possibly in contact with the ground to let the ground cool it. Pump cool water over it,

Hops might fit your parameters.

I use the same technique but I use pure tallow and completely saturate the boots or leather paying special attention to all seams.