Sonja Draven

When I wear nail polish, I use piggy paint. It doesn't stink and it comes off with rubbing alcohol. It stays on really well if you cure it with a hair dryer after applying. I wear it on my toes and I can't speak to how well it strengthens but it's all 1 or 2 on the toxic meter. I wish it came in more colors but I'd rather safe than toxic.

Erotic is using a feather.

Kinky is using the whole chicken.

You're picking up small pieces of trash in an area you're reclaiming, and your salvaged bucket is already full, so you grab a scrap of bark to use instead.

Hi Bethany,

Welcome to permies! think it's great how you've jumped in and started participating and making this place your home.

You've asked a great question and it's SO nuanced it's hard to answer without writing a book (and in fact people DO write books on this topic). This is just my attempt to briefly answer your question based on my experience.

I think most people agree that animals are capable of feeling and thinking, but for lots of different reasons, most eat them anyway. In my later years of being an omnivore, I focused on eating items labeled as free range, humanely treated, organic, etc. (I've learned since that most of those labels are essentially meaningless as far as the way animals are treated or whether they died in fear and pain.) When I ate animals and their products, I enjoyed the taste, but mostly did so because I believed it was necessary for my health. Essentially I was choosing me over them. I think a lot of people are in that place.

I stopped eating any animal products except honey almost six years ago. I made that decision, after a lot of research, for health reasons. My health is better than it's ever been even though I'm almost 50, so it was the right decision for me. The fact that I'm not directly causing animals pain and death adds to my overall joy and peace, especially when I see documentaries about how conventional animals are treated. Or during those times when I start thinking about something higher up the food chain caging, killing and/or eating me the way many of us do animals.

From my experience with permaculture people who participate in animal eating, there is knowledge that something with feelings died and there is appreciation and reverence for that life.  There is belief that eating animal/products is healthier (at least for them). There is consideration that small-scale, local, personal animal raising and eating is less harmful to animals as a whole than things like clearing land for large-scale farming would be. Practically, it is definitely harder to raise / grow all your calories if animals aren't part of the equation and a lot of people here really care about self-sufficiency.

Ultimately, I feel guilt is a wasted, harmful emotion. I think it makes sense to keep evaluating if one's diet and way of life works for them. I think if someone is living life well, they are passionate about things. It sounds like your son is passionate about veganism and that might be a temporary or lifelong state. I don't think it's possible to live life perfectly, to truly harm no one and nothing. I think we all need to choose how we spend our energy and our passion. It sounds like you and are your son are both sincere, loving people and you're currently passionate about overlapping but different things. That's not a bad thing. And there's a place for you on permies regardless of where you fall on the diet spectrum. 

Sonja

I'm guessing it's both. I believe that the mechanics of boiling liquid causes pressure to build in the jar that when cooling shrinks and seals the lid. I believe too little liquid would mean you wouldn't get enough hot/ wet sustained pressure to create a seal. Based on my instant pot experience where I've added too much contents and it just steamed all over my counter and wouldn't seal, I believe the opposite would be true with jars that were too full. They'd also be more prone to exploding since it's glass or boiling the contents out and contaminating the rubber so they wouldn't seal.

I've done a lot of canning and I never measure exactly. I basically fill to the top of the shoulder (give or take). There's a rough sweet spot.

Note all the "believes." I don't KNOW all that to be true but it's my best stab at answering your question

Christopher Weeks wrote:Sonja, your location is listed as PNW. If you have access to a car or truck and are in range of the ocean, you can bring home seaweed to compost and make your own fancy-expensive soil amendments for free!

Thank you so much for this suggestion!! Somehow I never heard of this option. I can definitely get seaweed. And after researching, it seems like a great solution.

Thank you all for responding!

Dave, I looked that up and it definitely seems like it's a factor for camp fires as they can easily get up to 1200+ degrees and exploding can occur at 1000. Not something I want to risk, so I'll use the concrete for something else.

Sonja Draven wrote:

Sonja Draven wrote:These look promising:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07RKP848L/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8

I ordered a pair and will report back.

I'm reporting back!

These boots don't have a wide toe box. Sadly, my feet are too big to order anything bigger to get that toe space and after trying to wear them snug, my feet hurt. So they won't work for me.

I don't think someone with wide calves could get them on. And they have a strong rubber smell. But they seem fairly well made and I think they'd hold up pretty well. I wish I could test that myself...

I wanted to update my update:

I ended up using these boots for a crawling around under the house situation where I needed them to be snug around my calves and not fall off or get anything icky up my pants. They worked great for that and using them for that led to wearing them for something else similar (short projects that increased over time) and eventually they became my normal outside work boots. (The shoe covers I linked to earlier in the thread also became increasingly annoying as they were constantly falling down my calves (tug o'war or tripping over them when they sunk too low) and/or ripping them on something and then no longer being waterproof. The use and toss nature of them got to me too. I really wanted something that would last well.) As I wore these boots, they stretched out some (still not super roomy in the toe box but good enough that my feet don't hurt) and the rubber smell is long gone. They are still snug in the calves which is a good thing for me as it helps protect from ticks in the summer.

I wear them most days when working and I ordered a second "just in case" pair recently to sit on my shelf, but I'm still wearing the pair I wore last summer. In the winter they help keep my feet dry and warm enough with thicker socks. So I *would* recommend trying them if you don't have serious duck feet and/or really large calves. (If so, I really hope you all can find something great!)

I had planned on putting in a fire pit next year since I don't need it until then (actually, I hoped to do it this year but *everything* is taking longer this year than expected and I expected it to take a long time...), but I have family visiting next month and I thought it would be a fun project to do together rain or shine.

I have a mix of big and small rocks and I plan to use the big ones as primary construction and thought I'd fill in the gaps with the smaller rocks and old concrete chunks. I thought I better ask the collective permies mind if it's safe to heat concrete that way, if it's a bad idea for practical reasons, etc.

Basically is there anything I need to know before I just jump right in?

Thank you both! I was hoping the answer was yes and I'm so happy it was.

Too much wood to get it all moved and split this year  but I'll keep doing what I can. And I have enough dry wood already for this coming winter so this can all dry a full year after it's split.