Douglas Alpenstock

That billhook is a great find -- colour me envious. The steel is likely better quality than most of the stuff we get today.

Ken W Wilson wrote:What chemicals are they using?

I think this is the essential question.

If they are fogging to kill adult mosquitoes, it would have to be a health emergency. This has the potential for collateral damage.

Otherwise, they may be spraying a natural biological predator of mosquito larvae. This is harmless as far as I know.

I look forward to watching the videos. This might be useful information to have in my back pocket. Omnivores can adapt. We live in interesting times.

I wonder if there is any margin for error though. Weather can muck up the best of plans, and the weather seems more interesting and variable than it used to be.

M Pearson wrote:I've experimented with firestarting a lot recently, although more for campfires.

It seems good tinder has 2 properties: easy to light (e.g. with a spark) and burns long and hot enough to light your smaller sticks or kindling to transition to a real fire.

I've found that pretty much anything really dry with a lot of surface area works

Good comments. Surface area is key to catching that first spark, and sustaining that first flame.

Way back when I was working on my primitive firemaking skills, I used an actual flint and steel (not the hot mischmetal ferro rods we have now, which are awesome). It was an exercise in humility and patience. Everything had to be just right. I used cattail fuzz to catch the spark, the shredded inner bark of dead poplar trees to catch the first flame, and then a progression of tiny shredded hardwood twigs to stabilize the fire. All of this was carefully prepared beforehand -- the first flame only lasted seconds. But I did it! (Pardon me while I have a small preen. )

The interesting thing about making fire out of almost nothing is that you look at available resources around you through a completely different lens. You automatically spot and gather resources as you walk through a landscape -- especially if they are dry.

I'm still using damaged/soiled egg cartons, but now I'm painting them with discarded beef tallow/bacon fat/cooking oil. Burns hot, works fine, and uses up waste materials. All good -- as long as I keep them out of reach of the dogs haha.

Thom Bri wrote:Other than as a personal challenge, or dire necessity, what's the point?

'Marginal' lands are considered marginal for reasons. Often they are dry, or naturally infertile, or infertile due to past mis-use. Trying to cultivate them leads to more damage.

One consideration is that this land can be purchased cheap, cheap, cheap. Smallholders can do wonders in places that are useless to commercial farm operations. But it's a lot of labour, a lot of sweat equity invested.

Burra Maluca wrote:I think a lot of it comes down to economics. It's harder work to get crops from more marginal land, so if there isn't the demand for the extra food then it won't be used to grow crops. Most land can be grazed by animals though.

I agree. It also takes a lot more labour to grow crops in places where normal farming equipment can't operate. Grazing animals provide the labour.

Joao Winckler wrote:Parsnips and carrots in the ground under straw is the way I do it too, and they honestly taste better after a frost.

I know people in milder climates than mine who do this. It would be so much easier than what I have to do.

Gray Henon wrote:A buddy was telling me a while back about “Green necks”.  Probably the closest description of me, lol.

Haha, that's good.

Me, I'm probably a Red Green neck. (Steve Smith cracks me up.)

It's a fair question. We had a related conversation a while ago.  https://permies.com/t/273807/cold-cellar-today

I wouldn't take the image posted above too literally. It certainly looks lovely and idyllic on a calendar. Not a serious design though.

In our Northern climate, there are limits to a stand-alone root cellar since the ground freezes solid 6-7' deep in winter. In the earliest houses, they dug a pit with a trap door under the main floor. Better-built century old farmhouses always had a corner of the basement set up as the cold room. Lightly insulated from the rest of the house, and with a sliding door to the outside air to control the temperature. And often, as noted, a sand bed for root vegetables.

Since our winters last six months and harvests are a year apart, it's hard to know how long they were able to keep things. But since I'm here, it seems it was just long enough.

With modern houses and central heating, a root cellar is tougher. I have a dark corner in the basement for potatoes, but it's too warm and the potatoes sprout way too early. With some framing and insulation this year I think it will work better than in the past.

For other root vegetables, we use a refrigerator. With the tubers carefully washed and trimmed of root hairs, moisture-managed with paper towels, and curated so a bad one doesn't rot the whole lot, we are still eating carrots and beets we harvested in 2025 -- a full calendar year ago. Yes there is some cost in electricity, and yes there are plastic bags, but even now the quality is better than the stuff in the supermarket.