Tammy Farraway

Sorry, I was exaggerating a little. We use anything over 3 inches as firewood too, although we have a pretty big pile of firewood logs now and a couple of large hugels along with smaller logs in the bottom of all our new raised beds. Most of our land is wooded, so we have a LOT of trees & branches coming down pretty much all the time.

We'd like to create compost to fill the new beds (and build more).

Francis Mallet wrote:...

Why would anyone call it useless? It does what it's supposed to do. Not like round head screwdrivers, now those are useless. Give it a spin Tammy you'll see it's not that difficult to make. The screen is 1/2" hardware cloth.

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I should call it Mighty Champion instead, yeah I'll do that.

I bought my chipper when I had a half acre lot in the city. It could definitely handle all the yard trimmings and leaves there.

Now that we have 90 acres in the country, he'd rather have something that can chew up a downed tree and produce a mountain of chips. He also doesn't like having to be careful when you're feeding material in so you don't jam it.

I accept its limitations; he wants a better tool.

Mighty champion sounds good to me!

This is great! I have a chipper like this. My husband calls it useless, but if I could chip into a trailer or the back of the dump truck...

Trying to clean the seeds is the largest stumbling block to saving my own seed. I've been doing it all by hand and, oh my gosh, what a total pain. The larger seeds like beans are not horrible, but radishes? cabbages? Wow. It's rare when I can't come up with something else that needs to be done instead. It's amazing how productive you can be when you're avoiding a task you don't want to do.

The zig zag seed cleaner looks like a do-able project. Thank you! It would be particularly valuable to a homesteading community that could share its use.

Michael Cox wrote:I had one experiment with powders last year - some dehydrated mushrooms. It failed miserably, because my hand-held blender just wasn't up to the job. Could just be the wrong type of blender, but is there something special about dry powders, vrs wet soups etc...? Do you need different blades/blender style?

You don't need different blades, but it might be your blender just isn't up to it.

Another option to try- blend before drying. It helps if you have fruit leather trays, but there are other options. After your leather is dry, it will pulverize easier than dried pieces. Also if your leather might have some moisture, freezing before pulverizing helps too.

Your mileage may vary.

Another use for veggie powders- homemade cup of soup. To broth or bouillon, add 1 or 2 tablespoons of veggie (or mushroom) powder. Makes a really great afternoon pick-me-up.

Kena Landry wrote:I would be interested in having a nutrition expert weigh in on the actual benefits of powdered veggies. My understanding is that you keep minerals and some vitamins, but lose the more sensitive vitamins and most (all?) of the fiber and feeling of fullness from the bulk and from having crunched actively.

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It doesn't make sense that you would lose the fiber when something is dehydrated. Where would it go?!? If you were juicing, absolutely.

Lina Joana wrote:I have one from lehmans, and I have to say it has not been the most used tool so far... I might need to sharpen it, but it doesn’t seem much more useful than a planting trowel. Not sure what the saw blade is good for, and that would be hard to sharpen...

I use mine on roots, twine, hard baked clay, ... I don't know about sharpening - I've had it 5+ years, and it hasn't needed it yet.

I didn't buy my hori hori garden knife from here, but it is definitely my most used garden tool. Weeding, planting, harvesting, cutting twine if I forgot my scissors, flipping bugs to my chickens, ...

Mine also has measurement markings on it, making it even more useful. Maybe they could consider that as an improvement?

Other options:

- the person travels/moves a lot. Rather than constantly changing their address, they get their mail general delivery.

- the person really doesn't want anyone to know their address.