Paul Ellsworth

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since Aug 17, 2020
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Recent posts by Paul Ellsworth

Yours truly enjoys growing tomatoes with kids in the neighborhood, meaning I usually have a cherry tomato plant, roma varieties, etc.  Producing more fruits than I can reasonably eat, give away, etc.

What I have yet to pull off to add to my cooking repertoire is ... sun-dried tomatoes.  Love 'em, cook with 'em, but don't love paying for them, but past attempts to dry the via non-electric means have mostly failed for reasons I attribute to Missouri's summer humidity. With growing season oncoming, I am wondering if y'all have any suggestions to get my excess tomatoes dried?  

Also, if any of you have any flavoring tricks while the drying is going on, I'd love to experiment... is that a thing to do or no?
3 years ago
I would plant them -- in the hands of my favorite gardening fiend...  I mean friend.  Funny story being that particular "Freudian slip"... I accidentally said that to another person, and she acknowledged, that yup! she qualified as said fiend because it has become an employable passion.   Anyway, why should permies then put them in my hands?

Because she is becoming the go-to person for many of the community gardens in the city where she lives, including one directly connected to a local homeless shelter program and providing both skills training and fresh vegetables and greens, etc. She's quite good at heirloom seed gardens and would be an ideal experimenter, seed harvester and distributor at the end of the season. She can put those seeds in the hands of hundreds.

God bless in all efforts here!

Leigh Martin wrote:... I found this design for a bridge and thought that it could be adapted to the form work of an earthen roof.

Good idea/ bad idea?



I like where you're going with this, and can only respond with a partially qualified "I don't know".  Meaning I am not an engineer but a few years back I found some software [doesn't seem to be available anymore and is copyrighted so I can't share it] and designed a gambrel-style roof with it which the building inspectors improved no-bid deal. Ordered the trusses and off we went, saving 30% of materials and increased the roof's loading factor by a similar margin.

There's also something called a "mansard" style roof that does the same thing on all four sides, plus geodesic domes, so I don't see the build difficulty being terrible.   Anyway, dinking around with that software but not looking at the lock-in gravity bits, the numbers look good, provided I've guessed right on pole diameters, etc. you might choose to use. Wondering about the side anchoring, however.  If this is to be an in-ground fixture, you might think about "footing the roof" separately from the below-ground walls, i.e., maybe have concrete or similar pillars that they are tied to but compatible with the overall design. That would take a whole lot less than full concrete footings, methinks.

Another thread, but at some point after I finish acquiring a new home but older home property (next month), I'm also going to be looking for a "permies" property to build a mini-park/community garden kind of thing, and can visualize where I'd use something like this both to teach a bit of STEM and just to show some cool design in what would basically be the exposed part of a "walk-in veggie cellar".  This will be a fun experiment to add to my list of projects.
Well, a small update... moving my property search elsewhere.

I was able to do a more thorough walk-through/look-see... and the likelihood of converting this particular property to a permies location? Doable but not desirable. The property where I would have put a residential structure (think "caretaker's college") is carved up by a bulldozer into the hillside, but in the wrong direction... so no visibility of the main garden area. Worse, there is a whole nest of power lines making up a big chunk of one of the property's borders.  Meaning that permitting the property to do what I/we'd like? not a headache I wish to sign up for.

That said... What I want to do is still a good hobby/approaching retirement greybeard's plan.  Just not in that location.  So I will pretend that it WOULD have worked and develop my knowledge accordingly whilst looking for a better landing zone for the learning.
3 years ago
--very small snip, me grinning like a monkey who just tasted his first banana--

thomas rubino wrote: Now I will tell you it is much harder to accomplish than folks think. A lot of variables involved with making usable power with water and it gets expensive the more power you want to make. Don't let me talk you out of trying, but approach it slowly with many calculations (pressure and flow) before you start investing much capital.


My huge grin is because that is an area where I plan to have more fun experimenting than spending.  Though I admit to already "mad-scientist-ing" much of the design problems with some very old technology. (water wheels), and keeping the rest of my power-generation expectations really really small. The remaining design problems?  STEM experimenter's domain! because I really won't need to be grid-disconnected... just not grid expensive. For example, I can picture a group of HS student thinking "hey, what if we use a tesla bladeless as a water turbine?" and seeing what they can build and how much juice they get out of it compared to their expectations, etc.  Meanwhile, they learn about CAD, CNC machines, hmm wooden turbine? 3D printer? etc. Whilst building their own little bots and mini-drones and other science-y toys durig other times of the year or when we don't have an experiment running.

For the rest of y'all, what most people don't realize is that water is hellaciously heavier than people realize, per cubic foot (about 62lbs), and how small a cubic foot is compared to even a small pond (say 20x40, 2-3 feet deep). That's close to 125,000 pounds of water if I'm trying to get that much from lower pond to an upper pond every day. Easy to calculate the GPM, rise, yadda yadda yadda... and suddenly the power required to pump the water up a full rise goes crazy. That said, my problem will be too much water already in the water table, but yup, gotta keep the top pond somewhat full. When a lower pond (the easier part) is full, I'll need to let a LOT of water out for much of the year... aka I'm planning to leave a similar water table and carbon footprint similar to what I started with but instead of the sunshine and water overgrowing trees and brush, this strange "junk property" grows useful trees, foods, and pretty stuff.

The best crop? and why I'm thinking of doing this? permie-aware grand kids and foster kids.
4 years ago
Melanie, great points which I will "snip divide and rearrange" for discussion:

Melonie Corder wrote: Love the idea of creating beauty in a derelict area but consider if your hard work would be protected.[/list]

  • [Are the neighbors on board, indifferent.
  • Do they have kids that could potentially disrupt harmony when you leave your land unattended?

  • Excellent questions.  Actually, for four of the five years in my little plan, protection wise, it's the little furry critters I'd be a bit more worried about -- specifically the deer population as there are no natural predators nearby. I like the question about the neighbors being on-board but I think initially I wouldn't be interacting enough to share any kind of grand design to enlist their interest... and at some point, I hope they have kids!  Because I'm not doing this for me and I don't know that my two girls want to inherit Dad's pet project. So a bit of MY planning is to plant a little curiosity about what yon city slicker is up to and over time enlist said kids and parents in the bits of madness final "to launch" year of stuff that would otherwise be hellaciously expensive to complete.

  • With any project the first thing I do is draw it out.
  • Then draw it with all possibilities.

  • Well said and started, as I have been able to do a kind of hybrid "paper grid by" taking the county's GIS system's satellite pic up to the size of an 8-1/2" sheet, then photocopying that onto PDF generated graph paper.  Hard part being "no slopes" on my overhead map So I have two choices... see if there is an extant but precise enough contour map OR (my preferred choice): become my own amateur surveyor by using a small laser level that I have with a protractor base and "do-hickey head" to measure the up angles that would let me play hiker through the woods / George Washington for a weekend on the larger tract (It's just over two of the three acres, the other acre being the access points on the northwest and southwest corners up top.

    If you plan to build a home there picking the site first would be important, then you can zone out from there.

    Actually, that's the easy one.  Given that to live here I have to be able to get in and out of my little valley in the winter, that limits a home site to the NW lot up top, with maybe a walkout basement leading to one of the paths.  The other end lot becomes a bit of an access road. THAT is the part I really don't have figured at all yet. Till I draw out the slopes ...

  • I've always loved terraced gardens. My legs are my weak point so they aren't in my future
  • You mentioned junk trees, could you use them to build up terraces hugelkultur style?

  • Huge agreement on the legs -- my mountain or even climbing days or at least desires are LONG past.

    Followed by... a big jaw drop. I hadn't considered the usefulness of some of the larger tree cuts (say 6" and up) enough for the terrace build-ups them along the way. If not done properly and WELL ground anchored, what I'd be creating would be a "too big rain triggers one or more mud slides" mess, likely sending all my hard work to the bottom of the gully, and getting me sued! That is also why one reason I planned to put three rows of fruit and nut trees near the top anyway. Below those rows, Attaching the ground anchors to a large wood undergirding supporting the terraces might help solve many of that kind of problem stuff I was sweating right now.  Fortunately, I have two semi-retired civil engineers I can brainstorm with in exchange for home cooked meals in the early go. That said, my first planned big tool is one of those ground compactors so that I can create some footpaths from which to work in the meantime,  clearing out some of the brush and establishing where the terraces and paths would go.

    One final point is that if 25-30% of the 2 acres doesn't end up as footpaths, it means I will have done things wrong, because I want everything except my immediate and eventual backyard to be wheelchair accessible and people interesting. So that y'all permie experts and others can teach the neighbors and kids what to put into all those raised garden beds on that crazy city dweller's converted hillside.  Make an interesting spooky walk at Halloween too, right?
    4 years ago
    Snipping a little, into the bits I am feeling connected to:

    Mike Haasl wrote:I like the farmer's market idea.  I started a Homesteading Club in my area and it has brought together a lot of people.  ... once you start talking to people about it, they come out of the woodwork.  ... It's lead to building a a Community Garden that also would be a good place to find like minded people. If you build it, they will come



    There may be a bit of an opportunity here if we can get past the covid-mess sufficiently well, and as it develops, I'll experiment & tweak and then give y'all my feedback at season's end. Here in the area we have a few u-pick orchards and two decent size farmer's markets... Most importantly, there's not much of a fee to play and I can get the equivalent of maybe a 20x20 booth space.  Thought being... put out a decent supply of "fill your cup with cold water", plop your buttz down in these here chairs and have somewhat "permie style expert" led conversations, bit of folk music, etc. and just see what and WHO comes to be part of something old but new.  Thoughts?
    4 years ago
    Thinking about the aging homesteader thread:

    There is a roughly 3-acre chunk of land (2 plots) not far from where I live that I can acquire at a reasonable price that most people would find absolutely useless because it sits on an odd facing side of a slope into a gully. The property value is limited by the fact that the accessible neighborhood is very old, darn near "cue the Deliverance music" visually and size-wise (still inhabited).   Insert current maybe slightly nutso grown up boy genius (me) who thinks... hmm, if I didn't actually plan to build the final home there until around 2025... I could "permie the heck out of it" as a hobby on behalf of my community in the meantime. The land is sort of unzoned, but I know it is not commercially zonable, if you know what I mean, and it's not ag-land per se. Here's what I am thinking about experimenting with and inviting anyone who wishes to play come (or a visit) along the way:

  • "Reforest" the property rim with trees such as the pome and stone fruits, replacing the current "junk trees into about a three-row permaculture orchard. Question being would I get enough light on a SW facing slope to actually get the apples, plums, etc.?
  • Terrace part of the down-slope like they do in Japan, into what would effectively be a series of raised bed gardens, putting in straw bales year one per terrace, and building up the beds for a while. Super-productivity not required at first as I don't eat THAT much, of course.  Maybe even just turn parts into a bee garden, put up the little houses for bug-eating bats and birds, etc.
  • "wild" a part of the slope but with raspberries, etc. that are crops where bedding is sort of a meh proposition.
  • Take advantage of the high water table and slope change to create a bit of a pond to pond tiny hydropower system. (Sun and wind and maybe a tiny bit of grid power pushes the water up via pumps, tiny water turbines as the 7x24 basic generators... which of course would only really work when it is not freezing outside.  

  • Any other experiments y'all think would be worthwhile on a small space like that? and what would you do first, etc.  Thoughts?
    4 years ago
    Having built an ICF house (lost due to mortgage collapse of the market in 2008-9), I sort of traveled a long research path, wanted to do something more natural, etc... and settled with:  rock wool. Very similar to fiberglass batting, but some superiorities. See this Rock Wool Article. What I did like was that the rock wool is:

    - Made from a higher % of recyclables
    - More Sound deadening
    - not hygroscopic, that is it doesn't pick up moisture from the air  (so low or no mold)
    - Basically not flammable

    Didn't like:

    -- devil of a time trying to find a local source that didn't confuse rock wool and the golden fleece, pricing wise
    -- harder to manipulate

    My ideal would be something like "blown-in rock wool that I could seal in afterward" but I don't know if anyone has solved that one yet.
    4 years ago
    Thought I would share an interesting "square foot" garden experiment I did a few years ago, in which I smashed up an amount of burnt char and put it one part of the beds and smashed up bagged charcoal in another, then turned both into the soil (which was excessively clayish to begin with). Sorta thought "meh" about my results that year... Skip forward a couple of years of no gardener effort in the form of useful composting, mulching, or other soil improvers. Then restarted gardening post-chemo and early recovery, and what came next doggone surprised me... Those two areas continue to be the best in this particular garden

    That said, I may be relocating this spring, and if so I plan to do even more experiments with a combination of this trick, trenching in with some straw bales, etc. Thoughts?
    4 years ago