Jane Mulberry

master pollinator
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since Sep 16, 2020
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Biography
Jesus-following retired RN, writer, and tomboy who never grew out of loving to play in the dirt and bash nails into chunks of wood. Currently living in the UK, spending as much time as I can in rural Bulgaria, and hoping to talk my very English hubby into making the move there!
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East of England/ Northeast Bulgaria
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Recent posts by Jane Mulberry

This forum is well moderated, but "be nice" is the main rule, so I think you may find it's a pleasant place to be!

If you haven't already, consider starting a new post asking your specific questions on the off-grid issue. Chances are someone else here has either already done it or researched how to do it.
14 hours ago
No to pressure canning in an Instapot!

Not even using the latest one Insta launched saying it could pressure can because it will do up to 15 psi. They made the claim in good faith but it was based on a wrong assumption -- that maintaining the pressure for the entire processing time was what counted, rather than maintaining a steady temperature high enough to kill the botulism. Further independent testing has shown that though the temperature inside the Instapot is maintained well above boiling, it fluctuates too much during the processing period to safely pressure can. I researched this, as I don't have an Instapot yet and was set to buy the new one they originally thought could pressure can. It's likely that now they know the issue they'll design one that is safe to pressure can (well, the turmoil on the corporate side od Insta permitting!), but it's not there yet. :(

All Instapots are safe for water bath canning and steam canning high acid foods.
15 hours ago
I'm interested in trying comfrey to feed my fruit trees, but am unsure about whether it's worth me spending on crowns of Bocking 14. I'm not sure it will manage my very hot dry summers. Does anyone have experience of growing comfrey in similar climates -- 7B, 15" rainfall per year but very little in the hot summers?

I don't want to do a lot of irrigation, though I know I'll need to do some. But I'd prefer trying to work as much as possible with plants that will adapt to the climate. I might try using the STUN approach with seeds of the weedy type. I'm willing to plant useful weeds if they'll keep down the current crops of less desirable weeds!
1 day ago

Barbara Kochan wrote:I have a question and hope I can post a picture. I am wondering if these pots my friend inherited are bean pots:

They are very large: I am also wondering, if bean pots, how well they work if only half-filled (or less). Any bean pot users out there who can help me learn?

Many thanks.



Barbara, apologies for the slow reply. Google suggests those are Columbian bean pots. They should be okay to use half filled. The main thing to watch out for is rapid temperature changes. There's information about it here: https://www.mytoque.com/pages/about-la-chamba-cookware
2 days ago
That's beautiful, Nancy! I love the way you sculpted it.

You may find that the fire vitrifies the clay to a certain extent. There's a very basic clay stove in my Bulgarian garden that is many years old and has clearly seen a lot of use, yet it's still intact and usable.
2 days ago
I'm so sorry, Tereza! Praying you make a quick recovery.

We're going to have to use a lot more concrete to fix our paths, too. Our garden slopes, and the existing paths are massive trip/slip hazards.
2 days ago
Like many here, my grandfather, who we lived with until I was ten, grew much of our food. He had three acres in a semi-rural area with an orchard, hens, bees, a huge veggie garden, and a cut flower garden where he grew flowers for sale. He built the house himself during the depression. I was devastated when aged ten, he sold the place and we had to move to a very average suburban house, where the yard was mostly lawn.

When I married hubby, his yard was neat and tidy lawn, it's now a not-at-all-tidy food forest and wildlife garden, that passersby either love or hate. I think the reason I love our place in Bulgaria is because it has the same feeling. in the village, it's considered abnormal if people don't grow their own food. If someone has land, of course they'll use it to grow food!
I would support it, though at a lower level.

Our house has a flush toilet, and there is no way on God's earth that my husband would ever use a humanure or willow feeder system instead. I collect and use my urine on the garden and compost heap, but still use the flush toilet for my solid waste. I want to set up a one-person system for dealing with that.

Ideally there needs to be information on scaling down to family, couple, and one-person systems. And I would love to see supporting written materials and transcript of the video, as I have a health problem that means I can't watch more than a few minutes of video at a time without getting a migraine. I've backed most of the Kickstarts over the past few years, and have not been able to watch a single video!
3 days ago
Audiobooks are a growing market, but it's best not to be tempted to pay a lot to get one. A friend, a far more successful bestseller than me with her ebooks, spent $2000 to get an audiobook made of her most popular book. Even after three years and a lot of promo effort, it hasn't earned out. I did three audiobooks on a far lower budget, but again, the earnings just don't justify the time invested, even when they can be produced for no cost but my time.

There are ways to get audiobooks without a big spend. Many authors are learning how to narrate and produce their own, which can then be uploaded to bookselling sites using ACX (a division of Amazon) or Draft2Digital. Many authors are getting into selling directly via their own website or sites like Gumtree or Etsy. I haven't tried this - where we live is way too noisy to record, we don't have the space to soundproof a closet to make it an audio booth, and I don't think it's worth me investing time in the learning curve to get competent with audio editing software. But there plenty of info out there about authors who've gone this route.

Other options - ACX have various audiobook production options from full pay-per-finished-hour to getting a human narrator to produce your ebook for no upfront cost, taking instead a 50% royalty share for 7 years. The catch is that good narrators won't usually do all that work unless they can be sure sales will be good. I got in early on this when there were still good narrators doing royalty share, or you might luck out and find someone new, working to build a portfolio and willing to do royalty share. But my lovely narrator sadly earned very little for my audiobooks, I felt so bad I paid her a big bonus payment I really couldn't afford because she'd poured many hours of work into them and was lucky to make $10 a month from them! The royalty share contract also requires that the audiobook be exclusive to ACX for seven years, which means it can only be sold through them on Amazon or iTunes, and the audio can't be used anywhere else. After the seven years, you own the audiobook and can sell it anywhere.

Using ACX to contract narrators to produce your book using pay-per-finished-hour can cost anything from $50 to many hundreds per finished hour, but you own the finished audio and can choose to sell it wherever you want.  Findaway Voices is another quality non-scammy audiobook production business offering pay-per-finished hour. But as my friend experienced, it's not likely for anyone apart from the big bestselling authors who can spend $$$ on promotion to make their money back when paying a good narrator to produce their audiobooks. I don't recommend it unless the author really really REALLY wants an audiobook and is happy to lose money to have it. But it may be possible to get a pay-per-finished-hour contract with a good but new narrator for a reasonable cost via ACX.

Google Play Books offers free AI narration for audiobooks that are listed for sale with Google Play. There are also AI narration apps of varying quality. Not everyone is okay with the idea of AI narration, but it's an option.

If you can and you would enjoy the process, DIY is possibly the best option!

Following up on my husband's latest experience with WoB.

He ordered three books two weeks ago. One, he paid more to get a very good copy, what arrived was heavily worn, creased, tanned, and when I was a used bookseller, would have been listed as acceptable. Book 2, also listed as very good, looked fine at first glance, but had been wet at some stage and the pages were all stuck together along the upper edge making it unreadable without literally tearing the pages apart. Book 3, listed as a three day delivery, still hasn't arrived, 14 days after placing the order. When contacted, WoB have told him to wait another 12 days. None of these were cheap books, all cost in the range of £10-15

We've used WoB a lot in the past and it's been about 80% good. The 20% bad has usually been responded to appropriately by their customer service. But after this experience, unfortunately we won't be using them again.
1 week ago