M Ljin

Dace

You can also create “pee spots” around the garden and in other areas that have good privacy and soak up the pee in a useful way. A simple kind of pee spot is to dig a small trench, and fill it with brown material lkke sawdust, wood chips, chaff or leaves, so that one can place a foot on either side and have no splashing. One might plant fertility loving plants around it like comfrey or willows that will soak up the extra urine. You can even submit BBs for this: https://permies.com/wiki/156716/pep-greywater-willow-feeders/Create-Level-Pee-Spot-PEP

Hmm, bamboo might be nice too if you live somewhere they grow evergreen. (Here they mostly die to the ground like regular grass!)

I am overall in favor of squatting for returning one’s gift to the earth because it keeps one mobile, it is easier to make composting squat toilets than sitting toilets (two stones and a bucket at minimum!) and there is no touching of the toilet seat (less gross). It also seems more efficient to me.

I made it after much adventure! Hopefully it’s good enough as there are worse spoons in my kitchen that are much loved.

The video is no longer available—does anyone remember what its message was?

I am so happy to see you two with your new gardener titles! Welcome!!!

Latkes again!

I grate potatoes and other roots (usually onions, garlic, sweet potato, carrot, etc.) and then knead them together with salt, like you’d make sauerkraut. This seems important for releasing starches that hold it together. Then I mix in an egg or two and fry them on medium or low heat, turning until both sides are browned.

I have an idea! And it’s even rocket!

The idea is as follows:

Have a pipe going into the earth where the air can be cooled. It can then be run through the house, mass or no mass, perhaps through the floor, and then goes outside.

But it doesn’t end there. The outlet for the rocket mass cooler… is an inlet for an outdoor rocket stove. So when the breakfast or meals are being cooked, the air is pulled via a moderately intense heat differential through the mass after being cooled by the ground.  

There it is, rocket mass cooling!

The mass could be the same as for heating. Maybe its particular system gets switched off by blocking off the air flow, vice versa for the rocket mass heater.

Pearl Sutton wrote:Apologies for not answering, I lost track of this thread.

The idea is circulation of air, from lower to higher, without it needing to be heated by the sun. I'm thinking the cooler air is lower, higher is generally warmer, is that enough to move the air from here to there?

So in the winter, or in the shade, is the air inclined to go that way? It doesn't have to be heavy flow, just circulation flow.

I might be able to test this, I have some guttering downspouts, could put little wind spinners by them to see if the air moves.

I don't recall what exactly prompted this question, I'll try to remember what I wanted it for :D

The cooler air is denser and should settle towards the bottom anyway. So too with the hot air, it is lighter and gravitates upwards. So that is just a static stratification of air and not circulation.

If the air inside is cooler than the surrounding air, it should move downward. The reverse if it’s warmer.

If you wanted to move air upwards during the winter, why not bury a length of pipe in the earth? It should be warmed by the earth and then gradually drift upward? I am thinking of an inlet close to the ground and an outlet up high. I am not sure it would even be noticeable though. Or it could even be something wider and more well-like.

Welcome to Permies!

A good question—just Saturday I was gathering some Indiangrass, bluestem and switchgrass from a roadside erosion planting. They are rare here in western New England, but are nice grasses…

My best success has been throwing them around and waiting. I got one indiangrass flower last summer/fall for the first time! The area was partly shaded, bare-ish soil but covered with nearby daylilies and other perennial flowers. So it makes me think they want a bit of shade and nursing.

My experience is that wild plants don’t germinate when we want them to but on their own time, and trying to work with that has been my approach. It may “waste” a lot of seeds but much is learned about their germination habits. I have also mostly stopped buying seeds because it has turned out to be a waste of money for me—maybe not for you but I can only seem to grow what already grows wild! So finding a hardy plant, or getting one started, might help you much more despite the extra cost of getting a plant versus a seed packet.

My neighbor is not that old but remembers her mother feeding them acorns. She would leach them in cloth bags in streams—I don’t know what they did after that, either boiled or used for meal. I was overjoyed to hear that this was still a tradition in living memory and am hoping to try the old way of leaching some time. I also hope to teach younger people about acorn leaching and cooking. The river floods ferociously and it might be risky, unless there is a pulley system for emergencies.

This neighbor also has no taste for puffballs being fed too many as a child.

As for toilet paper, my usual is a clump of Norway maple leaves (used like a corn cob) or sometimes a brown paper towel.