Michelle De Long

I have never met anyone else who knows about popped rice green tea! It's our favourite green tea! I've only found it in Toronto and only traditional herbal stores. Cool!

However, I do really enjoy Korean roasted barley tea, boricha, 보리차, (or mugicha in Japan). https://mykoreankitchen.com/korean-barley-tea-boricha/  It's soothing and warming, mildly sweet and toasty. It's very pleasant on a cold day. I also like roasted corn tea, oksusu- cha 옥수수차, and Japanese popped rice green tea, genmaicha, which is lower caffeine and has that toasty flavor. None of these are coffee of Postum or any of that ilk but these are grain based hot drinks that I really enjoy.

Have you (or anyone) tried growing it? Our season is much cooler and shorter here with less sun so I'm curious. I know you can grow it inside, just haven't met anyone who has to swap notes.

For a healthier version, medicinal mushrooms can be roasted and blitzed into a dry crumb for brew or put into a teabag, as can dried (maybe roasted) dandelion root. I'm going to try my hand at dandelion this season. Will report back when I've got it down.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I think, for me the simplest thing will be to just grow coffee. This coffee growing under the coconuts doesn't get pruned or watered or anything, and they get lots of beans. The family doesn't call it shade-grown organic, but they don't do anything to it and it grows in the shade, so that's what I'm calling it.

Hi William Bronson,
Actually, you're thinking along my lines here. I have looked at pellet and dislike how costly they are. I also dislike being tied to supply chain of any product I can't create myself - especially in this economic climate. I know that's limiting.
So I've considered a few things. I've looked into exterior boilers which are a great solution for many heating needs, including hot water. But they require that I get out in the sometimes -30 weather to load them with a lot of wood, that I clean them rather routinely in said weather, that I cut or purchase and have a place to store 10 cord or more of wood per winter (long winters here) and that I can smoozle someone else into doing all this when I want to vaca.

So that's off the table..

The benefit of a wood boiler in the home is the not going out to load it up. The drawback is size and efficiency in the units I've seen, but none the less I think they are capable and a thermal mass product would definitely increase efficiency. I'd be rather independent in that if I can haul wood I can stay warm. I can stock it for a property manager to feed when I'm not here.  It would require both a boiler and thermal mass heater but would heat hot water also. I'm going to look into that more, as it's interesting to me.

Right now, as someone else pointed out, I've an old house and it's drafty. I'm doing the energy audit this season to get a read on where I can best spend to improve my home's ability to hold heat. I suspect insulation. I will then apply for the rebate to recoup some of that cost. The rebate covers electric heat pumps and mini splits but no wood products. So were I to put an electric system in, as one other person suggested, I'd be able to apply that credit and it's very simple when I'm away for guests to maintain. So I think that's a great solution, although I don't trust the gov not to crank electric prices the way they are with petrol as soon as we all depend more on it.

Then I started looking at soapstone conversion of fireplaces to capture the heat and use my fireplace more efficiently. But it's on an outside wall and the retrofit looks really expensive and specialized. Great appeal for winter guests, and lovely fixture but I"m not open concept, so it's unclear how well it would heat the place.

At present, huddled under 2 blankeys with the crazy fluffy thick socks on, I've landed on a high efficiency wood insert for my fireplace to use this season. It will be charming for winter guests and need not be the main source of heating any other winter than this. It can function as a back up to the other systems and for ambiance and to allow me to use my FP since right now it's not WETT cert.

After that I will get the energy audit and weigh the pros cons of basement wood boiler over a mini split for which I can use a rebate.  

I had one person tell me I can use recycled car oil in my oil furnace btw. I don't know if that's true but figured it's just Permie enough to throw out there!

Thanks to everyone who shared ideas!

William Bronson wrote: A wood  pellet burning boiler might fit your needs.
You would still be dependent on an outside source of fuel, but it is at least not fossil fuel.
Outdoor wood boilers allow you to use less refined fuel, but also tend to be burned in the dirtiest way possible, specifically to stretch the times between tending.
They still need to be fed everyday.

Your house sounds large, do you have a basement?  
If so, a wood fired boiler that could feed a huge hot water storage could be ideal.
You could run the boiler wide open to get the cleanest most efficient burn possible while capturing the heat in the hot water storage.
That storage would be there to keep the house above freezing while you are away.

Indoor and outdoor wood fired boilers are common,  large amounts of storage , less so, but:here is one example of a commercial thermal mass product.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Hi Michelle. Yeah, costs have gone crazy. Ouch.

Fuel oil is a tough fuel to replicate in a way you could reasonably trust whilst away. It's sort of in the kerosene-diesel zone, with additives to prevent corrosion, gelling in extreme cold, degradation, clogging etc. Quite the witches' brew, phew.

It is possible to winterize, such as is done for seasonal cabins, where all the water lines are blown out with compressed air and the sewer traps are fortified with substances that will not freeze into a destructive, expanding plug. It can be done, but I wonder what would protect your cast iron radiators from catastrophic damage.

Sorry, no easy solutions that I can see right off, outside of someone staying on site while you are away.

Thank you for taking the time to reply! I'm still mulling over the possibilities.

Hello everyone. I am trying to discern if anyone has experience to share regarding converting a furnace that uses oil to heat a boiler that pushes hot water through old radiators. I love my cast iron radiators and the radiant heat. I'm up in the Apalacian mountains of the East coast of Canada and winters here are long and bitter. However, this sucker ran me about 700 per 6 weeks BEFORE the prices went up last year. I've a 3000 sq ft home that's brick and siding, could be insulated better, but has good windows and I close rooms off that I'm not using and don't heat 2 bedrooms. I want to determine if I can retrofit or convert the boiler / furnace to run on any type of cheaper, more sustainable fuel. Everyone here is converting to electric or wood. I'm getting a supplementary wood stove insert but it's not a full tine plan, as we need to travel a bit and can't have frozen pipes when I can't feed the fire. I prefer to stay away from electric as I've zero confidence that it won't sky rocket as demand increases and there is a new monopoly to profit from. I also can't use electric for the radiant heaters as it doesn't burn hot enough to heat the boiler efficiently. It would be forced air and that's all kinds of horrible for health.

Anyone know of anything like this? I keep thinking back to the future - there has got to be a different fuel that can be used for this type of furnace that's cleaner and cheaper. Thanks all!

I just saw this post and funny, I just picked up some of this chickory coffee substitute this weekend. I have gotten to a point where I don't like the coffee jitter and crash, so I picked this stuff up. Mine is called Inka. It's roasted barley, roasted rye, roasted chickory, and roasted sugar beet. It's not sweet and is low in carbs. I like the flavour and it shouldn't be that difficult to make if you know how to get it to the dessicated texture. Side note, my favourite coffee is from India. I've a friend who gets it straight from plantations there. You choose your blend. The blends contain chickory root as part of the coffee. It's far smoother and tastier and fresher than bagged coffee here and is made by steeping in a steel strainer over night then warming milk with sweetener to mix with the cold coffee in the morning. It's called Indian filter coffee and it is very tasty! Honestly better than most espresso for flavour. At the moment, though I think I prefer the inka. I got mine at the bulk barn in town. Hope this is helpful to someone.

Hi, I'm trying to purchase these but am in Canada. I thought the amazon link might be better for shipping, as it's obscene otherwise. But the amazon link isn't working. Anyone got a workaround for more reasonable shipping to Canada. Amazon is shipping me a bed for free. This can't be that hard!

Thanks all!
Nonie

Subscribed with reminder. Can't wait for the new content!

I see my grammar mistakes in that response. It's not its. Sorry!

I was excited to see this thread! I'm a licensed nutritionist with a clinical practice for about 10 yrs now. Reading the replies here it looks like permies all know a good amount about nutrition because these are all things I regularly recommend!

If anyone is interested I write a weekly nutrition column free of charge for local papers who don't have big pockets to help regular folk who may not otherwise have access to preventative healthcare. It's called Ask The Nutritionist. I answer reader questions about nutrition. Currently it's only published in a few papers in Canada but I'm looking to expand its reach if anyone can recommend papers or publications. My aim is to keep it free. Okay, my top 3 food related health recommendations are:

Real food can be picked or dug up or fished or hunted. It does not come from a factory in a box or package.
Food is only as good as the soil its grown in or the quality of the environment in which its raised (when talking about animals). Sick soil, bad feed, commercial feedlots make sick food. Sick food makes sick people.
Humans are omnivores. For optimal health that should include nose to tail animal matter from a variety of properly raised animals or seafood and a variety of plants and fruits in their natural state, raw or cooked.

Namaste!