Barbara Simoes

The pool does have a shallow end which is 3.5' deep or so.  I love living in Vermont, but one of the downsides is that there isn't a huge diversity of businesses, and I wouldn't know how to proceed without help from someone who has done such projects before. (For example, when I discovered Permaculture a few years back, I also discovered that no local nurseries sold fruit trees other than the standard apples, pears, cherries and peaches.  I ended up having to order most everything online.)
Obviously, the pool has electricity to it, but it would be a dream not to have to have anything "plugged in" and have the symbiosis between plants and fish take care of it all.  Frogs do jump in all of the time, and because of my plantings, I do have lots of birds and dragonflies, etc.  A friend suggested tilapia--not something I'd be too keen on, but certainly a possibility as would the koi.
When I went to town and was waiting to donate blood, I went outside because it was a glorious day; there was no place to sit so I walked over to the culverts by the street and was shocked to see about ten crawfish in the water.  A bird must have dropped it from somewhere because it's more or less just an overflow for road runoff.  It would be cool to even be able to raise them!  I've never tasted one myself and have always assumed that they were a southern delicacy....of course, that would mean that I wouldn't want to dip a toe in on a hot day!

I have a rectangular 20'x40' inground pool that I no longer want or use. I put it in about forty years ago and now that I'm facing down 65 years old, I find that I don't really use it much and I'm just tossing money at it in chemicals, time and effort.  Last week, as I was fighting with the cover, I was thinking how I really need to do something.
I would like to maybe have it be a pond and was wondering if anyone has converted a pool into a pond and what would be required.  I know that it would need some sort of aeration, and I'd like to have plants and fish if possible.  It does have a deep end, so at least eight feet deep there while the shallow end is four feet.  
I do live in zone 5 central Vermont, where we do have cold winters...although it's not been as cold as it used to be.  We had been a zone 4.  Where we used to get light, fluffy snow, it's now more wet, slushy stuff. Sometimes, the temps will dip to 20 below, but that is rare and when it does happen, it usually only lasts for a few days.  
I mention all of that because of wanting fish.  I'm hoping for that symbiotic relationship between the plants and animals.  Anyway...is it possible to do this?  Has anyone out there converted a pool into a pond?  Is it too deep?  If so, could you let me know what was involved and whether or not you are happy with the results, or should I just hire an excavator to remove the whole thing?

I have some cherry tomatoes in the dehydrator now.  I just slice them in half and put them on the tray, cut side up.  They do their thing for about a day.  I don't want them crunchy, instead a little pliable.  Because of that, I don't store them at room temperature but keep them in the freezer, but as you say, a giant bowlful fits in a quart bag no problem.  All winter, I can then toss handfuls onto salads.  They're like candy!  LOVE them!

Rez Zircon wrote:

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
I suspect that I'm a super-taster. To me, tomatoes that are pureed with the skins on are nigh inedible. I sure know that the skins are there!

I'm that way with apple peels. No can swallow. Body is sure they're toxic waste. (I'm waaaaaay out the far side of supertaster....) Don't like tomato skins either, but have found if I process tomatoes in the food dehydrator instead of cooking them down for sauce, the skins are less of a problem and I can usually eat them.

So I slice them fairly thin, season them liberally (garlic, rosemary, or whatever sounds good) and put 'em in the dry heat until they're somewhat shrunken but not yet stiff... at this stage they're cooked but still juicy, tho most of the water is gone. Then shovel 'em into quart freezer bags, press 'em flat for good packing, and into the freezer they go. Five gallons of fresh tomatoes reduces to less than a quart of thick but ready-to-use sauce, with minimal effort.

Well, at least the ones I manage not to eat straight out of the dehydrator. :D

I have a ridiculously excessive number of tomatoes coming this year... must figure out how to adapt this for the cherry tomatoes; rough count on four VT100 vines was over 2000 fruits in progress. I don't know how you even pick that many, other than whack 'em with a stick so they fall into a basket.

I had a huge garden that I needed prepped in a hurry...I did research and came across a powered tool called a sod cutter.  I was able to rent one from a local equipment rental place.  They delivered it, and a neighbor ran it for me.  I went behind it and rolled up the sod, loaded it onto a cart attached to my ride on electric mower and hauled to rolls out back to compost. The area done was 150'x25' on average, and the job was completed in a few hours, including clean up.  I was left with beautiful, clear soil and no weeds.  The cutter cuts the roots so that I didn't have to worry about grass growing back as I would have had I just tilled it under.  This was done in early spring, right before I planted my food forest out front and I have not had any problems since.  The garden is in its third year.  Of course I mulched it right after planting with wood chips and I planted strawberries as my groundcover...You don't want to leave it uncovered because even if you get all of the grass out, seeds will blow in and take root if there is bare soil.  I would highly recommend this method.  If you're going to do it this fall, I think it would be a great idea to still add the cardboard, etc.  They are finding that tilling really disturbs the soil structure and brings up weed seeds that you wouldn't want to have sprout.

This is a very fun thread and useful, too!  One of the best sites out there is "Practical Self-Reliance."  She is thorough, clear and, well...practical!  She provides beautiful photos to amply illustrate her points and covers every kind of food preservation imaginable.  She even has a post about limed eggs.  She goes into cheese making, wine making, all sorts of ways to preserve meat, fruit and vegetables. She also talks about foraging and IDing things and then how to use them. She doesn't blather on like so many peoples' sites do.  What she writes matters toward the end result.  She has so many links to recipes that it is nuts. She lives it, she's not some suburban housewife dabbling in an idea to make a few bucks, but lives off-grid and actually writes from experience.  I have used her wine recipes and her tincture and salve recipes, to name just a few, and all have been perfect.

How clever!  I could just fill one side of the sink and not haul out a tub, though.  I've already sent it on to a friend who has a lousy refrigerator and can never freeze anything without it getting freezer burn.  I've found that channel to have some good stuff.  I use the "Grape Nuts" recipe from that site, and the taste is exact.  The "nuts" are a little softer than the name brand, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, thanks for sending this on.

Vase Angjeleski wrote:Hallo all, I saw this method just recently and looks kind of very frugal and effective. Has someone ever tried vacuum-sealing as this and if so, would that one be kind enough to share the experience with us?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrZPLF0ezw8&ab_channel=SeriousEats

One year (probably about thirty years ago) I was entranced (and still kind of am) by hanging, braided garlic and strands of peppers.  Mind you, I live in Vermont, so we don't really have a dry climate, especially now, but I was able to air dry my hot peppers by just stringing them up.  I don't know where you live and if this would be possible, but it is pretty and pretty easy!

I have made tinctures with my elderberries and hawthorn.  Permaculture has led me down a path of exploring many side interests.  Herbal medicine is one.  Taking hawthorn has allowed me to cut my pharmaceutical prescriptions for heart failure in half!  Since taking elderberry tincture, I have not gotten any kind of sick with flu and the like.  I make plantain salve...I am constantly amazed at how much better these homemade remedies work! I've even started making capsules with some plant material: burdock, chickweed, horsetail, yellow dock, etc.
Another preservation technique is making wine!  So far, I've made dandelion, strawberry and rhubarb wines...quite successfully, too!  It is quite lovely to just grab a bottle whenever a glass of wine sounds nice.  It is basically free, because I grow the fruit, I recycle the bottles and the water is free.  Yes, there is sugar and yeast and a few other ingredients, but over the long haul, it's dirt cheap to make.  There is a time commitment.  Some wines take a year or more from start to finish, but once you build up your stock, that doesn't matter. I used to make beer, and I am having renewed interest in doing that again, as well.
I have a freeze-dryer, but I don't love it.  In retrospect, I wish I'd just gotten a big dehydrator which I'd use much more.  Although the nutrient aspect is better, the machine requires more maintenance.  It has allowed me to powder eggs, mushrooms and some fruit.  I've freeze-dried sour cream and cream cheese, herbs, and a few other things.  Unless things are powdered, the size remains the same, unlike dehydrating.  I grow wine cap mushrooms, and when they start producing, there is a crazy amount of them.  I freeze dry and then crush them for mushroom soup throughout the year.
I've just started pickling and canning, which is easier than I expected.  I grow Kirby cukes, because you don't have to peel them and the size is right for me.  I've made a few batches of bread and butter pickles, and hope to do another either today or tomorrow.  I've canned blueberries.  I'm eager to try canning meat, like turkey, when it's on sale. Of course, I love just freezing stuff, but the room it takes is forcing me to branch out. Right now, I have 50 quarts of strawberries frozen, which is preventing me from any kind of big shopping.  I have fermented some things like asparagus and rhubarb. That was fun, but I wasn't sure about how long these would keep without refrigeration.  
I've dehydrated in a small, round cheapie dehydrator for years.  You know, the type with no settings--it's either on (plugged in) or off!  My favorite is dehydrated cherry tomatoes.  They condense down so that they are like candy and wonderful to toss into salads.  Because I don't want them so dry, but instead, pliable, I keep those in the freezer.  What started as gallons shrinks down to a quart or less, so it is a huge savings in space.  
This fall, I hope to try my hand at making "apple scrap" vinegar.  If I can make enough of it, it would really help with the next season's pickling!
My brother accused me of really liking gadgets, and he wouldn't be wrong! I have many.  One is an apple peeler, corer, slicer which will help me make dried apple rings and have the peels and cores for the vinegar.  I have a cherry pitter for the day when the cherry trees produce in earnest, all of the wine-making implements, a steam juicer for the concord grapes...the list goes on and on, plus, I inherited all of my mom's gismos too. I have her Squeezo, Foley food mill and canning stuff.  Good thing I have a big pantry!

Stephen Smyth wrote:hi, just wondering if anybody has a read an article  comparing  the different methods of preserving and  measured the available nutrients before and after, specifically  all soft fruit, rosa rugosa, elderberries, hawthorne ,apples and maybe afew examples of green vegetables ,kale, sprouts,carrots.There are obviously lots of different methods, i am  interested in alcohol and fermenting.  Thanks, Stephen

I would highly recommend the book, Braiding Sweetgrass.  In it, Kimmerer talks a lot about the "Three Sisters."