George Ingles

If I'm being a bit hurried, then I might cook up some Jasmine-type rice without washing it...
However, normally I take the time to wash it until the water isn't cloudy anymore - quite a lot of washing.
My online acquaintances I have from countries where rice is the primary staple seem to think washing the rice is essential.
One benefit is that it seems to keep the cooked rice from clumping and mushing as much.
Another benefit might be the washing away of stale starch powder and perhaps making it more digestible.
Although, actually soaking the rice a good while, and maybe even sprouting it if you can, would make it even more digestible.

The mention in an earlier post of 'rabbit starvation' brought to mind a book about survival skills I read: Unlearn, Rewild.

One of the contentions in this book is that although rabbits are too lean and have not enough fat to sustain a body as one's only food source, there is a simple transformation that can happen to the meat to turn it into a very good source of fat and protein...
I will offer an entomophagy 'trigger warning' here for the squeamish.
The offspring of flies, after they consume the spoiled meat, become a more complete food than was the rabbit.
It would be quite a gag-reflex to overcome I'm sure, but he recounts an anecdote of a man during the depression that would keep spoiled meat in the basement and scrape the 'baby flies' onto his toast each day for food value.

I make no claim that this is a safe or desirable practice - do your own research.
However, in a discussion of bare minimums of fat and protein for survival I thought it was relevant.

I'd say give the Uke a whirl, why not!?  I got a Ukulele for my nephew, and I play around on it a bit - fun!
As to the question of when do people play their musical instrument, I keep my classical guitar ready in a multi-use space where I can play often without having to go get things and setup things.  
Playing almost every day is best for my heart.  Making music is cheap therapy, and I get much joy from it - just playing guitar and singing-- by myself most often, though making music with others magnifies the joy and therapeutic value manifold.
Also playing for chickens is good stuff!  Perhaps unsurprisingly, my chickens always responded positively to me playing the old standby, Cluck Old Hen.
 

Somewhere I saw someone posting about using a polytunnel (greenhouse) as a solar-powered wood kiln.  
I believe they were using it for lumber rather than firewood... and they might have had a rocket stove in there?

As someone who relies on a woodstove to heat my home in the Winter, having wood that is adequately dry makes a huge difference in having a hot fire, and a less-smokey fire.
If I have some wood that feels a little too heavy (i.e. wet), I might bring it in and arrange it around our big cast-iron woodstove.
Drying out wet wood by the heat of burning dry wood is a nice example of passive function stacking, I feel.  

I'm curious what you mean by "black" oven?  Are you trying to get super dry wood for a special fuel purpose, like blacksmithing?
I also wonder about getting wood TOO dry and losing heat value.
Wood that has sat in the shed for more than a few years seems to start losing its heat value... is that because the burnable gases have mostly evaporated?

held

This Summer I fermented some of the wild Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) that likes to blanket my garden.
I snapped off tender growth from the plants before they were flowering and put them in a jar of brine on the shelf a couple weeks.
It was quite tasty, though it got a bit slimy.  The remaining post-ferment brine juice was strongly flavored and made a good addition to soup stock.
As others have mentioned - if it is an edible green then it is likely fermentable...  

Where I live is the best place to be, for me, because I was born here and my family has been here a few generations.  
I feel like I belong to this bit of land in my heart - - (as a young man I had dreams of moving to Costa Rica and being a Fruitarian, but I couldn't bring myself to abandon my home place.)...
I feel like I was made for this valley, although my Vata body type is truly more suited to the Tropics.
The cold and very rainy winters and dry summers of this area may dismay others, but I've come to appreciate each season.
May-June & September-October are spectacular and sublime here, though.
In addition to being tied here by family bonds, the land in which I dwell seems to support abundant plant growth too.

So in conclusion, my reason for this being the best place for me is less to do with ideal permaculture conditions and more to do with family and spiritual feelings, and convenience.  However, I expect that a lot of people (perhaps a majority?) don't feel a special love or affinity or tether to the place they were born.  
Having travelled around the states though, and British Columbia too, I found many lovely and beautiful places, but I never found a place I liked better than Home.

I have the notion that the typical Asparagus crowns sold in garden centers are only Male plants.
Planting from seed though, would make for males and females and the potential for spreading via more seeds.

Steve Solomon, the gardener, offers a brief but thorough explanation of how to raise Asparagus from seed in my climate.
In his method, the female plants are rogued out of the bed once it can be determined which is which.
That would solve worries of it spreading *invasively*, I think.

I cannot say how preindustrial folks managed their poultry, though I expect they were not giving the chickens any more inputs than they had to - I imagine people were considerably thriftier and more frugal.
The chickens at our place are totally free range (many have been gotten by predators over the years).
We feed them scratch-grains daily, all year- they habitually expect it.  However, it is really not very much - a little handful per bird.
I notice them busy scratching for their daily bread most of the day, and I think the vast bulk of their food comes from their own efforts.  Weeds and worms and grubs and bugs...
I have read (maybe from another thread on Permies?) that farm kids a long time ago would have a regular winter chore of trapping/hunting/finding small game - for the chickens to eat.

The only time I feed the chickens a sizeable portion of grain is when the ground is covered in snow or frozen hard, or if it is pouring rain and they won't come out of the woodshed.

I believe if we were careful and fed them more fancy grain they might give us more eggs, but they seem to do just fine on free-ranging with a tiny bit of grain.
Though, it is probably very dependent on your location and what is available to them from the ground.

Fine