tom campbell

I also placed an order this January, and Carol cashed the check immediately, and no seeds, no word from her...

I imagine this might be a frequenly asked question: doing the math in the reward examples sounds like it's $8.33 per book. does that mean you get three (physical) books at the $25 reward level?

edit: nevermind, question answered in live kickstarter

Elecampane is useful for helping you cough stuff up out of your lungs.

As for the probiotics, you can take marshmallow (the herb) with them and it will help make the lining of your gut friendlier to the good little beasties.

Antibiotics saved me from pneumonia several years ago. The herbs I had in my arsenal at the time (osha root, usnea, echinachea) didn't touch it. Stephen Harrod Buhner has a book on herbal antibiotics. That's what I would reference now if I was in your shoes again.

I'm curious if the agroecology team has any experience working with karst? especially concerning the sealing of ponds.

a picture of my portable rmh made it into the rmh article! thanks, paul!

hey! that's my friend! I don't think he would mind being called today's april fool.

I suppose that's related to to more common approach of just burying hot compost/manure in a bed deep enough that it won't burn the plants, but close enough that it'll warm the bed up for growing in.

that's an interesting idea. hot water rises?! makes sense. With the situation I am considering, the bed is on the ground, but perhaps I'll rearrange things to try out your suggestion too! thanks!

I have this idea to have a jean pain compost pile heating a raised bed in a greenhouse. I would build the pile in the greenhouse, and the piping full of water that runs through the pile to be heated up would be a closed loop, pushed by an electric pump, running from the compost pile through the bottom of the raised bed, very much like radiant floor heating, and back into the compost pile. It could have a thermostat to turn the pump on and off, monitoring the soil temp, set to keep it at 70 degrees. It's not super permaculture, since it's using an electric pump (and a greenhouse, some would say), but it seems like it wouldn't take a whole lot of energy to have a pump push water mostly horizontally. I don't know if there is a pump out there that is designed to handle pushing water in a closed loop. Does anyone know if a pump like this might do the job? What does anyone think about this idea in general. If I try it out, I'll definitely report back. It'd be pretty nice to be able to eat greens from the backyard through the winter, eh?

So I've fired the stove three times now. The second time I did not have any smoke back. It appears that it only is happening when the fire creeps up the fuel out of the feed tube into the open air, which happens when the wood doesn't crumble and fall down with gravity as it burns. the first burn had wood in it that I put in small end down, big end up, and I think that was the trouble there. the second fire I used very uniformly sized wood.
so it is appearing that this stove works but requires a lot of attention to push wood down as necessary (at least every 10 minutes). does anyone have suggestions for how I can change something so that the wood doesn't hang up on itself or each other and falls into the burn tunnel on its own? is it reasonable to want to get to a point where I feel confident in walking away for a time from the fire while it's going on?

the feed tube is 5" by 6", and 10 inches tall, but the top layer of bricks are not mortared in, so it is adjustable in being able to slide those bricks away to make it shorter. but could it benefit from being taller? or should I have a cylinder of hardware cloth above the feet tube to funnel the fuel in? I don't have a small barrel around the feed tube as they describe in the book. is this the problem that that addresses?

p.s. is there a less clunky way to post photos? how do people do it without all the attachment info junk after?