Thekla McDaniels

Apparently many people are using pure tallow for skin care.

I haven’t tried it, but I do use it for soap making.  Years ago when we began hearing about the orangutans’ loss of habitat and the relationship to commercial palm oil production, I replaced the palm oil fraction of my soap formula with tallow.  It contributes the same characteristics to soap as tallow.  But I am buying “deodorized” tallow…. ( I make a lot of soap.)

Dave, grapevines can be pruned as much as little as you want.  If you do prune, cut back to a bud.  When you choose which bud you are going to cut back to, pay attention to what direction the bud intends to grow.

As for hops, they will make a leafy “canopy”.  I’m going to post a photo of a commercial hop yard.  They grow 20 feet.  And in commercial hops yards, they select the shoots to a very few.  Once established, a hops plant will put up a lot of shoots.  You can divide the clump.  You can keep several shoots and put them up a fan shaped trellis.

I made a tipi shape from long fence rail type poles.  I put a picnic table underneath and adirondak chairs

Passionvine spreads.  I don’t know what their potential height is.

If you’re set on grapes, or your climate demands them, so be it!

Two of my favorite vines for summer shade and winter sun are
passionvine and hops.  Passionvine, also called maypop, Passiflora incarnata, to prevent confusion.    It tolerates a freezing winter.  It does make fruit and they are edible, but not the culinary gourmet kind.  It will die to the ground in the winter, so you can just pull all the dead vines out of the way… and the strings you gave them to climb up, use for animal fodder or bedding or mulch or compost.  Harvested green and dried it has medicinal uses.  The flowers are elaborate and fragrant.  You can pick one and immerse it in a glass of water, and it will flavor the water.

Hops also dies to the ground, and makes all new vegetation each year.  Once spring warms up, they grow remarkably fast… up to 18 inches a day!

Lots of varieties to choose from if you are a brewer.  The hops “cone”(?) has plenty of medicinal uses.  The green shoots in the spring are eaten like asparagus, and it’s recommended that you do thin those shoots in the spring.

One thing I love about each of these is if you make a total mess of “pruning” one year, it all goes away and you can begin anew next year…. Or just try something new!

For more, search old vine

I don’t have any grape vines at present, but I have had them. I bought a concord grape which I will be planting out in the spring.

I think pruning is an important consideration when planting new grapes.  Most commercial grapes and wine grapes are pruned every year. But there are other things to do with grapes. I once saw grapevines left to climb up into the oak trees. The owners liked it that the birds could eat those grapes. I have seen grapevines used on shade structure.   It’s important to keep in mind, grapes are like Wisteria. Year after year, they get heavier and heavier and heavier.

I did have grapevines over my enclosed Chicken run. The wire in the roof of the Chicken run was about 7 feet off the ground. I planted the grapes outside the pen and let them crawl over the top. I enjoyed watching the chickens stand under a hanging bunch of grapes or leaves and jump up to try to get a bite of something good. I never even tried to harvest those grapes. Those were purely for the chickens.

Where I am now there are hundreds of deer. I think if I planted grape vines to grow on the barbed wire fence, the deer would eat them all. I would not even have vines. I will have to plant my grapevines in the area the dog patrols. She loves to chase the deer away.

I don’t have a picture, but some commercial wine vineyards have no supports for the vines.  Each vine stands independently, they’ve been planted on a grid.  They have been pruned over the years to resemble bonsai.  Strong branches come out of a central “trunk”.  The branches are strong enough to support the grapes.  I have seen these in dry farmed vineyards on central coast area of California.

It’s probably important to know where to cut, and where to leave a bud.  

What I like about this system is that in the dormant season the ground between the vines is accessible.  One could easily compost or grow green manure crops, or fava beans.

If I can find a photo I will post it.

So many cheeses, so little time

What a wonderful collection of knowledge!  I have enjoyed reading evrry word.  

I have never faced the large amounts of snow Kyle described when he started this thread.

I had a place for several years where the house was above the street, and I had a LONG sidewalk and street frontage.  

It was arid country.  I would shovel the snow up onto my garden beds.  Crazy?  Maybe, but it looked like free water to me.  And we never got even 6 inches at a time.

Where I live now I have a quarter mile of driveway, so I bought a “big” pickup.

I just passed my first winter here.  I did not have to clear the driveway at all.

I’m getting a tractor with a bucket on the front and a landscape box on the back.  I plan to groom the drive and shape it this summer so there’s a crown on it to help with drainage.

I am paying particular attention to the suggestions about snow in windy areas.  I have wind, sometimes a breeze, and sometimes a gale.  I have 6 A acres and not enough irrigation water for all of it, until I get soil microbe community established and adapted pasture and browse.  I would LOVE to have the wind deposit water for me 😊

Thanks everyone for sharing your wisdom.  Interesting to see what you have all come up with!  A lot of thinking about a goal and how to accomplish it.  Some experimenting and revising based on results.  Permaculture at its finest!

That’s powerful, Emmett

Thank you

How perfect that this thread pops up right this minute.  I just wrote a long post, essentially about gratitude on another thread

https://permies.com/t/223449/Snow-Wisdom#2866124

I moved to a new place in September, at 7000 feet.  I didn’t really know what winter would be like as I had never been through winter here.  It is on a high mesa in arid country.  Driveway about  1/4 mile long.

Even in the heat of the late summer and fall, winter was on my mind.  The wood stove looked iffy and I made plans to replace it.

I called the chimneysweep.

I called the forced air central heating experts to check the system.

I got wood.

The chimneysweep convinced me the existing stove was “good”, just needed a few repairs.  It’s a combination wood and coal stove.  

One of the “greenest” people I know, but I got coal… and began learning to burn it.

When it got to the second stage of “cold”, the stove stopped drawing.  Smoke billowed out into the room, coming around the newly replaced seal.  Things had been going so well, I thought the stovepipe had plugged up.  I called the chimneysweep.  He was rude and aggressive.  

I called another chimneysweep.  He came out and cleared the stovepipe though it hadn’t had any creosote build up.  He gave me a few pointers that sometimes help with getting a stove to draw.  I tried for a few nights.  Build a fire and open the doors and windows to clear the smoke, leaving doors to other rooms closed to keep a smoke free hideout.  CRAZY!  Not my idea of heating the house.

I believe the stove doesn’t draw because the pipe doesn’t go high enough, but what have people been doing in this crazy house for 50 years?  I didn’t add more pipe because the double wall (?) pipe penetrates plywood roof decking, metal pipe in contact with bare wood… I don’t want to alter the existing situation, because although it hasn’t burned in the last 50 years, how do I know what would happen if I increased the temperature in the stovepipe, and, WOULD altering the situation increase the temperature?  I don’t know, and I don’t know who to ask.

I figured I would have to rely on the propane central furnace…. And hope the power did not go out (for long).

The blower in the furnace doesn’t push heated air to some parts of the house… I called the same furnace people to check the ductwork.  The guy said the blower doesn’t push the heated air through all the ducts.🤦‍♀️  They don’t replace ductwork in the winter….

On very cold nights I left a drip in the remotest bathroom, set the dishwasher to run at 4am.

The hardest part of the cold season was not knowing how to recharge my body with heat from an external source.  There is only so much tea I can drink, only so many layers of clothes I can wear, only so much activity I can do, and to get cold, or be not quite warm enough is only ok if you have a place to rewarm.

I bought an infrared heating pad 52 inches long and 26 inches wide.  It fits in my recliner.  It is wonderful.

I have spent the winter doing gratitude practice for things not being worse than they are.

I only got stuck in my driveway once.  Walked home.  Called AAA to come out at 10-11 the next morning.  The tow truck guy appreciated that.

I have left out the most preposterous parts of the story in the interest of brevity 😊

Now, as spring approaches, again my thoughts turn to the approaching winter.  I have some idea what I need to get done, and I know a few people NOT to count on for help.🤣.

And I know a few good people who will help me.  Sometimes by recommending others, sometimes by lending a hand.  (I’m happy to pay for good help)

It is incredibly beautiful here, with a far horizon to the west for classic desert winter sunsets,  not too distant mountains on the east for sunrises.

In fact I have vistas in every direction.  In the direction that the ground rises, the neighbors have a “hay field”.  It looks like the foreground of a Van Gogh painting.

Even when you do everything “right” you can just end up with another challenge.  

I concur, attitude is everything