Denise Lehtinen

Yes, she does like to spill the dish with barley in it. She also beats it up from time to time. On the other hand I occasionally find a barley plant in my yard, too. Personally, I'd love to get enough of that to happen to have grain for her from the yard.

I've mostly skimmed the preceding posts and just want to share my experiences with my pet bunny.

When I got her from the shelter she was on a pellets and timothy hay diet. My approach to shifting her to a more local diet was 1) to research which weeds were good for her to eat in my area, and 2) provide the weeds I found AND pellets. Some point along the journey I read that grain was an important part of a natural diet -- and tried her on some barley I had around (for me -- I wasn't very fond of it). I gave it to her dry -- she immediately loved it -- it sounded like someone eating peanut brittle when she ate it.

Another thing I did from early on was include papaya leaves in her diet. Papaya grows well around here (except once every 5 years when we get a freeze that it is) and the papaya leaves help her with hair balls and the like. The people at the shelter recommended some pills with papaya in them from the store -- I knew right away I could do better than that.

Somewhere along the way she stopped being interested in the pellets.

These days she eats: grass from my yard, weeds from my yard, and organic barley from the health food store.

I think this was a pretty good method. I let my bunny do the choosing. She knows better than me what is right for her. And she looks forward everyday to when I go out and bring her in good things to eat from my yard that I didn't do one lick of work to get to grow there.

And in return I get to bring her rear-end stuff to the plant(s) I want to bless with it at the moment.

I often hear of people using straw to grow mushrooms on, but I have yet to hear of hay being used. Is there a reason that it is not an acceptable growth media?

Now that I cut my grass with my scythe, all I need to do to get hay from my yard is to put it some where to dry out. So, it is readily available.

Thanks from Tampa, Florida.

Sapodilla is a new to me fruit that I am on a quest to find out if I want to try to add to my property here in Florida.

It is a tropical fruit tree that according to the University of Florida website will survive a brief dip to 28 F once it is full grown. Based on this information I suspect that it will be very happy here.

BUT I have never tasted the fruit. Before I grow one I would like to know that I like them.

According to the Wikipedia article about them they are popular in India and in Latin America and places like that, so I have searched in the ethnic markets around here for them. But I haven't found any yet.

Does anyone have any advice for me as to how to get to taste a sapodilla fruit?

My interest is spinning cotton -- which seems to be more hard to come by than spinning animal fiber.

But between being married to a vegan (which means wool is off-limits) and living in Florida (which means cotton is better because it is less warm than wool), cotton really is the better choice for me.

If someone reading this happens to know of a source of online instruction on how to spin cotton, I would very much appreciate a link.

My hope is to be able to spin my own cotton sock yarn (which is very expensive in the stores and relatively hard to come by), and maybe eventually add cotton (grown as a perennial) to my yard.

I already know how to knit socks -- but I use that cheap Walmart cotton yarn that comes on a bolt that is intended for making wash cloths, so they come out more as slippers than as socks (because they are so thick).

This is a series I watched sporadically as a child. Turns out it is still around.

It features making things from wood using things like hand axes, hand saws, and carving tools.

Many of the episode are now available online.

This one I watched earlier is focused on how to carve a Swedish spoon. It includes alot of safety tips, a bit on how to choose the right wood, and some thoughts on what a good spoon design is.

http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/video/3100/3108.html

There is lots more than spoons available. Surf around and maybe somewhere he'll cover what you really want.

Thank you for your post. It reaffirms and builds upon much of what I have concluded in my search for the answer to: 'Why do we have an environmental crisis?'

Stories are powerful things. The story of objectivity and the inanimate world is the key to why we can destroy whole forests, species, each other without a second thought. The story of the animistic mind that all is alive and all is meaningful indeed sets the basis for a different way of living in this world. And if permaculture is the respect for all the growies amongst us, then its synergies with animism are very strong indeed.

I have never thought before, though, about animism also being the natural way for us to be. I had only gone as far as recognizing the need for some chaos in my life -- that chaos being the source of growth and creativity, of allowing those parts of myself that are not deemed acceptable in our culture (but which I need) to have a time to express themselves and that in doing so bring with them a sense of meaningfulness to my life.

I wonder if this is a key to possibility being able to transform things relatively quickly. Nearly everyone is lonely and hungering for connection. Get them over or past their initial reluctance due to their cultural conditioning and then their own innate feeling of rightness takes over and becomes the incentive to continue. To speak in the language of objectivity I learned in college, the story of objectivity is an unstable equilibrium (like a pencil balanced on its end), a small deviation from that place of balance and the whole thing falls over and assumes a more stable way of being. Add just a little chaos to our world and we can change it away from this place of great destructiveness.

This is going to sound really wierd. But at least in my case it has worked splendidly.

About a week ago my husband came home with an article about some guy in Australia who did research on boron deficiancy. The cure (which sounded really wierd to me) was to take an 1/8 teaspoon of
Borax (the common laundry additive) in water. They recommended drinking it slowly over the course of a day. (Which is not what I did.)

By the end of the article I was so excited because so many of the symptoms that were being attributed to boron deficiancy were the ones I had that my initial reluctance to the crazy idea evaporated.

My yeast infection (which I have beat back successfully for many years with a mild vinegar solution -- into a bottle of water add one tiny drop of vinegar and spray it you know where)
is now gone. Also my hormonal levels are improved (boron is needed for the adrenal glands to function correctly -- and all those glands interact with each other in complex ways).

BUT also be careful not to take too much. At too high a dose it can also be toxic (the same way iron can -- iron is needed but too much will give you the runs).

There is also a worldwide campaign to ban boron and borax from domestic use. In Europe it is already banned. If you choose to believe this wierd idea helps you, know that it is also in danger of being taken away.

http://www.klinghardtacademy.com/

Dr. Klinghardt is the authority on Lyme Disease that my husband and I listen to. (My husband has Lyme Disease.) Take a look at Dr. Klinghardt's site, if you are interested.

You might also want to try common ginger.