Dennis Mitchell

My first thought is to just sit tight. I can always eat oatmeal and cook over a fire. Read a good book. We drive ourselves crazy complicating stuff. If you don't have a months worth of food and water stashed away get it done today. Ten pound bag of beans, ten pounds of rice, top ramen, potatoes, onion and carrots are all cheap and filling.

Locust sure makes a pretty spoon. The best wood for a spoon is the wood that has some meaning to you. Make one out of the first Christmas of your marriage. A small pine tree will have a tighter grain than a board you get at a lumber yard. The locust spoon I made from a tree on the family farm. I've used cherry, hickory, maple, ash, white oak, even walnut in cutting boards for years. Red oak is just about the only hard wood I would not use.

Being in the heart of dairy land, I have no shortage of flies. 1000's and 1000's of the little beasts. Unfortunately they are not dung or carrion flies. Guess I'll find out here in a few years if the tiny little twigs I planted survive the winter.

I know pollination is an issue. Bees don't pollinate them. I guess a fly does the pollination. I'd be interested in any plant that would help pollination. I've also read they like shade for the first few years so maybe a plant that would shade.

Absolutely no idea if it is a good diet. I fill a five gallon bucket with weeds and prunings. Then feed my three rabbits. Every other day I feed each rabbit a 1/4 cup rabbit feed. I try to mix it up with wild mallow, plantain, lambs quarter, and grass being the majority. On any given day I'll add poplar, strawberry, rasberry leaves. Maybe some mint, catnip, yarrow, dandelion, carrot, or cabbage.

Mice love straw bales.

My straw bales came from less than two miles away. The lava rock came from less than 200 feet away. The earth bags came from feeding cows and the dirt I dugout of the hole. The logs I cut from beetle killed pines about 100 miles away. Every thing was dirt cheap. My opinion after this is that we "over think". Keep it simple. Course what has me scratching my head is importing bamboo from china to build "green".

I had to buy your weed for my medicinal herb garden. Yes it is pretty. We have a wild mallow that I've found has tasty buds.

So kidneys are what filter pesticides...

Picking rock is a regular post tilling job around here. Many folks have helped ends meet by this odd job. I found myself unpicking out of a 100 year old pile. Maybe in another 100 years we'll have put them all back where we found them.