Life goes on - Summer 2018

[taitgarry00]

I agree wholeheartedly that we should be incinerating waste, especially paper and cardboard, which make nearly no sense to try to recycle. Send all that junk to a local steam plant, and recover the energy with minimal processing.

Greenwashing is a corporate occupation of great importance nowadays.

A little known fact about microplastics in the oceans, rivers and lakes is that roughly half is clothing fibers. Lint from washing clothes. And the micro fibers are the worst, as they are the most chemically active, toxin accumulators, and able to incorporate into living creatures.

Sure makes me question our reliance on manmade fibers, and our standard methods of sewage treatment, down the drain, and like magic, it’s not my problem any more…

[JO_Olsson]

Yet another very good example on how a shiny surface does not mean better functionality.

I recently watched a documentary on how a Swedish family got to follow some of their electronic junk to recycling. They ended up in Ghana where children sat in the dirt, knocked open piles of electronic devices to cut out any copper they could find to sell. All the remains where thrown down the slope towards the village lake. Only a couple of decades earlier this lake was their main water supply and food producer, full of big fish. Today their lake was completly dead, steaming from toxic vapours.
The money they got from selling the copper was not enough to buy the now needed shipped in food wrapped up in tinfoil and water in plastic bottles.

[BillyAlabama]

Same thing happened in Argentina with the beef industry, Nigeria with aluminum, and a hundred other places. Not to mention our American conversion from a manufacturing to a “service-based-economy”. Usually a promise of better things that brings very short term gain in exchange for sustainability at a suposedly “lower” but more stable level.
The slums of all the cities of the world are full of people who left the family farm to go find their fortune in the city, only to find out that the city had nothing to offer but a cardboard shack on top of a landfill.

But if we could figure out a way that the poor of the world could make a viable product like a burnable oil out of a waste product like trash plastic at a local/semi-local level. Even if the profit margines aren’t as high as the big oil industry. Then their would be an incentive to clean everything up while at the same time giving people a source of income. I know there are issues of power and all that when dealing with big oil. But I still think it could work. And if it can, it will be done by guys like us that can drive their truck on firewood, self funded, self motivated. It won’t happen in the universities with grant funding etc. , since they are more controled/influenced by the power structure, etc…

[DanNH]

Unfortunately going against big multinational corporations with a less profitable alternative as you mentioned with respect to recycling will never work the company’s will use the economy of scale to crush the smaller less profitable competitor.
As to places polluting their water resources for short term gain watch gasland about the fracking industry in the USA. It scared me to see how wide spread the issue is. I thought it was just limited to Oklahoma and Pennsylvania with a little spill over into the corner of Texas wow was I wrong. 32 states have fracking gas wells and issues with ground water as a result.
Gasland

Gasland part 2

Those are both nearly 2 hours long put any of the climate change related issues aside and just look at the water pollution issues and ask yourself is the tradeoff worth it? I for one say no drinking water is more important then natral gas.

[BillSchiller]

Isn’t this thread meant to show others what else we do that’s unrelated to wood gas?
Animals, bees, gardens, storms that may have hit your area, etc.

[kmrland]

As said he not know ware else to post. All the industris care about is bottom line and who they can snooker next.This fracking industri y may verry well need methods used looked intoo.Though i gess we are slipping intoo politics and i thought that was out of drive on wood rules.? Though it would be a. Bad thing too have fracking cemicles in ones gardoning and drinking water sourse.??

[KristijanL]

Well Bill l have one just for this topic then!

Its a Guinea chick! Tiny litle criters.

Allso a newity to my new pastre

Its a milking voriety. Athugh 99% of people cant stand the taste of goat milk, l grew up on it and miss it eaven as a adault.

Wife is the cheaf trapper these days, l have lots of half wild rabbits on the property, usualy a .22 puts meat on the table but l decided to catch some, and put in the fence for easyer control or the population/genetics.

Slowly working our way up to food self sufficiancy

[BillSchiller]

Thank you Kristijan.
I look forward to this particular thread for those reasons right there.

[DanNH]

With rabbits that might not be so slow… lol
Speaking of food supply I need to go work on finding my garden it turned into a weed patch while I was haying…

[JO_Olsson]

Kristijan, wonderful pics. I sure wish I lived more remote to be able to live a life like that.
My nearest neighbour is a pensionist and the type who vaxes his car and mows his lawn twice a week. He once told me my firewood looks ugly and I should consider electric heating. Our greenhouse had raised beds around it and he complained about my dovetailed timber frames turning gray and the possibility of mold.
I haven’t bothered listening to any opinions about the chunking business
He would probably explode if I brought hens or a goat home
We’ve actually thought about moving to a smaller house since the children left. But there are not many options. I don’t want to move to far from the wood lots

[KristijanL]

I culd swallow it all but if someone calls my firewood ugly im out thats terible.

Haha my pigs visit my neighbour over the hill from time to time. No complains yet

Dan, we are brothers in war then. I have a butyfull weedfeald too

[Bobmac]

JO, I would buy the chickens and goats, also a couple of Rosters and Turkeys to wake him up in the morning so he could mow his grass and wax his car four times a week. He sounds like a “Yardbird” to me. It 's a American saying. It’s not a complement.
Bob

[Bobmac]

Make that three Bros , my garden has more weeds then crops. The chickens like it when I pull the weeds and feed the greens to them.
Dana’s garden looks weed free compared to mine. The chickens love her more.
Bob

[bsoutherland]

I came across an article online by a guy raving about his many happy years of using wood chips for garden mulch. So this morning after hoeing the weed filled garden paths, I spread 500 shovels of chips in our garden. We grow in mounds instead of rows.

[f_pal]

I am delighted that the members of this forum have the same inspirations, sign that he has a full conscience and have a healthy opium on their thoughts for the future, having a garden is a sign that he seeks independence, and autonomy without relying on the state to come to his needs and without harming his neighbor.

[offgriddave]

A burro is a nice wakeup call for the prissy neighbors. A friend of mine has one and it goes off in the morning like nothing you ever heard. lol and peacocks are obnoxtios

[BillyAlabama]

Guys, I’d be almost ashamed to post a pic of my gardens right now. Rough year for gardens at this place. Bruce the wood chips are a great mulch, unless they get into the soil before they compost. They will drop your pH and rod your Nitrogen. That’s what happened to us this year. When we re-did the front garden, we added 7 dump truck loads of “composted” wood chips to build a deeper soil base. Some of the chips were not rotted far enough, so our garden was incredibly “patchy”. One plant would be strong, the next three poor, etc. Expecting that next season, after the wood has gone through a composting cycle and then releases its Nitrogen, we will have an excellent soil base. Anyway, we’re still not starving. God is good.

Yours is looking real good.

[kmrland]

Now that you guys talking about wood chip mulch, in gardons,is there some type of wood chips not too use, i heard pine chips were bad for the growing soil ??

[oregoncarl]

I think the issue with any wood chips is the carbon to nitrogen ratio. For anything you apply to the soil to break down, it essentially needs to compost. The ratio I have heard thrown around is that you want 25:1 Carbon:Nitrogen for quick decomposition. Since wood chips are 400:1, they need to get a considerable quantity of nitrogen from somewhere, and in your garden they will suck it out of your soil. I am not sure if it would really be so much an issue if you left it as a surface mulch, or only used it on paths, but if you mix it into the soil at all it will start sucking up nutrients.

Also, I know some tree species are supposed to contain chemicals that suppress weeds, I want to say I have heard of redwood and black walnut doing that - but I would guess anything that stunts weeds is also going to do a number on your crops too.

I use wood chips in my paths to deal with mud in the winter, and It doesnt seem to be doing any harm.

[dbaillie]

I’ve taken to sprinkling my wood chips with 40 0 0 in piles to speed up the process. I know it does work I have not been doing it long enough to be an expert on it. I just decided that importing manures into our area to be more organic was worse then chemical fertilizer supplementation. I figure I will still be getting the biomass and other nutrients into the soil this way without moving large quantities of manures from god knows where produced by animals eating god knows what…