My notes about horticulture, permaculture, less toxic living, etc.
For some of this stuff, I spent a freaky huge amount of time trying to figure something out. And then I post what I learned. Those things are constantly evolving.
Some of this stuff is nothing more than a documented experience that seemed like it would be helpful to share with others.
There seems to be quite a few folks that like my stuff and ask me to keep writing. And there has been more than one person shouting from the rooftops that I'm an idiot and should stop misleading people. So I set up the forums so there could be feedback on each article. Anything that appears to be less than accurate can be contested. I have to admit that I've written some stuff that later turned out to be dead wrong (soap with cast iron is a great example).
Sepp has to be listed first. Of all the people in all the world, I admire Sepp Holzer the most. Not only does he demonstrate how to make heaps of money from ag, but I think that he is leading us on a path to saving the world.
I was getting a lot of e-mail where folks were asking a lot of the same questions. Or folks were asking questions where I knew somebody that had a better answer. I set up the permaculture forums, and this has been a huge help. I added some forums in there to talk about quite a few of my interests. I check the forums at least once a day. If you have a question for me, please write it there. Currently, about 25,000 different people visit the forums each month. I try to manage the forums so that they are heavy on technical info, low on fluff and low on hostility.
Some ways are better than others. And some ways are better still. After enough leaps forward, you get to something where you don't buy feed anymore and you
can actually leave the chickens for a week.
I have done extensive research on the use of cast iron skillets and can now get them to sing for me. I explain why seasoning a pan in an oven doesn't do much for you. I explain why you really can use soap, and why you may be wise to avoid it. Why a steel spatula is actually better than a plastic or soft spatula. With a little knowledge, a cast iron pan will be the last pan you own.
I wrote this in 1994 to hand out to some folks at an organic lawn care workshop. About 20 people came. I posted it on the internet in 1995. It has now been read by millions of people. Based on the feedback I have received, I suspect that this article has reduce the use of toxic gick on the order of thousands of tons.
A form of building that, I think, is far more eco than anything else out there. At least for woodland with a slope. Needs no heat or A/C. Three times faster to build and five times cheaper.
Heat your home with a renewable resource that you can find just outside your door. Twigs and tree prunings. People have built this in a weekend for twenty bucks. This contraption burns so efficiently that the exhaust is just steam and CO2.
I didn't have much experience with fleas. I would always just toss down a little DE (diatomaceous earth) and they were goners. And then a household I was connected with got some fleas. The problem wasn't the fleas really - it was the panic. People thought they might actually die! The misinformation put out by companies selling pesticides is designed to scare people into parting with their money. I couldn't find a web site that carried enough information about what needed to be said. When I tried to talk to somebody at the house about the problem, well .... they were hysterical and sure they were going to die - I couldn't get them to even consider that they weren't going to die, let alone tell them how to take care of this. I wrote this web page out of a need to express what I couldn't express. I eliminated all of the fleas from that house, organically. It gave me a chance to try a few experiments along the way.
other articles
some popular threads from the permaculture forums
Shortcut to the missoula eco forum. Some of the topics include:
- shipping container house - insulated, cheap and super quick
- Michael "Skeeter" Pilarski on wildcrafting nettles plus a little about bone healing herbs
- cobville tour
- 500 hot showers from one small compost pile
- hot water via wood, solar and micro hydro
- demo of frying eggs on a cast iron skillet
- several Sepp Holzer videos
- several videos of Mike Oehler and his structures
- several rocket mass heater videos
- lots more!
my web site buddies
I'll be speaking at the 2010 northwest permaculture convergence.
