Dylanfm

9 か月前議論

I also use it for tea regularly in Spring/Summer. Once they're seeding I use the seeds for tea. If I have enough time to collect them I'll store the seeds for a garnish over winter.

Dylanfm

10 か月前議論

The firewood can be harvested as part of a coppice rotation too, e.g a woodland broken up into 8 coupes with one harvested selectively each year, then starting again at the beginning after regrowth is sufficient. Friends of mine do this and it works well. They replant as necessary as they go.

Dylanfm

昨年議論

It sounds like there have been some changes to the Guardian and Observer lately, such as the sale of the Observer to Tortoise Media. [0] Journalists were concerned enough to strike. [1]

[0] https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/who-is-the-money-behind-t... [1] (PDF) https://www.nuj.org.uk/asset/18CD4D84-FD26-4CDB-AF43E11F6A6C...

Dylanfm

昨年議論

It's not as simple as just installing more wind turbines. The grid needs improvement and we need things like regional pricing. See https://wastedwind.energy for example.

Dylanfm

2 年前議論

There's a 3 part podcast series on good bread from the great UK-based regen farming podcast Farmerama https://farmerama.co/arable/good-bread-part-1-what-is-good-b... Dips into this and talks to people involved in the good bread movement.

Here in the northern Scottish highlands it's hard to find good bread. Which led us to learn to bake our own sourdough. But there are some good things popping up, like a local baker who is now doing a People's Loaf pay as you can https://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/sutherland-artisan-bak...

Dylanfm

2 年前議論

Another interview with Jon Moses: https://novaramedia.com/2023/07/13/novara-fm-revenge-of-the-...

Putting the 'right to roam' movement in a greater context. Coming about after de-peopling of the land, trying to counter the effects that has had on people. By returning land access to people, people will regain a connection with the land and care for it more.

Dylanfm

2 年前議論

There's also a recent interview with the same title on the Debunking Economics podcast https://debunkingeconomics.com/episode/yanos-varoufakis-on-t...

Dylanfm

2 年前議論

I love growing (and eating) Frank Morton’s lettuces. If I recall correctly, a lettuce variety he bred was grown in space. Here’s a good podcast interviewing him, also touching on Open Source Seeds and patents: https://osseeds.org/free-the-seed-podcast-03-hyper-red-rumpl... there’s another good episode on the Seed Grower podcast too.

Dylanfm

3 年前議論

I wonder if they knew they were coppicing the tree, rather than killing it. Thankfully the tree will continue to grow, I think the land managers have chosen to leave the tree there. Many of the oldest trees around (at least in the UK) have signs of coppicing and pollarding. Those who cut the tree have unintentionally extended its life (e.g https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-203131...). The only issue is it wasn't done at the best time of year.

You can read more about coppicing on the national coppice federation: https://ncfed.org.uk/public/coppicing/

Dylanfm

3 年前議論

I've been building a private app on the side for market gardens (veghub.co) to manage their knowledge, plan their growing season and manage their weekly tasks. It's a really interesting little space which I could ramble on about for ages. When I got into market gardening and began seeing tables etc in books with crop timings, spacings etc, as a developer my brain immediately wanted to build something to help growers think less. Most growers don't want to spend their time in spreadsheet land (although there are quite a few farmer spreadsheet wizards - e.g Dan Brisebois). There's a small demo from a year ago recorded here: https://youtu.be/0FuAF95GceE?t=401

Some interesting aspects that have been fun to code with (the app is Rails + Elm btw).

- one key detail is Days To Maturity (DTM). This changes between varieties, time of year and latitude. A seasoned grower will know what to expect from a crop they have experience in on their ground. Local knowledge networks are important. The best market gardens know their DTMs and will be tracking it, using it to inform their growing on the fly (maybe their plans need adjusting). Doing things like this should be easier.

- an efficient market garden makes sure they don't have empty space. When a crop is harvested or terminated, a bed flip occurs where it's prepped and the next crop is put in (sown or transplanted). You want to have this planned, ideally in winter before the season starts. You need to know your crop timings (DTM, days in nursery, harvest period (once off harvest or repeat harvest for _n_ weeks). This can be used to ensure you have your succession sowings ready.

- efficient market gardens will most likely have a standard bed width & length, organised into field blocks. A grower will have spacings (distance between rows, in row spacing, multi-sow count). It's easy to calculate the number of plants, rows, seeds for a grower when they're sowing (taking into account a safety factor too). When knowing a seed weight you can also calculate a seed order. This also leads to being able to predict harvest quantities, which leads to knowing how many veg boxes could be filled etc and when coupled with pricing data, can predict yield. You want to know your $/bed-metre and use that as a metric for comparing crops and making decisions.

- if you imagine a weekly veg box scheme, that has _n_ customers (shares) of varying box sizes (e.g a 0.5 box, 1.0 box and 2.0 box), with a season from Some Date -> Some Date. You aim for _n_ number of different vegetables in the box. You can imagine some questions that are helpful for experienced growers and also newbie farmers:

  - if I have _n_ acres, what's an efficient way to divide up my field into beds and field blocks

  - if I have entered in my crop plan, can you show me what's going to be in the veg boxes each week?

    - actually, I don't know what I'm doing, can you just fill in all my beds with a crop plan as a starting point? All I know is how much space I have

  - ...how many shares can I support ...how much money will that bring in?

  - if I have a sense of prices of my crops, how much value are my customers getting?

  - At the weekly harvest: we have harvested and have all the different crops with quantities. We have a box scheme composed of all these shares & share sizes, divide up the harvest evenly so that we know what to pack in each box. Usually this is done each week by hand on a whiteboard or similar in a packing shed. It should be easier (and ideally predicted).

Dylanfm

3 年前議論

We have a similar invasive worm in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe: New Zealand Flatworm and Australian Flatworm. I've lost count of the number of NZ flatworms that I've killed in salty water over the past few months. I'm losing hope of removing them from our small market garden. There are far fewer earthworms in the patches the flatworm flourished before I found them.

I am very interested how organic growers in NZ deal with them. If they're a problem in their native regions.

Dylanfm

4 年前議論

I think the exterior insulation is kind of taking the place of the cladding or rain screen here. I suspect it also as an air gap. But I suppose you could affix a rain screen to it, although I am not sure if that's worthwhile.

There's some more info here: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Rainscreen

I hear the term "rain screen" fairly often to describe open cladding styles. Scroll down to "timber cladding profiles" and then "open cladding": https://www.thousandhuts.org/walls Rather than a more closed timber cladding, like shiplap or board-on-board, there would be a gap, maybe 8mm between the cladding boards. Rain can get in, but with an effective membrane beneath, it's waterproof. And there's always ventilation, so it dries out more quickly. If the wall is built for it, the membrane should be vapor permeable and allow the building to "breath".

I'm not sure if this is as appropriate for your local buildings if they have exterior polystyrene etc. Where I am in northern Scotland many of the buildings from the past several decades are timber frame inside + cavity + a wall of concrete blocks. Those concrete blocks are basically the cladding. They have the same renders as you linked on them. While a lot of people are skipping the blockwork and just cladding the building with timber or metal instead.

Dylanfm

4 年前議論

As others have said, circumstances have changed (Brexit).

The handling of Covid was a reminder too. Consistently rules would (or would not) be made in the south, yet here in Scotland we'd have a firmer stance and/or clearer guidelines to follow. For example, lifting mask rules and so on. I know opinions differ on this subject, for many people that I know the difference in the Scottish gov's handling was appreciated.

It's also interesting looking at result maps for the Brexit vote and the last General Election. These maps show the Scotland / England border, yet that's just a result of showing the differences in how these nations vote.

Dylanfm

4 年前議論

For anyone interested in the kind of timber framing used in these buildings, here are a couple of videos that I've been enjoying:

Carl Rogers & family are restoring an old French farmhouse and have a series of very well made videos about the process. There are separate 1-5 videos of this barn build, but here's a shorter version that's combined: https://youtu.be/K75pQ2HxRgM

Another good channel has this recent video showing a legit medieval castle being rebuilt in France using simple tools and traditional methods. There's a section on working with green oak where they use a side-axe to square up some lumber https://youtu.be/Ajqort8ldXA

Mr Chickadee is another high quality channel for expert timber framing using hand-tools only https://www.youtube.com/c/MrChickadee

Dylanfm

4 年前議論

The midges are definitely still here. Not sure how it compares to the past, but I haven't heard anyone say they're getting better.

Dylanfm

4 年前議論

North coast of Scotland, as far north as you can go on the mainland. Dark winters and long summer daylight. Didn't move here to start a farm (moved for the surf), but started a small market garden as a side-project a couple years ago. Also developing software for running a market garden, good to be my own user.

Dylanfm

4 年前議論

There's a woodland on Hoy, Orkney's wildest looking island, which is a great snapshot of what a real native Orkney woodland would look like. There are no deer on Orkney, so the woodland gives a great impression of the different layers of species that form when given a chance (the rest of Scotland has a herbivore problem).

Here's a great post on the woodland by a very knowledgeable person: https://alanwatsonfeatherstone.com/a-day-in-scotlands-most-n...

I live on the mainland across the Pentland Firth from Hoy, with our place looking across to the hilly island. We've planted 1,000 trees or so over the past couple of years. I'm growing a lot more from seed I collect locally from woodlands that weren't planted by someone (true local seed stock). There aren't so many native woodlands in this area and it's almost impossible to source trees grown from local seed. It's great to see proof that even on Orkney these sorts of woodlands want to thrive.

Dylanfm

4 年前議論

I recommend whathappenedlastweek.com for a thoughtful, curated weekly email summarising under-reported news. Helpful for resisting the urge to hunt news out.

Dylanfm

5 年前議論

Another good resource is https://www.neighbourhoodconstruction.org e.g their page on Thermal Envelope > Bio aggregate https://www.neighbourhoodconstruction.org/bio-aggregate/

Dylanfm

5 年前議論

This also occurs in Australia, resulting in mammalian meat allergy. Some more information here https://allergy.org.au/patients/insect-allergy-bites-and-sti...

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