M Ljin

There are lots of ways to meet people, not just online. I think that if you go to community gatherings, meet different people, eventually you’ll find some other people interested in permaculture. I wouldn’t put my information online, for one because I would rather figure out someone is nice before even learning they are into permaculture, but also for other reasons.

I’m sure you could also make a thread in the “Southeast US” forum and see if anyone is around.

I love the fretless sound.

One way to make it less muted is to press down with the fingernails, not the fingertips, but this may not work so well with steel and wound strings (could abrade or break fingernails or cause a scratchy sound). Apparently, this is common for instruments like sanxian that are ordinarily fretless.

Schedule for PDC, day 1, April 6.

Monday: We shall begin the day by singing in a circle underneath the Great Oak. We will sing incantations, causing a pepper plant to grow from seed to maturity in the course of a minute, thus understanding the life cycle of the pepper plant in its entirety in a single day, through the power of memorized words and incantations. After this we will visit the composting outhouse. When we go there, we will muck it out, add the dung to the compost pile, and turn it. After we’ve done that, we will cover it with a large, intricately woven blanket. When the blanket is removed at the end of the day, the compost will be finished.

Next, we will start making lunch together with healthy foods like peppers, acorns, pine nuts, miner’s lettuce, and kimchi. We will talk about the more than 250 varieties of kimchi made on the farm, trying a sample of them. After that, visitors will be served steamed trout with sumac.

After lunch we will go for a walk in the hills and pick butter from the butter trees, and candy from the candy bushes, and talk about the ninety-seven permaculture spells and the seven great substances. When we are done with that we’ll go back to the compost pile, peek under, and discover that the dung is now finished compost, and we will spread it on a newly prepared garden bed.

Did you hear about the PDC starting on the sixth of April at the Great Californian Pepper Company’s Robles Grandes Farm? It is free to all, with the requirement that you answer the following riddles at the gate:

-A harp placed upon a stone began to sing all on its own. What is the interval between the longest and shortest string, and additionally, who plays it?
-How many roots does a palm tree have, exactly?
-What do all sheep do on midwinter’s day at dawn, and additionally what are their names?
-A brave knight fell in the river and drowned. When he came out, he dried himself off, went looking for his horse, and then went back home. Why didn’t he continue on to obey his summons?

Tuvan Igil—I saw this and loved the instrument, and the way the musician gets lost in the playing while teaching at the same time. He also uses it to imitate animals, and talks about the symbolism of things like holding the bow with the palm facing upward.

I think the plant looks to me to be in the celery family. I can’t say more than that.

Inge, I think it is possible. If you take a very tiny amount and use a lot of water for the infusion, that can be a simple homeopathic dilution, especially by only taking a small sip. I think maybe the only reason it seems so inaccessible may be the tedium of preparing it the traditional way.

Usually, I try new herbs this way, but especially powerful herbs still get made this way, like burning bush.

Incidentally, I think garlic mustard and dame’s rocket fit this category. They are both evergreen vegetables in my climate so can be gathered whenever the ground is not covered in snow (though dame’s rocket disappears about mid summer). So they can help with the provision of vegetables during the colder times of year when it might be quite expensive to buy a satisfying amount of greens, or expect anything from the garden without significant inputs.

I agree with nettle too—very lovely, nourishing food! They are a rampant vegetable that enjoys the sorts of disturbance and fertility that humans create, and are wonderful medicine for the body as well.

Ramps are another wonderful vegetable that sticks around. They grow as a spring ephemeral in full shade and multiply slowly every year, but if well tended they can grow into a carpet over the entire woodland floor, and be a source of good springtime root and leaf vegetables that are highly nourishing.

There are so many things!

Instead of using rope or paracord made from petroleum, I collect my own natural fibers and turn them into cordage for most of my uses. It beats by far having to buy string at the store, and I can make it any length or diameter I want, two or three stranded or braided, etc. This is something I’ve done for a while.

I am also planning on repairing my outhouse door which rotted off, with a roundwood gate, using some wood from buckthorn and Norway maple and some dead juniper trees that I am already cutting down, rather than buying or using dimensional lumber which requires bigger trees. I always try to avoid things that require cutting down big trees—our forests need a lot of healing!

I’m also growing fungi this year, blewits and wine caps so as to make better use of the very woody character of the place where I live for the sake of feeding ourselves, and also intercepting local waste streams (sawdust) for food and soil building.

Saving jars and using them instead of tupperware.

A recent thread about making your own non-plastic tarps from duck canvas. I have made a lighter tarp by waxing a bedsheet. https://permies.com/t/225610/toxic-tarp

Making my own glue from spoiled milk… https://permies.com/t/369248/Natural-glue-finer-woodworking-lutherie

Relying on herbal medicines that work, as opposed to depending on synthetic pills and potions in plastic bottles. I’ve been saving many different kinds barks, cherry, honeysuckle, buckthorn, etc… I also gave someone catnip for a cold and it seemed to help a lot.

https://permies.com/t/370143/medicinal-herbs-recommend-beginners-start

Another thing—I’m cutting more Norway maple branches, both for sap, because they shade out all the other plants, and I also am hoping to grow some shiitakes on them!

I also have made swales and terraces in the past, which are excellent at intercepting and soaking water which would otherwise wash away soil and cause flooding, but instead go to feeding plants and restoring our water table. They also work in dry areas because they paradoxically increase drainage as well, and aerate the soil. https://permies.com/t/366576/Capturing-precipitation