Can anyone clarify whether Beaked Hazels are self-fertile or not? Our lone, semi-mature bush produced a single nut last year that we only noticed now. I was under the impression that I needed a second bush for pollination, so I'm trying to get seedlings established but they're barely 4-6" tall right now. I've looked on the web and can't find any clear explanation of how we managed to get a nut. One website said that it requires cross-pollination AND that it is self-fertile. Confusing.
Aldous Fangsteiger wrote:The colleague with whom I am developing this research has obtained information, yet to be verified, that the small structures Mike built may have been demolished along with the purchase of the land by a third party.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to trace the owners back to the place where he built.
The search continues...
The vast majority of people likely wouldn't see any value in what Mike built. It's also highly likely that whatever structure replaces Mike's will have absolutely no value to me.
steven hobert wrote:Hello Michael.
We (my partner and I) really appreciated all your helpful information about the Groovy Yurt, yurt life, and the earthbag foundation/cellar. We'd love to ask you some more questions.
Before reading your post we had also come up with the idea of a "root cellar" underneath the yurt but didn't have an idea how to do it in a reasonable amount of time and with no experience. We are also thinking of the "root cellar" being above ground (at least for now) in order to save time and avoid potential water table issues.
And we are also leaning towards buying a 22' Groovy Yurt.
Could you give more details about how the yurt and platform (with insulation etc.) was done?
In your photo it looks like you have one thick beam going across but I assume you put more across to support your floor and wood cookstove etc . . .?
I assume you did not put any posts in the middle to hold up the floor, correct?
I believe you said the top of your floor was two layers of 1/2" plywood and underneath it 8" of styrofoam. How was the styrofoam secured to the plywood? did you have 8" joists between plywood floor and the beams? Was there any material below the styrofoam?
How did you secure the yurt to the foundation/ground?
Do you have a ramp going up to your door? how many feet off of the ground level is your yurt floor?
I'm sure we will think of lots more questions.
Thank you for your time
We've built up the ground around the cellar so that there is a gentle slope up to the yurt.
The styrofoam panels we used were 4ft wide with varying lengths and staggered end joints. I laid out 2x10" planks lying flat so that all joints (sides and ends) were supported. On long plank spans, I used posts to provide extra support.
The big beam in the middle is supported by posts in the middle in order to support the weight of our cookstove.
The panels have metal inserts molded in on 24" centers, so these were where I screwed the plywood flooring into.
The yurt is not actually attached to any of this. There is a thin plywood skirt that encircles the circumference of the styrofoam with 4" rising above the level of the flooring. The yurt walls sit inside this skirt to keep it from shifting and slipping off the floor. It's still just a big round tent that can be moved if necessary. It's heavy enough that it is secure in any weather we get.
Mary Haasch wrote:Knowing what we now know about the communication in the forest community, do these methods cause any effects on the neighboring trees?
This whole thread is intriguing but I read it all with the uncomfortable awareness of the trees' sentience.
Mike Haasl wrote:Having the hinges on the side makes a lot of sense! Mine has them at the top so you're kind of hunching down to get under them and access the trays.
The one thing I never did resolve was a way to support the top while someone is fiddling with the trays. Just by typing this, I've come up with at least one viable solution, so I guess it wasn't an insurmountable challenge-- just a matter of focusing my mind on it. If it works, it'll be to your credit. If it doesn't work, we just won't talk about, okay?
Any chance you'd be willing to take a couple of pictures about how the pipe is attached to the dehydrator? Are they permanently attached, or can you whack the pipe into the ground and then set the dehydrator on top, which would make it easier to store in the winter or change its location if needed. Thanks.
I am so sorry that I'm only seeing this now. I would take a photo of the pipe attachment right now but the dehydrators are snowed in at the moment. I'll try describing it though.
I used threaded iron pipe and formed a TEE. The top (horizontal) part of the TEE is attached to the underside of the dehydrator frame, right in the middle, using heavy pipe straps that fit loosely over the pipe allowing free movement. The lower (vertical) pipe is two pieces with a threaded coupler joining them. I used an iron bar to open up a hole (and probe for rocks) that was about 18"deep. I opened up the hole enough that it would accept a chunk of poly piping. The poly piping was slid onto the bottom end of the TEE, butting up against the coupler. Then the TEE with poly pipe on it was slid/tapped/pounded into the hole.
When complete, the dehydrator swivels freely in the poly pipe and the pivots on the TEE. To adjust the tilt of the dehydrator, I attached a piece of light chain to each end of the dehydrator with enough slack so that it drooped down low against the vertical part of the TEE. Then I drilled a hole at that spot on the pipe and inserted a screw with and inch or so sticking out. The chain links can be hooked on the screw head and this supports the dehydrator at any angle desired. Everything can be lifted out, leaving the poly pipe in the hole and reinserted. I made little plugs to keep dirt and snow out of them.
I realize that this probably makes no sense, so I'll endeavour to get a picture asap. It's supposed to snow again tonight, so it might be a while.
Jeff Steez wrote:I'm starting to think that for those of us that can't afford land and building an entire house on it, septic, wells, solar, animals, machinery, everything else, nomadic living to travel the national forests and parks might be the next best bet, though this lifestyle will never lead to good money to afford land and a home, it would make one rich in experience though.
The issue of having enough space to store food and process game from hunting and fishing, and the other intricacies of this lifestyle remains. If not an RV, a conversion van towing a teardrop trailer would work well.
This would allow sleeping and general camping-things to be done in the teardrop trailer, and the van can be used for storage purposes, and maintaining nomadic gizmos. I just don't wouldn't want to inevitably rely on grocery stores for the majority of food as that somewhat defeats the whole purpose to me. One might argue nomadism is to experience society, so perhaps if the foods purchased were local it would be different. A big problem with this lifestyle and living rural or traveling the parks, for me, is my love of homemade bread and pastry, which is far more suitable on a homestead...
One of the ugliest houses I've ever seen just built in my town, rather small with essentially no front or back yard, was $700,000.
Every option has some sort of downside. I gave up having a vehicle and more in order to be free to live off-grid on land we bought. There are times when I look at the nomadic lifestyle and yearn. Maybe it's just me, and I should be grateful for the security I do have.
Myron Brenner wrote: We are blessed to have a good supply of burr oak to fire with. I do not like using any thing else ! We can get 34" long pieces into the fire box.
34" logs of Burr Oak sounds awfully warm right now.
David Wieland wrote:
Unless your trees are less than 5 inches in diameter, you'll need to make that roof very strong (maybe with I-beams) to withstand a tree that falls on it.
Most of the trees in the area I'm considering are under 5". The biggest threat would be from the tops of small spruces and poplars.
Ed Jo wrote:
One thing I do really worry about is branches as well as whole trees falling on my bees. I remove any dead branches that I find and will trim trees as necessary.
That's a good point. It's routine here for trees to fall, and it's rarely the tree that you're expecting to fall. I've been outside during high winds listening to the trees creaking and cracking and had a tree right beside me snap off at the height of my head. I'd probably provide a roof of some sort over the bees that could withstand a falling tree.
Anne Miller wrote:Have you looked at what they do at Wheaton Labs?
I must have in the past because that looks an awful lot like the idea I had/have in my head. I'm nearly certain that none of my thoughts or ideas are my own, but that I just cram all kinds of stuff into my head and then pull them out with no recollection of their origins.
I just moved my bees from pasture land to forest last year. So far (fingers crossed) they are doing well. Currently they are about 10 yards inside of a sparse tree line. The thing I like the most about having my bees in the trees is that I no longer have to mow or weed eat around them. I have future plans of setting up a large pollinator garden on another part of my property for them and other pollinators.
And thank you for clarifying about the bees in the woods.
Did you get bees?
Not yet. We'll need to establish a safe place for them first. We have a lot of black bears around, so we'll need to protect the hive(s) somehow without electricity since we're offgrid. I'm thinking a chainlink enclosure with barbed wire and other pointy things as a deterrent.
Taylor Clark wrote:Beautiful Field Farm in Lively, Ontario carries all kinds of fruit trees and bushes that are hardy to northern climes. We purchased some haskap from them this past year, friendly and knowledgeable folks!
james cox wrote:hey doug
check out
zero fox trees they are in bc
Thanks for posting this, James. It's amazing how many nursuries are lurking on the web, but not easy to find. I've searched many times in order to accumulate a list of links, but never saw this one.
Su Ba wrote:Jen, I've had my hens eat styrofoam too. Apparently no problems.
I had a dog get into a box of those styrofoam packing chips (peanuts?) and eat until she was full. It was a windy day and when I took outside to poop, it didn't even touch the ground, it just blew away.
We have a Waterford Stanley cookstove in our little yurt. Our chimney height is a little short of the recommendation, so we occasionally struggle to establish a draft. Over the years, what I have found is that if I light it with the damper open (exhaust going straight up flue) and the air feed open slightly, I can preheat the stovepipe until it is too hot to hold my hand to it (double wall pipe). Then, I close the air intake (ash cleanout) door and turn the damper to circulate the exhaust gases around the oven chamber. The fire immediately slows down for a few seconds, then (ideally) revives.
If this technique still doesn't lead to a good draft, it is usually because it is time to clean the stove. A little ash can collect in just the right spot to choke the draft. When I've got a squeaky clean chimney, a squeaky clean stove (all the passages around the oven chamber), and dry firewood, there is no reason for the stove to give me grief. But then, I don't live in an island paradise. I do have weird issues when I decide to light the stove in summer.
Doug McGregor wrote: I started 500-600 seeds this year
Great post. As I read it, I kept wondering, what on earth are you going to do with all these seedlings? I'm glad you added your website link at the bottom. I've done countless searches online, looking for nurseries in Canada but I keep stumbling on ones that I've never heard of through word of mouth. I'm glad to bookmark your site. Thanks.
The result was an explosion of new varieties and flavors never seen before and probably since. It seems like in England a lot of varieties originated from hobby growers sharing varieties among themselves and in France it seems very similar but from owners of small nurseries.
This excites me, too. A whole bunch of hobbyists can do things that big corporations are incapable of, and uninterested in.
Bethany Brown wrote:I came here To ask about growing soles from seed. I know fruit trees are almost always grafted, but wouldn’t it be better if we could grow trees that naturally produced desirable fruits and grew on healthy rootstock? How can we achieve this?
What I find most intriguing about trees from seed is that the seeds are imprinted with environmental information from the parent. This (allegedly) means that trees grown from seed are more tuned in to their surroundings, soil and climate compared to grafted varieties. Nature knows what it's doing, we should give it more freedom to do its thing.
Kim Goodwin wrote:so you have to as they say "kiss a lot of frogs to get your prince".
I've been following this guy for years and in my understanding of his endeavours, he has shown that the idea of complete randomness in apple seeds is a myth. He has successfully cross-pollinated trees with desirable traits and produced trees with a blend of those traits. He deserves a lot more notoriety and praise for his work than he gets. Nice guy, too.
I think if you're comfortable with the precautions you mentioned, it couldn't hurt to try. I'm guessing there isn't much mass in a batch of ashes though. Maybe you could include heated bricks or a kettle of heated water with the trip you make?
Kathy Crittenden wrote:We built a 10-foot deep mound over the spot where the fruit tree had been. Within a year, the comfrey was growing out of the top of the mound.
Our old neighbour tried the opposite approach. They dug a deep pit where the plant was growing, disposing of any plant material they found, then had a large bonfire in the pit that they kept going for hours and hours. Guess what came back the next year.
We have no trouble growing comfrey here. We have about 300 plants that we started from cuttings we took from 2 plants we had in our previous yard. In some places, it would grow to over 4 feet tall, then topple over due to wind and its own weight. This spring, I put up a tall cylinder of fencing around the most vigorous plant in order to support and see how tall it would get. It stopped growing upward when it hit 6.5 feet but continued to flower and push out fresh leaves on the sides.
We built a new 4x30 foot bed for garlic and mulched it with comfrey harvested from about half of our plants. We occasionally bring comfrey leaves to our neighbour's chickens, and they eat it all, but usually after eating the clover and kitchen scraps we bring.
That's a very handy feature. I'm waiting for some genius to engineer a woodstove that converts from a big cold winter stove to a mild spring day stove. I've considered acquiring a tiny cast iron stove like they use on sailboats and just sitting it on top of our cookstove for the milder months. It could be hooked up to our existing chimney.
So, if you have the damper set to bypass the oven, and you have the grate winched up high, does the rest of the stove heat up much when you're just brewing coffee?
Kaarina Kreus wrote: The burning platform can be lowered and rised with a winch.
I had to look that up to see what exactly it was. It sounds like a great feature. Was it optional? I assume it would be very useful in warmer months when you want to cook on the stovetop but not build a big fire. I couldn't find any clearer info on it.
That's a sweet looking stove, I hope you'll do a post someday reviewing it. I know there is a distributor here in canada that carries it, but they were out of stock when I was ready to pull the trigger last.
