Christopher Weeks

I saw a podiatrist yesterday for the first time. (I've been limping for about five months and saw my regular doc first after it didn't seem like it was healing.) I apparently have Achiles tendonitis and maybe plantar fasciitis and maybe bursitis -- definitely bone spurs on the xray. Anyway, I don't love much of what the podiatrist is suggesting, though I'm taking his exercises and augmenting them with stuff I'm reading online (including here at Permies where a handy thread just popped up into currency). One of those things is epsom salt soaking my foot and calf. I've never done that, but just ordered some. I assume I'll be able to figure out the concentration from the packaging since I haven't read anything yet that was specific. But what I'm really wondering is what to do with the bath after the soak.

First, is it bad for the septic? That's very much not my first place to put it, but winter is coming and we have pretty real winters here in northern MN.

Assuming I'm going to be adding it to the garden: how? Where? In what concentration? If none of you come back with anything authoritative, I'll just dump it on the various compost piles until they ice over and assume that system will buffer and leach it as needed.

When I've had that, if it didn't seem like a mother/SCOBY was forming, I just stirred it in each day and it went away.

My three red oaks are shedding a million acorns right now. The squirrels and jays are fat and happy. But I've collected up a basket of them and was wondering about getting oil out of them. I've had it on my to-do list to get a Piteba oil press for stuff like this. Does anyone do that? And does anyone have an idea for extracting the tannins?

This site mentions using it for baskets: https://survivalskillzone.com/quackgrass-identification-control-and-uses/

I saw another reference say it's best to use the stems while still green so it doesn't get brittle.

Joe, have you developed a set of winter cutting practices since you posted that? How's that project going?

Did your tree survive? And did you figure anything out? I'm wondering if it's just old age.

Harold, can you describe your setup in just a little more detail? I think I get the basic idea, but I'm not sure how much I'm making stuff up as I read between the lines. Are you still doing this?

Thanks for this discussion, Nicole! I'm thinking about setting something like this up to play with. A lifetime ago, I was a pretty serious aquatic hobbyist and have a bunch of supplies that I can get out of storage, so that helps.

Even if you don't have to follow code, it's worth using it as a suggestion. Several of the sections on this page relate to your scenario:

https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IFGC2018P4/chapter-4-gas-piping-installations#IFGC2018P4_Ch04_Sec404

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:If you could give only one piece of advice to someone looking to get started with permaculture, what would you tell them?

I admit, the first thing I think of in the face of this question is growing food. And so my knee-jerk answer is plant a fruit tree today. You may still have to wait 2-10 years for your yield to start kicking in, but that's better than waiting 2-10 years from next year or five years from now.

But if I want to broaden my thinking, I guess I'd suggest you find a waste channel and figure out a way to make it a resource. Maybe that's collecting rainwater from your roof, or composting your waste, or sheet-mulching all those Amazon boxes, or filling the space between timbers in a wall with all your wine bottles -- there are a million variations, but turning waste into gold is as good as growing your own food.