Philip McGarvey

I'm staying with some folks who have a Waterford Stanley Errigal cook stove.  The firebox door has been stuck shut for six years.  The inside of the door appears to be badly warped.  

They can get a new replacement door.  And these are excellent cook stoves, I've used one for a while, so it's worth effort to fix.  The question is how to remove the current one without damaging the stove.  Being a cast iron firebox I don't want to risk cracking it.

It seems unlikely to me, but possible, that removing rust with a penetrating oil, and then heating the door and firebox around it may allow it come free.   See discussion of this here: https://permies.com/t/92396/woodstove-door-handle-rusted-stationary

But if rust is not the only issue, and it is stuck shut from warping due to excessive heat, or we otherwise can't solve it that way, I'm thinking what other options there would be.

My thought was to cut out part of the middle of the door with a grinder, then heat the outer edges of the door and tap on them with a hammer to get them loose, gently enough to not shock and crack the firebox itself.  Any other thoughts?

It's been a year and a half since I posted so a little update.  I've gotten more captivated with playing the fiddle which has been wonderful, I'm about to go to a week long traditional/folk music camp tomorrow which I'm excited for.  I found a couple to co-caretake the place with me which has been good, I don't imagine they'll stay forever so I expect I'll be looking for co-caretakers again at some point.  And I've been traveling a lot, I spent a couple months in Arizona this spring helping with the effort to protect Oak Flat, and a few months last year out east staying with my brother and his family, since I now have a 2 yr old nephew there and I'm loving being his uncle.  After five years of rarely leaving this land it's been good to get out and be other places.  I feel open to the possibility of moving from here, mainly to be closer to more community if the right situation calls, and, I also really love it here and might never leave.  I've learned to be at peace with this uncertainty for now, practicing being present with what I'm doing wherever it is.

Some clothes last a long time and some don't.  I have everything I need right now but still if I stop at a garage sale or thrift store and see jeans or work pants or shoes my size, or anything made of wool, and it's cheap, I buy it.  Hard to ever pass up a wool sweater for $10 or less.  I have some wool sweaters that are a bit too small for me but they make good gifts.  I generally don't buy clothes new except for underwear/socks and boots on rare occasion.  I don't buy clothes made of plastic except for certain things like I recently found a nice down coat made of nylon at a garage sale.

Agreed with many comments here: a dry-summer climate like California isn't suitable for raised hugel beds.  I've not seen any examples of that working well here.  In contrast, sunken hugels seem to work well, if you have the machinery to dig a deep trench and then throw the wood in and put the soil back on.  Or potentially even better, if you have piles of brush and wood to burn anyway to reduce fire hazard, using charcoal mixed with compost for an even longer-lasting and also immediately useful water-retention bed - but again, probably better not as a raised bed.  

Raised beds in general in a dry summer climate will be harder to keep moist.  I find the plants that do best in my garden are growing in the path from underneath the raised bed.

Hugels are probably great where the summers are wet, as it keeps the plants up off the saturated ground so they don't get flooded, and also the logs rot much faster.

Michael Qulek wrote:Actually, I believe it is the opposite, with people becoming more far-sighted with age.  So, this jibes with the OP's description completely.  I know this in detail because I got lasik about 24 years ago to correct my gross near-sightedness, and now with increasing age I'm wearing glasses again, but this time to slightly correct my far-sightedness.

My understanding is that far-sighted means losing your acuity at close distances.  I can still focus on print 4 and 4.5 inches from my face with my left and right eye respectively.  So while I do seem to have been nearsighted when I was younger, I seem to no longer be nearsighted, but have not become more far-sighted per se.

Enjoy it while you can... they will change back as you get older.

While this may be true for many people, I will not assume that it is always true and I believe there are ways to mitigate it - though no doubt it varies from person to person.  A friend in his 60s can still see even sharper than me at long distance and points out distant birds that I can barely see.  He's spent a lot of his life wandering the mountains.

I'm curious if anyone else has had experience with your eyes improving on their own, especially if it was significant like it is for me.

My story:
Growing up, at the doctor's they made us look at some letters on a chart far away and I didn't realized I was supposed to tell them if the letters were blurry.  I was pretty good at figuring out what the blurry letters were because there are only so many options.  So they always said I had 20-20 vision.  At about age 21 I was driving my dad's car and put on his sunglasses which were prescription sunglasses, and suddenly I could see the crisp detail of everything - the distant treetops, the little rocks in the field along the road.  I was blown away and realized my eyes were not very good and I had been missing this my whole life.  I got glasses.

Then later at 27 when I was quitting my office job to go be in nature, I stopped wearing the glasses for a combination of reasons.  

Two years later at 29, I had been thinking about getting glasses again as I really wanted to see the forest where I lived in detail.  But I didn't do it.  But one day a few months after having those thoughts, I was lying on the deck looking up at the tall trees from underneath, and realized I could see clearly the needles in detail.  I looked around at the distant mountain top and could see that clearly too.  I was blown away.  I don't know for sure if it happened suddenly or gradually, but part of it must have progressed pretty quickly since it was within a few months of when I had thought about getting glasses.

It's been four years now, and my eyes are still great like they were right after I noticed the shift.  My right eye is really sharp and the left is a lot better than it was originally. And while I can't be sure, it seems like my left eye has been getting better over these years, because at first I noticed my right eye had become sharp but the left was still quite blurry.  I'm constantly grateful for this, it's just about the best gift I could have ever asked for.

I don't know if I was born nearsighted or if that developed due to excessive use of books and computer from a very young age.  I am still able to focus up close, at ~4 inches with my left eye and ~4.5 inches with my right.  I do know for sure that when I did get glasses, they not only improved my long distance vision, but also improved my focus on the computer screen 2ft away, and I would often wear them at the computer from age 21 to 27.

----

People often ask what I attribute it to.  There's some good discussion on the topic of natural eye health here that covers some of this: https://permies.com/t/70550/personal-care/Eye-Health-Protecting-Valuable-Asset

Some thoughts I have:
- I think not wearing the glasses was an essential first step, because if I wear glasses my eyes can only learn to be better with the glasses.
- I imagine walking through the forest all the time and looking all around at things at all distances helps exercise the eyes - better than the up close computer screen at my prior job.
- Who knows if there's some micronutrients in some of the uncommonly eaten species around here that help eyes heal.
- Someone told me that this can be a sign of a cataract coming, it could be; so far it's been 4 years of improvement.

I won't tell anyone they "should" ditch the glasses or contacts, they are essential for many people, but if you don't really need them, it might be worth trying not using them.

Also of note, when I got glasses, the way I understood the test they did to determine my prescription, it seemed there was a 50/50 chance that the prescription would be on the slightly too-strong side rather than the too-weak side, thus training my eyes in the wrong direction.  I imagine if I had raised this issue I could have ensured I got a prescription on the slightly too weak side so that even with the glasses my eyes would be training themselves in the correct direction even if very slowly.  I would recommend this to anyone who gets a prescription.  And likely the doctor will suggest or tell you that they know what they're doing, be insistent.  They often overlook things in my experience.  I only got a prescription twice and didn't think of it then so I don't know what they would have said.

Anyone else seen their eyesight improve?

It varies a lot depending on the type (species) and density of the wood.  

There's no general hard rule because it depends on a lot of things.

Wood dries faster with more wind, sun, less rain on it, less humidity, less soil contact, warmer temperatures, and more exposed surface (cut and split).

Wood with enough moisture in it will rot, and it will rot faster the more moisture it has.  The speed of rotting depends on the species and density of the wood.  Wood will rot faster in contact with soil or where bugs/fungus can directly contact it.

So where I live, fresh cut tanoak that is lying on the ground will rot quite a lot in one year.  Tanoak even if it is split and stacked will rot within a few years if it's out in the rain and doesn't get quite enough sun/wind to keep it dry.  Madrone on the other hand is very rot resistant and will take several years to rot.  If left dead standing it can stay good as firewood for five or ten years, again depending on the conditions.

Many kinds of oak are more rot resistant.  One week is going to make very little difference.  A month is unlikely to make much difference, but again depends on all above factors.  In freezing temperatures you could probably leave it out for months.  On the ground in a warm wet climate some species might begin to rot noticeably within a month.

The quote from the book  "the moisture content never falls to the level it does in timber that has been dried quickly"  may be true when all else is equal.  However, the wettest wood, even somewhat rotten wood, can be dried enough to burn if you give it enough airflow/heat in a dry place.  I occasionally bring pieces of half rotten wood in and set them by the woodstove and eventually they're dry enough to burn well.

I've loved my battery tools although it is annoying when they just stop working, as my milwaukee chainsaw did after four years of use.  I took it apart and figured out which of the electrical boards isn't working, but everything is hardwired together, the board itself is buried and you can't even see what's on it, not that I'd want to risk soldering it anyway.  I could get a replacement electronics assembly on ebay for $100 and try to solder it in to replace the one that's there... there's no guide for how to do this anywhere though, it seems everyone just sends it in or gives up on it.  It's out of warranty and they quote up to $230 plus shipping to repair it which is basically the cost of a new one.   I could hotwire the saw past that control board but that seems pretty dangerous with a chainsaw.  

Gas saws have their problems but they're fixable, and catastrophic failures are usually due to you doing something very wrong, where I think this battery saw just got a connection loose because the electrical boards are fragile and subject to intense vibration during use.  I have a very beat up gas saw from the late 1980s that someone gave me broken, I fixed it (cleaned carburetor, replaced gas hose and couple other small parts) and it runs.  I don't imagine any of my battery tools are going to work in 20 years, probably not even 10, and as I just saw, some will conk out at 4 years.

Rant over.  I still love the battery tools, I just wonder about their long term reliability.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Novel and prevalent toxins certainly might be partially to blame. However, the people who have dedicated their lives to studying the issues mostly don't seem to think so. Autism and ADHD mostly seem to be down to diagnostic changes and social acceptance -- what's probably rising is diagnoses, not incidence. Allergies and cancer do both appear to be experiencing a rise in incidence, but it seems to mostly be down to processed foods (which might include the introduction of toxins, for sure, but I bet mostly has to do with removing vital nutrients for purposes of shelf-stability), with sleep deprivation and other social factors carrying some of the weight.

Yes, many things have changed, toxins and poisons are just one of many possible culprits, that likely act in combination.

Christopher Weeks wrote:And like, I'm just guessing. I don't have a medical degree and while I'm educated and interested in this topic, I'm not an expert. I also don't think that big pharma is motivated out of the goodness of their hearts to take care of us, but most university researchers are trying to do what's right. And exactly because I'm just guessing, I'm not going to stoke the flames of conspiracy with my relatively uneducated guesses. For me to do that would feel deeply irresponsible.

That's fair.

I also imagine most researchers are generally trying to do what's right, I think most people generally are.  And, I think there's a system of perverse incentives (i.e. profit), as well as a culture of conformity that makes it rare for people to notice what's wrong and if they do, makes it scary to speak up about it.  I'm sure this is colored by my own experiences.  First in big tech, where profits were to be made by keeping people addicted to their screens, and the story was that we're just giving them what they want so it's a good thing.  Second having government agency employees tell me they fear for their jobs if they tried to actually enforce certain environmental laws, as much as they'd like to.

I notice fear come up in myself to talk about this kind of thing publicly.  That if I do, I'll end up alone because people will be afraid to associate with me.  I have to reckon with that.  I believe that most people hold some skepticism but are afraid to talk about it publicly.  That's definitely been my experience.  So I think it's good to normalize talking about these things.  I just had the thought that maybe it's similar to the MeToo movement, tons of people have stories to tell but lone whistleblowers tend to be punished severely, so they won't feel safe sharing these stories until there's a critical mass of people doing so.

Timothy Norton wrote:you don't hear him talked about a lot.

You're right, he isn't talked about a lot in the media.  But clearly more and more people are hearing about him as his polling keeps getting better.  That's why I posted here, because I think most of us at permies will choose him at least over trump or biden, once we look at his policies and hear him speak.

Timothy Norton wrote:I wonder if he could put out strong, solid statements of his positions, if he would poll better? He needs to find his footing and be clear when he speaks.

I just looked at his website www.kennedy24.com/policies and it looks like it has clear descriptions of his positions on each issue.  It's hard to cover all of the positions in hour long interviews, where interviewers are often trying to focus on some particular hot button issue[s].  

For example, on environment:

kennedy24.com wrote:We will shift agricultural subsidies so as to encourage regenerative practices. Today, a new generation of farmers and ranchers is building soil, replenishing groundwater, and detoxifying land, all while producing just as much food as conventional farmers and earning a decent livelihood.
We will incentivize the transition of industry to zero-waste cycles and clean energy sources, and forge agreements with other countries to implement these policies throughout the global supply chain. These first two policies will vastly reduce the toxic waste, industrial poisons, and pesticides that make people and ecosystems sick.
We will protect wild lands from further development, by curbing mining, logging, oil drilling, and suburban sprawl. We will become a global advocate for rainforest preservation and marine restoration. We will rethink development policies that promised economic growth while ignoring ecological sustainability, and ended up delivering neither.
We will restore the USDA and the EPA to their proper role of protecting health and the environment. Today, corporate influence has severely compromised these agencies, resulting in a proliferation of highly toxic chemicals in our food, soil, air, and water. It’s time to clean it up!

You won't see the democrats or republicans saying those things.