Douglas Alpenstock

Why do you ask?

For me, adding char is one component to building robust, ongoing soil fertility. Compost, aeration, and thoughtful management are other components. It's the plants and microbes and fungi and bugs that do the real work -- my job is to give them better tools to work with. It's not like there is an instant "pow" -- but compare my soil to abused/depleted soil a few years down the road, and I can assure there is definitely some "wow."

Interesting. Is that an old pressure tank from a well water system? Or a water heater?

I like that Rob. But it's awfully subversive. Because it suggests the "they" are actually "we."

^^This! Every fall! WTH??

Raven Blade wrote:...Simply give the entire, intact computer to someone who needs that system.  You want to destroy an entire comouter merely because it "does not interface with new hardware"?!  

Well, I respectfully suggest you give this a try. You may find it an engaging and instructive hobby. Hint: It's not nearly as simple as it seems. And the people you give it to sometimes turn out to be be quite demanding (after all of the selfless volunteer effort you have invested and delivery to their door) expecting lifetime tech support.

Back to the OP: If it can't be brought back to life, a lot can be harvested from the "dead carcass" of an old PC. Memory (RAM). Hard drive -- run DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke), or harvest for magnets and shiny platters that make awesome signal mirrors. Power supply: precisely 12VDC and 5VDC, though not very efficiently (and the capacitors are big enough to build your own Taser). Cooling fans (my favourite) requiring precise voltages as well (higher and they will cut out; but they will run lower, just fine). From an old desktop, endless supplies of heavy braided low-voltage wire. The lithium coin cell may still have lots of life in it. And lots of metal screws, which engage with wood and plastic quite well if you torque them by hand, gently. I harvested a giant CPU heat sink that will sit on a wood stove under a coffee pot, just to see what happens. The remainder, of course, goes to recycling.

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:One other thought just came to mind, I wonder about creating mouse habitat somewhere away from the house.  They look for warm places they can build nests in.

So ... are you essentially proposing a contract with the mice? Or an armistice? As in, "You can play out here, as long as you stay out here?" It's a noble thought. I confess I have not found rodents, of any variety, who can be trusted to respect such arrangements.

DW likes a product called Caf-Lib. Says it's much better than Inka. Also misses Postum, and has some choice words for the accounting hamsters that killed it off. DW adds a bit of cinnammon etc. to Caf-Lib when she's looking for an evening beverage that is not (properly prepared English) tea.

Come to think of it, my mother (83) likes Caf-Lib too.

Neither can handle caffeine past a certain hour. Not me: I am now, regrettably, mostly immune; it's the cost of being a freelance writer, writing to deadline, for a decade or three.

I'd like to bump the "song suggestions" post from earlier in the thread. What would you guys like to hear while you're shopping for carrots and carrot cake?

Well I guess it's the free-est of free enterprise -- people are free to ignore you. Or tip heavily. Maybe an older guy doesn't look hungry enough, even though he plays rather well. Maybe the bad sax player was kinda cute and seemed wistfully helpless and had soulful eyes. You never exactly know what goes through people's heads, and maybe that's just as well.

Haha, saw this thread and said "I gotta introduce you guys to the Blackfly Song!" But the OP had it covered.

Not just Ontario/East Coast either. Tree planters in northern British Columbia have BF tales as well, and we're not talking best friends.