Burra Maluca

Well, my seeds have finally arrived.

Anyone with any interest, watch this space.

Anyone with any experience, please share!

Oh, also this one, which my partner took for you all to play 'Spot the Burra' with.  Good luck!

We went for a little drive up the mountains today and thought you might like to see some of the views.

That's the barragem marateca in the distance.



My car looks an awfully long way away. I hope she comes back...



Ah there she is. Glad to see her - it's a long walk home!



Views from the top of the Serra Gardunha.





A local village, complete with goats.



Mountains, terraces, and an imploded silo...

I happened to see one of Sepp's monks in Tamera, Portugal, at the end of an exceptionally dry winter when the water level was far lower than usual, allowing the mechanism to be seen.

I hope the photos I took will help people visualise how they work.











More discussion in this thread - Sepp Holzer on ponds and "the monk"

Joe Danielek wrote: “It may seem the riser is pushing but it’s the downstream cooling effect that is pulling (“contraction”) the flame to behave the way it does in the J-tube. ”

I don't get it. If it was relying only on the downstream cooling effect, then how would the hot air rise up a normal chimney?

Is this just a semantics thing, like arguing about whether a horse pulls or pushes a cart because although he's in front he's attached to it via a collar around his chest so from his point of view he's pushing?

I can't figure out if we're just talking about the same thing in different ways or if you really don't understand how a chimney works?

Goats in Wales, where it's pretty damp most of the time, would be prone to foot rot and mud fever unless a lot of care was taken to keep them and their feet dry as much as possible.

The terraces on my property were made by hand, not machine. By the people who lived on the land, probably over several generations.



These things *can* be done. But I wouldn't rule out using machines if the operator really knows their stuff.

Are the dailyish emails themselves reaching you ok?

How often are you getting them?

Did you get the dailyish that was sent to you on March 31?

Yury Smirnov wrote:
The same flat-cutter can be used by left-handed and right-handed person. It works well from both sides.
Important thing is that it is designed to work with both hands - to make it work in the most effective way.
Of course you can use only one hand to work with flat-cutter, but it takes time to get used to work with one hand.

That's wonderful!  

My friend lost his right arm a few years ago and if you think it's possible for him to use it with just the left hand I think it would be perfect for him as he can wander around with it whacking brambles, cutting the odd bit of grass, making furrows for his beans, weeding and probably using it as a walking stick too. I appreciate it won't be the most effective way to use it, but it might be that it's the most effective all-round tool he can use.