Putting the final piece of tin on the roof sort of feels like the last piece of a marathon jig saw puzzle.


We recently upgraded the WaldenEffect blog camera from the Fuji Finepix S1000fd to a beefier Canon Power Shot SX20. I can already tell a difference, but will wait for more experimentation before I give a full report on how awesome it is.

The internet is chock full of articles glowing about biochar's potential, but I seldom find any useful, hands on information.  The Abingdon Biochar presentation we attended delved into the nitty gritty.

Today's video highlights methods you can use to make biochar on any scale.  I was especially intrigued by the idea of modifying a rocket stove to produce biochar while cooking your dinner.

Roland made a good safety point on my post yesterday that sent me back 25 years to Mr Beaver's woodshop class in High School. Yes...that was his real name.

The Pro-Tech 10" bench saw was a hand-me-down and already had the splitter removed. I think I've got it in the barn somewhere.

I decided to take Roland's advice and look into what it might take to replace the splitter, which is a piece of metal that prevents the cut wood from drifting back to the blade.

The above picture is from The Woodshop.com, a great website that has encountered this problem due to the original splitter/guard being too flimsy. They came up with a strudy do it yourself version that looks easy to replicate. The guard only functions to prevent scraps from being dropped onto the blade, but the splitter seems like it should work better than the original.

One of the first aspects to catch your eye at Abingdon Organics is half a dozen high tunnels.  Anthony Flaccavento uses these 150 foot long hoop houses to give his plants a head start in the spring --- his secret to having May tomatoes without heating a greenhouse.

The first high tunnels at Abingdon Organics were purchased for thousands of dollars apiece, but the newest hoop houses are DIY versions.  Imagine 4,500 square feet of protected growing area for just $900.

Anthony and his farm manager built the DIY high tunnels from locust posts, a steel purline, PVC pipes, brackets, and a huge sheet of plastic.  Clearly, the hoop houses are still being perfected, and Anthony noted that he lost two during heavy storms this summer.  Still, at a cost of only about 20 cents per square foot, his high tunnel design is definitely worth continued experimentation.

Mark's ears perked right up when Anthony started discussing homemade hoop houses, but I had to point out the negatives.  Like any greenhouse or other protected area, Anthony's high tunnels become breeding grounds for molds and spider mites.  Mark's rebuttal is that we could easily build a small, movable unit that was just used to give the tomatoes a couple of months' head start.  Clearly, cheap, DIY high tunnels are making their way onto the drawing board.

This skylight will be right above my bed so that I can look out at any stars in the night sky while I'm drifting off to sleep.

After I've got it all sealed up I'll make some sort of shutter that can be closed during the day.

Zimmy and his wife rounded out their energy efficient home by producing some of their own power.  They live in northern Ohio where it makes sense to supplement solar power by capturing the wind blowing down off the Great Lakes. 

The couple has been building their homestead infrastructure for about as long as I've been alive, so it's no surprise they've been able to snap up good deals.  "Almost everything we buy, build, install, is seconds. We live in the world of surplus," Zimmy emailed when I asked him the cost of his alternative energy system.  He went on to say that he has two different sets of solar panels as well as the wind turbine.

The solar panels on the ground put out about 3kw.  They came from a demonstration solar power plant in the south California desert.  After being cooked in the sun with concentrating mirrors they were dumped onto the surplus market.  I installed them in 1994. I don't remember the cost, but it was cheap at the time.

The panels on the roof were installed last year by Mary and I.  They are a 1.6kw array, and they came from http://www.sunelec.com/ as seconds.

The [17.5 kw] wind turbine....well that's another story.  It was installed in 1984.  The turbine was bought as a damaged unit that was damaged in a wind storm.  The tower was bought from a scrap yard and they bought it from the local airport.  I also found other sections of  the same type tower from another person.  The tower is 150' tall and I have 20' left over to be used for my water tower when I get time.  The turbine has been hit by lighting several times, mechanical failures, electrical failures, modified and upgraded several times.  I have lost track of the cost, but I have a spare alternator, gearhead, governor, blades, and spare inverter boards.  The turbine had some damage over the winter that cost $3,500 for repairs but insurance paid for it. 

Whenever I consider alternative power --- beyond our simple solar backup --- I get caught up in the disposable nature of batteries and whether the unit will really pay for itself.  Unfortunately, Zimmy wasn't really able to answer my questions about the economics of his grid-tied system.  He noted: "I don't keep track of power produced and power used.  We use every bit of power we produce, and have some amount of electric bill to pay.  The utility co. is happy and so are we."

Whether or not Zimmy's system is cost-effective, I can tell he's had a wonderful time tinkering.  Keeping our eyes open for salvage and seconds is a good lesson for everyone to learn.

The height of the summer busy season is starting to calm down enough for us to dedicate some time to getting the 2009 winter building project wrapped up.

With any luck we should have the sky light boxed in and sealed up by the end of the week.

Although I usually think that buying insulation for the ceiling is the quickest and cheapest way to improve heating efficiency, one article I read suggested that I was on the wrong track.  They noted that infiltration and air leakage are the most problematic causes of heat loss in the winter, making up around 35% of all heat lost from the average home.  Windows and doors followed behind at 18 to 20%, then floors at 15 to 18%, walls at 12 to 14%, and finally ceilings at 10%.  Clearly, fixing any holes or cracks should be your first priority, closely followed by dealing with windows and doors.

We installed double-glazed windows in our trailer, but even the air gap between those panes of glass is a drop in the bucket.  Double-glazed windows tend to have an R-value around 2 --- compared to a preferred R-value of at least 13 in walls.  Is there a way to make windows more efficient without living in a cave?

Zimmy made some quick and easy window coverings to insulate his windows when they aren't in use.  He used foam board on basement windows and some upstairs windows (top photo), then bought quilted window blinds for windows in his main living space (second photo.)  The quilted blinds run on a track and seal all around the window.  I estimate that Zimmy gets an additional R-6 from his foam board (although the gaps at the edge of the foam board may drop this down some) and perhaps as high as R-7 for his quilted blinds.

Maine Home Energy has a very well put together page about different window insulation options, including price per square foot and R-value of each.  They recommend quilted blinds like Zimmy's (which they call "insulated Roman shades") on south-facing windows since they are easy to open for passive solar gain on sunny days, then seal shut for the night or on cloudy days.  Insulating windows has always been on our priority list, but after reading the statistics on heat lost through windows, then seeing simple how-to instructions for making our own insulating blinds, I think this project will have to move closer to the top.

Adding a roof and basement to his mobile home made it much easier for Zimmy to insulate his house.  We've tried to wrap our minds around insulating our trailer better, but since Mark's head already almost brushes the ceiling, we would clearly have to follow a similar route and we're not quite ready to embark on such a huge project.  Still, it's great to see how a trailer can be insulated relatively cheaply once you have a roof and basement in place.

Zimmy didn't give me figures on how much it cost to build his new roof and basement, but he did say that the subsequent insulation job cost about $500.  He managed to insulate so cheaply because he spent some time scrounging for materials:

With his supplies compiled, Zimmy and his wife ripped off the inside paneling and installed 6 mil plastic as a vapor barrier, putting drywall over that.  They tacked an additional two inches of insulated foam board to the outside of the trailer and coated it with 1/2" of plywood.  The resulting combination of insulation in the walls now reached R26.

"The roof already had R19 of fiberglass insulation in it and the company I worked for sold me at cost bags of rock wool insulation," Zimmy wrote.  It was simple to add more insulation under the roof, bringing the insulative value up to at least R60.

Zimmy made sure that I knew he still planned to put vinyl siding over the outside walls of the mobile home.  I could tell that the insulating project had been a lot of work, but I'll bet he and his wife consider that $500 a very wise investment.

Since our own solar experiments are so low-key at the moment, I thought you might enjoy hearing from one of our regular readers who has built an extensive grid tied solar and wind alternative power system.  Zimmy and his wife live in a 1974 mobile home (14 X 60 feet):

I was intrigued to hear more about Zimmy's project since we live in a similar trailer (although ours is a third smaller and a decade older.)  We thoroughly approve of starting out with a living situation that is as cheap as possible, then improving the efficiency of your space over time.

Mobile homes are usually barely insulated, but Zimmy proved that you can turn even an old model into an efficient and beautiful living space.  This week's lunchtime series follow's Zimmy's journey to insulate his home and then provide a good proportion of his own power.

You can barely make out where the left rut here has several cinder blocks laid next to each other in an attempt to harden up an area that sometimes has running water passing through.

It's been over 4 years now and the cinder block mini ford has proven itself to be a long term workable replacement to big gravel, which has a tendency to spread out and sink even deeper under these conditions.

The only problem was a 20 degree tilt over time as heavy trucks and golf carts weighed heavily on its outer edge. I think the angle might even help some of the tires grip easier in wet conditions, but it's never been a problem.

I got so excited when I read that you can buy a plug-and-play grid tie inverter and pump the electricity from your solar panel directly into the grid for less than a hundred bucks that I snatched up the first one I saw on ebay.  The theory is sound and would make small-scale solar fit into the average person's price range...if it wasn't illegal and potentially hazardous.

The dream is that you can simply plug a solar panel directly into one of these small inverters, and plug the other end of the inverter into an electric socket in your house.  On the level I'm interested in, there's no way you'd actually be feeding energy back into the grid since continuous loads in your house (like the computer, fridge, etc.) will suck up all the juice you've created.  But you would lower your electric bill, and would also remove the most disposable part of a solar power system --- the batteries.  Without the repeated purchase of batteries, I figured even the solar panels you can buy at Harbor Freight for less than $200 would pay for themselves before they began to seriously lose efficiency.

The problem with the dream is that utilities require you to jump through such a series of hoops before tying into the grid that you might as well not even think about it unless you're willing to sink a few thousand dollars into the project.  I contacted our local electric company (Appalachian Electric Power) and found out that in order to plug in a grid tie inverter, we'd need to:

The employee I emailed with (who went to great lengths to make his emails understandable by the layman) explained that the existing disconnect below the meter is not sufficient to fulfill step 3.  In addition, more extensive reading on the internet shows that a certified inverter costs around $2,000, putting grid tie-in completely out of our league.

The electric company has a few valid reason to squash cheap plug-and-play inverters.  The biggest hazard from these inverters comes during power outages, when the electric company shuts down the juice on a line so that it can be repaired.  Without the proper precautions, your solar panels would continue feeding electricity into what is supposed to be a dead line, and you could fry the linemen who come to fix the problem.  Granted, even the cheap power jack grid tie inverter we found on ebay has anti-islanding protection, so presumably this problem wouldn't occur.

I read an excellent point on a forum that our grid tie inverter is inherently unsafe since it has live electricity on the male end of the plug rather than protected within a female plug.  This is where my (very mild) libertarian leanings come out --- we live in a household of two adults who can remember to unplug the solar panel before yanking the inverter out of the wall.  We're not going to fry ourselves.

Many people buy these plug-and-play grid tie inverters and surreptitiously put them to use in their own homes.  Chances are, no one at the electric company would ever find out (although if you go the illegal route and have a fire in your home, your fire insurance will probably refuse to pay for the damages.)  Unfortunately, breaking the law would keep me up at night, so we've wasted $90 on a useless grid tie inverter and will have to figure out a better way to harness the extra energy that doesn't go into charging our power packs.

The only thing the new wheel needs is a locking nut, which will have to wait for the next town trip.

I know the body is rusted and has holes, but this repair gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that a new wheelbarrow could never deliver.

The old wheel shaft rust was holding hard and required cutting.

The Harbor Freight tire was a tight squeeze with the spacer and washers.

I used a slightly smaller bolt to avoid making the holes on the wheel holder bigger.

I've been looking everywhere for a replacement wheel for this small wheelbarrow.

A bit of browsing at the Harbor Freight store yesterday lead me to this pneumatic wheel with heavy duty bracket for just 10 dollars.

Stay tuned for more pictures of the installation process.

We still think that plug and play is the way to go for our cheap solar backup, but we've tweaked the specific components a bit.  We wanted to find a powerpack that we could pick up at a physical store since powerpacks bought online have often been stored in warehouses for years and have dubious longevity.  We figure that by picking one up locally, we can easily return it if it turns out to be old.

The 5-in-1 power pack at Harbor Freight is the best we could find at a physical store --- it's only two thirds as voluminous as the Duracell 600 watt power pack, holding 216 watt-hours of energy, but the price commensurate.  And the reviews are quite good --- one user notes that his powerpack is only starting to lose its gumption after five years of use.

The 45 watt solar panel kit is really too big for our system, but it's irresistible at the current sale price ($170 on Harbor Freight's website --- print out the price page to use as a coupon at local stores.)  Since we've oversized our solar panel, we have to throw in a $26 charge controller, bringing the total cost to just under $300 for the entire backup system.

On a sunny, summer day, our 45 watt solar panel will probably be wasting quite a bit of juice, since it should pull in 135 watt-hours of energy a day even in the dead of winter.  I suspect that there will be a way to capture that excess, perhaps by plugging an inverter directly into the included power center to run electronics while also charging the powerpack.  Or, better yet, we might buy a (roughly) $100 grid tie inverter, which would allow us to plug our solar panel directly into an electric socket in the house and sell power back to the grid --- no muss, no fuss, and easily detachable to plug the solar panel into an inverter when the power goes out.

We'll update you as we experiment, but Mark is currently on his way to pick up our components, so this phase of the project is now set in stone.

sk1ppy14 from somewhere in the United Kingdom has done a fine job fabricating this automatic chicken coop door closer/opener from an old gate opener.

These medium sized gate openers will sometimes get weak over years of heavy usage and require replacement. What a great way to extend the usefulness of this farm gadget.

It would be great if all the downed trees would fall like this one.

Being elevated off the ground makes it so much easier to cut and avoid letting the chain dip into the dirt, not to mention being safer.

I start at the far end and just let each log fall to the ground, and then let Anna load them up in the truck.

Youtube user clintfisher has created what I would call the most sophistitcated automatic chicken coop door opener I've seen so far.

It uses Arduino technology that allows for wireless control and will be powered by a solar cell that charges a small 12 volt battery.

The locking mechanism is impressive and he makes use of an old battery powered drill for the motor action.

I doubt if there's any racoons out there smart enough to get through this level of security.

Half of you are going to find this post ludicrously basic, but I suspect the other half of you never learned the facts of life from your mother.  Paper towels seem to be the last bastion of consumer society found in many homesteaders' households, but the truth is that you already have a free alternative --- rags.

How to make rags
The first step in making rags is wearing your clothes into the ground.  After a certain point, there's no purpose in mending a piece of clothing --- the fabric has degraded so much that it will merely rip along your mended seam.  Or maybe your t-shirt now has half a dozen holes that seem to get bigger every day.  Put it in the rag bag.

Once a year or so, I get around to pulling out the rag bag and taking a look.  First, I sort my old clothes into three piles --- 100% cotton, partially synthetic, and fully synthetic or bulky.  The last category doesn't have much use on our homestead, so we tend to relegate it to winter pet bedding, but all of the others will be used.  We turn 100% cotton clothes into fodder for my bees' smoker, and everything else becomes rags.  Underwear and t-shirts make the best smoker fodder and rags, and luckily they're the pieces of clothing that wear out the quickest.

Making rags is simple.  Just cut through any turned-under edges, then riiiiiiiip.  (Rag production is also a great way to improve your mood if you're down in the dumps --- so satisfying.)  It's best to tear off and discard underwear waistbands and t-shirt collars, but otherwise there are no rules.  Just be sure to end up with rags roughly eight inches by eight inches.

How to use rags
Now, how do you use rags?  The first line of defense in our household is the wash cloth.  These storebought items (costing perhaps a quarter apiece at the dollar store) will last years as long as you use them for gentle cleaning like doing dishes and wiping down counters.  I only pull out rags when I'm going to be working in more goopy or disgusting situations, like wiping oil off a machine or cleaning up fecal matter.

What do you do with a dirty rag?  If it's not too filthy, rinse it out in the sink, then drape it over the side of the laundry basket to dry.  Rags can then be washed with your regular laundry.  On the other hand, we reserve the right to throw rags away if they're too awful --- that's why we use them for the more disgusting tasks that would retire a wash cloth.

We tend to go through rags at just about exactly the same rate we go through clothes.  You're probably discarding your clothing too soon and buying too much of it if you're overrun with rags.

For those of you who were raised using rags, I'm curious to hear what you'd add to my rag tutorial.  Any helpful tips for the uninitiated?  Any uses for those bulky blue jeans and fleece shirts?

Marcus Sabathil is a glass artist and furniture maker who managed to modify his Toyota Previa in such a way to increase highway mileage from 20 to 36 mpg.

I've often wondered how much of a gain we might get from our Toyota Previa if we fabricated a similar boat tail.

The dry season makes for good conditions to catch up on some minor ford maintenance.

The do it yourself cinder block ford hasn't really needed much repair in the past 4 years. This  turns out to be a low budget creek crossing solution that continues to work.

I've seen a lot of automatic chicken feeder designs and I think this simple use of PVC pipe with a cut out trough is an idea that works the best if you need to leave your flock for a few days and you want the feed to be automatically replenished with the help of gravity.

Usually I see these projects from afar on the internet, but today Anna and I were lucky enough to see this setup first hand when we got a chance to visit Everett and Missy's new awesome farm today.

I could even see a version of this being practical in a chicken tractor if someone was needing to be away more than a couple of days at a time.

I decided our driveway was in a good enough state of dryness to see if the parts Festiva had what it takes to help tow out the golf cart for some expert repair.


It only got stuck once, which was quickly fixed by modifing the ruts to fit the bigger wheel base.

I'm pretty sure this is a once a year opportunity and when the rain kicks back to a more regular schedule the flood plain will earn its name back. In the meantime it's nice to have a back up to our much valued golf cart.

One of the casualties of last year's big winter storm was our high fence to keep deer out of the mule garden in case one of the deer deterrents fail.

I finally got around to repairing the damage last week and decided one of the upper gaps was big enough for a deer to jump through. An experimental solution was to use some of this orange marking tape to deter any possible breach.

I know a deer could rip right through this thin plastic ribbon material, but if he or she does the evidence should be obvious, and then I'd know if this was a failure.

If it does prevent deer from thinking of jumping, then maybe someone else could use this as an ultra cheap fencing material that could be installed within a few hours depending on what type of posts or trees get incorporated.

Mark Stead from Melbourne Australia has created a clever, low budget, automatic chicken coop door opener that takes advantage of a cheap alarm clock.

I estimate he's spent around 45 bucks, which is not bad compared to commercial units over twice that.

What makes this design cost less is the fact that you still have to manually close the door at night. His instructions are clear with a generous helping of images to guide you.

I'm thinking this alarm clock opener could be modified to also close at night by incorporating the Chris and Keri limit switch method.

Mark and I are in the research stages of putting together a very small solar backup for use during power outages, and I'm hoping that some of the more technical folks among you can give us the benefit of your wisdom.  During three power outages over the last few months, we've figured out that running the generator for an hour a day keeps the farm ticking along, but that we miss two major creature comforts --- lights on winter evenings and more steady access to the internet.

Luckily, these gadgets don't draw much juice --- about 25 watts apiece for our laptops, another 23 watts for the router, and 13 watts for a CFL.  We figure that if we increase efficiency by buying a car charger for the laptops (deleting the inefficiencies from converting DC to AC to DC) and buy a couple of DC LED lights, we could coast along on very little electricity, allowing us to work and play online for perhaps 3 hours per day on a solar system costing less than $300.

A simple solar system that doesn't seem to require much technical know-how consists of a 600 watt Duracell Power Pack (basically, a 12 volt, 28 amp-hour, AGM battery; a controller; and a 600 watt inverter combined into one unit, costing roughly $125) along with a 25 to 30 watt solar panel (roughly $150.)  Many solar panels come with the right connectors, so the system would be basically plug and play.

The flaw I see in the combo above is that the solar panel might not fully charge the battery in a single day of sun --- some websites say the system will charge up in 5 to 7 hours, but other sites think the system will take 16 to 18 hours to charge.  We can't just add a larger solar panel for quicker charging since the manufacturer notes that you can't hook a panel larger than 30 watts directly to the power pack without adding an external charge controller.

So here are my questions:

• Is it okay to shop around and find the cheapest 30 watt solar panel, or are cheaper solar panels going to burn out quickly?  Are there solar panel categories I should be aware of in the low end, consumer market?
  
• We're willing to pay a bit extra for plug and play (and portability), but don't want to be seriously ripped off.  Would it be smarter to do more research and buy the battery, inverter, and charge controller separately?
  
• If we bought an external charge controller and a 50 watt solar panel, would the larger panel charge our power pack faster?  My very vague understanding makes me think it wouldn't, that the charge controller would just filter out the extra power from the larger solar panel since it's more than the battery can handle.
• One website notes that this system would give us around 160 watt-hours per day.  I'm not actually sure where people came up with that figure --- does it make sense?  Does that mean that I could run a single 25 watt laptop for 6 hours?

Basically, these questions all come down to one major one --- is this a bad idea?  We like the modular nature of the system, especially since Mark thinks we could use the power pack with pedal power, a bit like this article describes.  But we don't want to spend a few hundred bucks on a dud.

This seems to be the best do it yourself solar dryer design out there.

You can thank the good folks of Appalachian State University for the design and testing.

We plan on building one in anticipation of our upcoming tomato harvest.

ASU has put this thing through many testing situations with documented data available as a PDF download.

This was my first attempt at the latest automatic bucket waterer. I think it once held cooking oil.

The main problem with a container like this is the thickness of the plastic. Two of the nipples screwed in fine, but one of them didn't seem to have enough plastic to bite into and ended up leaking.

This automatic bucket waterer was easy to put together with a DIY kit, a shelf bracket, some scrap wood, and a handfull of drywall screws.

A future system will make use of a 50 gallon plastic drum with some sort of  gutter collecting run off water from the roof of the chicken coop.

This automatic chicken coop door design is called the up swing version for obvious reasons.

You can get the complete kit from a guy named Jeremy for around 135 dollars which includes an adjustable timer.

I like the way the movement goes out, which seems less risky than the guillotine like action of most automatic chicken coop doors.

The biggest mistake I made with the do it yourself garden cart worm bin was to not allow enough space at the bottom for the tea to drip to.

The next error was to use a drinking container spigot as a drain valve. It needs to be bigger with the ability to be turned on and left on as opposed to the push button mechansim of the spigot.

The good news is that the worms did great! Which goes to show you how easy it is to grow your own worms. Once the kinks are worked out I think this garden cart will make a fine over sized worm bin. One that will provide buckets and buckets of compost tea in the future.

The refrigerator root cellar is being over taken by weeds due to its low position on the "list of things to fix before winter".

Digging it out and installing a roof over the top will most likely be a winter project.

When we first got our used tiller it worked fine for the first season, but when I went to get it going the next year it wouldn't seem to start, so I used a couple squirts of Starting Fluid spray and off it went. I only did this a few times, but that was enough to get our innocent Statesman tiller addicted to Ether, which is the main ingredient in this wicked spray. Now it won't start without this high end boost.

Don't get me wrong...in the hands of a qualified expert a short spray of Starting Fluid can be used to safely troubleshoot several specific problems.

The trouble happens when a back yard mechanic like myself was never told in Health class how repeated use of Starting Fluid begins to wear off the oil that usually coats the inner walls of each cylinder, which leads to accelerated wear on the rings, piston, and the cylinder itself. This creates a decrease in compression and explains the increased difficulty in starting.

Is there any kind of rehab center I can send my tiller to? I would assume a complete engine rebuild would be in order to get the compression back where it once was.  Maybe one of those expensive oil additives might rejuvinate things back to normal? It's been a couple of years since I've had to till up new ground due to our no-till method of growing and the tiller repair is way at the bottom of the "fix me now" list.

Image credit of the close up shot of Starting Fluid being sprayed goes to dazecars at FordMuscle.com.

After much trial and error I've concluded that the water we pump from the creek is too rich in particles for these little screen filters to handle.

Anna started experimenting with deleting the filters back in the spring. So far the results suggest we don't need them for this application. I suspect the high pressure is enough to push any stray particles out through the sprinkler nozzle.

The Champion generator started on the second pull Monday night when the power first failed here.

Tuesday rolled around and I made a big mistake by topping it off with some old gas. I thought the fuel was fine due to just using some in the lawnmower, but I guess this generator is more sensitive.

My first solution was limited by our local hardware store and the Dollar shop. They only had STP and Gumout, which I think is the same thing. I added both with very little results to show for it. It would start up...but putter and stall due to what I assume was the bad gas or water in there somewhere? My second mistake was not deleting as much of the old gas as I could before adding the supplements.

The next round of repairs involved a longer trip where one can find a proper auto parts store. I went right for the Seafoam and after a short consult with one of the clerks was off to the gas station for some premium grade petrol.

Dumping out the old gas and adding the Seafoam helped, but it continued to putter and eventually stalled due to what I'm guessing is some sort of blockage. I think it's going to take running it a while for it to smooth out.

Luckily the electric guy showed up with a chainsaw and a smile and cut down the offending tree that was hanging on one of our power lines. It was touch and go for a while as I watched the line hold the entire weight of the tree and finally allow it to fall without  breaking. I let out a loud enough cheer so he could hear me and we had power restored within the hour.

If you live near a lake or some other source of cold water you could pump that water through an old radiator and then blow the coldness out with a simple fan.

I found this clever solution at the Straw Bale Retreat blog.

Now I'm wondering how much cold air I could harvest from our nearby creek using this method?

I've been interested in taking advantage of geothermal energy for heating and cooling since I first heard of the idea.

The main problem is the high installation and material cost.

After several hours of research I finally found some comprehensive information on tackling a project like this from an angle that won't break the bank.

Free home air conditioning is a simple website that covers several details I wouldn't have thought of. Like how important moisture control is and if you select the wrong material you might create favorable conditions for mold to multiply.


I would not try to dig trenches like this by hand unless it was an emergency situation. The time and energy a Ditch Witch can save is what makes this project practical.

These new dark cornish chickens we've been pasturing are said to be more predator resistant than most birds.

We've yet to see any signs of predator trouble thanks to Lucy and the new K9 electric fence strand.

What predator resistant really means for this operation is a substantial increase in the challenge to catch your bird when it's time to process.

It gets easier with practice, but I think we'll experiment with a different breed next time.

I've decided these plastic hose repair kits are better than the metal ones.

It's easier to install, and most importantly won't snag on every other thing that comes by.

I know the metal might stand the test of time better, but this is some hard plastic, and I'll do almost anything to prevent any more entanglement with the mower.

I was all set to get a Craftsman 24 inch pry bar/flywheel remover when I found this one for only 4.99 at Harbor Freight.

Usually the Craftsman no questions lifetime warranty is enough to push me into spending more for a tool, but in this case I think I'll be okay with the cheaper model....especially when it also has a lifetime warranty at a third of the price.

It says Pittsburgh, but it's made in Taiwan and it feels heavy duty. Stay tuned to see how it handles some real world pressure when I replace my first flywheel shaft key in hopefully what will be far in the future.

The first do it yourself pet door lasted a few months before the screen broke free. Not a good choice of material.

I found some see through material that is working out much better once I installed a layer on each side.

It got Huckleberry's meow of approval, but Strider is still reserving judgment due to his fear of change.

When we first started this irrigation project the budget was a bit limited.

I'm sure it breaks every law of proper electric wiring, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do.
                                                                                                                                            

It's basically four 100 foot extension cords cobbled together and wired so each pole is carrying 110 volts. I'm pretty sure this is close to the maximum distance you should think about stretching these cords. Electrical tape works well for sealing up the junctions where each cord is plugged into.

We're going on the third year of this setup. There was a problem in the beginning with the pump connections, but I solved that by figuring out how to make the contact points waterproof.

If you feel like you're testing the limits of safety try picking up the cord in question to see if it's giving off much heat while you have your pump working. It's this heat that can be dangerous and must be dealt with by making the distance shorter or the electrical cord thicker.

When we first started using the large well pump to supply water to the irrigation sprinklers I was timid about how long it should be used at one time.

I was concerned that too much continued pumping might damage the motor, but little by little we kept using it for longer episodes. Now it's not uncommon to see them going for hours at a time.

Every now and then a sprinkler head will get clogged with some creek debris, but it only takes a minute to unscrew the hose and remove any offending algae or sand.

What's most challenging is getting 220 volts from the trailer to the creek. More on that in part 2 of this creek pumping series.

If you had chickens 100 years ago in America you would've most likely used a hand cranked corn sheller every day to keep your flock fed.

Thanks to Global Cycle Solutions now you can give your hand a rest and get all your corn shelling done with pedal power.

The device can be unattatched so you can operate the bike for transportation or hook up another clever gadget to charge your mobile phone or flashlight or whatever else you can imagine that needs a little power.

The cost is 60 dollars plus shipping which seems like a bargain.

My brother in-law was smart enough to buy a Little Giant type ladder years ago and I'm glad he did. It helped this small home improvement project be a bit safer and smoother than a neighbor's older ladder which wasn't quite long enough. I've always thought the old standard extension ladder was overdue for a make over and this is one of those times when the engineers got it right.

You can find them in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. The big plus is how compact this thing folds down to.

Harold Ray Wing discovered the first prototype in Germany back in the 1970s. He came back home to Utah, got a U.S. patent, started building them in his garage and selling them at trade shows and the rest is what they call ladder history.

Photo credit goes to Maggie Hess for capturing this Little Giant Chinese knockoff in all its long and sturdy glory. I wonder how much of a percentage Harold got from this big box store deal as the original patent holder?

Need clear instructions on how a Briggs and Stratton engine really works?

Davidsfarm channel on YouTube does a great job at distilling down years of experience into minutes. I appreciate David's simple approach to DIY videos and feel like I've already learned a thing or two from watching what I've seen so far.

Working on a tip I got from the local hardware store last week I went out this morning in search of the Flywheel Wizard. I was not only lucky enough to see him without an appointment but was able to record the short sequence of events that needs to transpire before the flywheel will finally yield its secrets.

It was a father and son team, and I asked them about flywheel puller tools. It seems they both agree that a special tool is needed if you're an amateur, but if you perform each step with care the old pry bar and hammer trick will work without doing any damage.

What you need is:

• long, hard screwdriver/prybar. (20 dollars)
• heavy mini sledge hammer. (20 dollars)
• replacement flywheel nut.(?)
• someone to help apply pressure to opposite side.
• flywheel shaft key
  

The flywheel nut should be positioned at the very top of the flywheel shaft so it will receive the brunt of the hammer pounding which helps to protect the flywheel shaft threads.





What you don't see in the short video is the flywheel nut being replaced due to something going wrong. I suspect he should have had his Dad pulling since the first hammer hit.

The Wizard only charged 18 bucks and had me on my way within minutes.

When I first discovered that I'd ordered the wrong flywheel puller I had a brief fantasy of fabricating one of my own to get the job done.


I never could figure out a decent direction to go in and decided to give up on it for a while and just mow with the semi un-balanced blade.




Well some guy with an interesting blog named Ed had a bit more gumption than I did and almost made his own diy flywheel puller tool pictured here.

He reports the wood breaking before the flywheel came free, which is a bummer. The way he finally solved the problem was to take it to a local shop where they used the crude but effective hammer and screwdriver approach to pop it off.

I'm starting to wonder if anybody out there uses these flywheel puller tools for the basic small to medium lawn mower engine?

I estimate the total cost of the chicken pasture electric fence installation to be around 75 dollars which ended up including the following items.

• Zereba K9 lawn and garden charge controller
• small bag of yellow plastic insulators
• about 300 feet of electric fence wire
• a half dozen small metal fence posts

Each bag of insulators comes with enough nails, but I prefer using drywall screws because it makes adjustments easier after you've got it all together.

I think we've finally found a product that will help Lucy figure out that she's not allowed to steal food scraps from the chicken pasture.

Just minutes after the new chick made it back to mamma Lucy went sniffing around the fresh chick trail. It didn't take her long to follow it to the chicken pasture. I just happen to be watching when she got too close to the Zereba K9 lawn and garden electric fence controller. The backward leap she made seemed to break a few laws of doggie physics.
 

It's easy to set up. Just wrap each end of the perimeter wire onto the wing nut at the bottom. It uses something called direct discharge technology which eliminates the need for a grounding rod. With a maximum range of 1500 feet the K9 electric charger makes an excellent solution to keeping unwanted pets out of sensitive areas. Expect to pay about 25 bucks for the unit and maybe another 20 to 200 depending on how long of a perimeter you're protecting and the quality and quantity of the fence posts used.

The drink dispenser I salvaged the spigot from for the garden cart worm bin is now doing duty as a waterproof enclosure for the new K9 electric fence charger.

These units somehow get their grounding from the electric line, which is a change from other chargers.

The new flock steadily grew more interested in what I was doing to their pasture as the day went on.

Now we have it split in two sections with a gate connecting each area.

It only took about 2 minutes to install an eye hook on the port and starboard side of the do it yourself golf cart dump box.

Now we have tie down points to attach a bungee cord to for easy snugging.

I decided to use an old piece of tin to shore up the chicken pasture gate.

Putting a strand of electric wire across the gate bottom would make getting in and out of the pasture a small hassle.

After several days of basking in the sun the solar fence box seems to have a weak battery, which means our next step will be to spring for the 40 dollar electric fence charger.

Since the do it yourself golf cart dump box is working out so well we've decided the Heavy Hauler garden cart can start its new carreer as a large outdoor worm bin.

It took less than an hour to scrounge around for the parts and put it all together.
The spigot was salvaged from a thrift store drink dispenser. (Thanks Mom)

I used a couple of 2x2's cut to 30.5 inches for the bottom support and modified a portion of the willow wall to function as the floor. A small gap at the bottom helps to prevent the spigot from clogging and worms from drowning in their own tea.

Being on heavy wheels makes it easy to manuever and tilt for the most effecient drainage

In looking for ideas to expand our outdoor worm farming I found this clever use of a discarded bathtub as a medium sized worm bin at the pleasant lifeboat.co.nz.

We've decided to give this approach a try along with a few others so we can determine which one is most trouble free.

If you've got a good source of horse manure then you really need to put a small army of worms to work on that manure to speed up the composting action and take advantage of that wonderful worm tea. It's one of those things we neglected to set aside time to build back in the beginning, but sometimes it takes a while to wake up to the wonders of worm assisted home grown compost.

This nose high strand of electric fence wire will help to keep Lucy out and any other stray critters that might be a potential threat when she takes her random naps.

I figure if the ramshackled wheel barrow makes it through its first week back on the job then its got a bright future here on the farm.

No complaints from its main operator after several heavy trips.

I predict this fix to last around 2 years.

I just noticed this back door to the chicken pasture Lucy installed recently and growled at her while I stitched it back together.

We could double down on securing the bottom edge with some additional fastening, or hook up the electric fence charger and run a strand at nose height all along the perimeter.

Another option would be to stop giving the pastured chickens any scraps and divert that nutrition to the chicken tractors or worm bin.

None of these choices work for me because they avoid the root problem of Lucy's failure to recognize that all food scraps belong to us and she needs special permission to access even a banana peel.

It may seem like a tall order to train a dog to fight the urge to eat something yummy, but I've seen it happen before and feel that Lucy is serious about doing her part in being a team player.

We just need to discover where the communication is breaking down and put some extra effort in explaining this critical lesson.

Thanks goes out to Roland for pointing  me in the winch/tripod direction for any future heavy root extraction.

With any luck our Poke roots won't get as big as this Sitka Spruce root in Scotland.

Sometimes an old fashioned shovel beats out a fancy roto tiller.

Big, thick, Poke root extraction is a task that needs someone to invent a solution for in the form of a tiller like machine. Maybe it will somehow use a small, flexible auger to chase down and grind up any unwanted roots within a 4 foot deep perimeter?

Hopefully it'll be easier to start up than our tiller was last year.

Don't forget to drill pilot holes through the wheelbarrow frame and the new 2x2 handle.

I placed another section of 2x2 on the other side with a pilot hole only half drilled to give the new screws something to bite onto without splitting anyone's grain.

This wheelbarrow insists that it has at least one more season left in it after some quick repairs today.

I appreciate all the ideas for alternative stump removal from yesterday's post.

This is a new stump we plan on inoculating with Oyster mushroom spawn we've been nursing with wet cardboard all winter.

The plan will be to drill a bunch of holes, push in the cardboard with mycelium, seal it up with some bees wax and check back in about 10 months to see if we beat any other mushroom variety that may have already introduced itself.

The downside to using this 5 foot tall chicken wire on the new forest pasture fence is how flimsy it gets towards the top.

I've found that a semi tight stretch of electric fence wire helps to firm it up.

It took me a few times to figure out, but it's a lot easier to measure out the distance first and cut the wire to size and then weave it through.

How are the deer deterrents working for you this year, have you done any adjusting to your technique?

Earl from Baton Rouge, LA

Thanks for asking Earl. Its been a nibble free year so far. The deer deterrent tinkering sort of took on a life of its own and required a separate website which we now call BackYard Deer.com.

The goal is to give away the data we have so far in an effort to stimulate some widespread experimentation to see how well this works in other environments.

We've had some good feedback so far, and Anna posted an interesting piece on a study done by the Canadian government concerning what they learned about keeping deer out of airports.

Image credit goes to Mr Granito for his cave painting of a deer hunt in action.

It seems like old chimney bricks have hundreds of uses.

I wedged these together between the 2 gate posts of the chicken pasture in an effort to discourage Lucy from trying to dig her way under in order to help herself to any future scraps that might get tossed that way.

Luckily she fully understands that chickens themselves are off limits. It's just the delicious food scraps that bring out the bad girl in her.

Most fruits and vegetables require one inch of water per week during the growing season.  Sprinklers are a great backup to natural rainfall, but how long do you turn them on to get that precious inch?  How do you know if your garden is being evenly watered?

Last year, I learned that it's best to situate your sprinklers so they provide head to head coverage, but that trick isn't enough to ensure even watering with an irregularly shaped garden.  Instead, you'll need to put your sprinklers where you think they should go, then run some irrigation tests.  Scatter empty containers every few yards across the garden, blast the sprinklers for an hour, then go back and measure the amount of water in each container.

To help you visualize wet and dry spots, draw a rough map of the garden and write in the water depth at each container location.  Do a bit of math to figure out the average water depth across the garden, then circle areas which ended up with less than average water.

Now it's time to move the sprinklers a bit to make those dry spots go away.  If you're lucky, you will have noticed an abnormally wet spot on one side of a sprinkler and an abnormally dry spot on the other side.  In this case, you can simply move the sprinkler a few feet closer to the dry spot and away from the wet spot.

On the other hand, you may simply have too few sprinklers in play.  If there are dry spots at the outer limits of two sprinklers, you may need to add a third sprinkler to fill in the gaps.

Once you move the sprinklers, run another irrigation test and repeat the process until your garden is getting the same amount of water in every container.  I chose to stop tweaking the sprinklers once the containers were all within the same ballpark --- how obsessive you get about this is up to you.

It will take a few hours of your time to get the sprinklers set up properly, but the irrigation tests are well worth the work.  Now your garden will be evenly hydrated, and you will even know how long it takes to provide that critical inch of water.  Due to different sprinkler orientations, I figure I need to run each set of sprinklers for three hours to get an inch of water in the upper garden and for two hours to get an inch in the mule garden.  I guess it only took three and a half inches of water to saturate that hydrophobic compost --- not nearly as bad as I thought.

The most vulnerable spots for the new chicken pasture fence will likely be near the ground.

Since we've got plenty of logs laying around I decided to line them up along the bottom edges to provide a solid wooden surface to staple the fence material to.

I should get the gate installed tomorrow, which will make everything ready for the new flock to get out and roam for the first time.

The new chicken pasture is one step closer to completion with the final stretch of fence going up today.

Next up is to fabricate a light gate for easy access to the pasture and coop.

We used a U-Haul car trailer to tow the new parts Festiva from South Carolina to home this past weekend. (Thanks, Errol.)

The rental price was just over 80 bucks, and I'm happy to report on how smooth the whole operation went even on the large North Carolina hills.

If I ever do it again I'll insist on being the one to ratchet down the front wheel straps. The guy who did ours was in a rush and bunched up part of the fabric causing a small delay in unhooking everything when we got home.

Mike Turner tells the story of hitting a deer with his AeroCivic in this short video.

If you're inspired to learn more about homemade aerodynamic automobile modifications then you'll want to check out the Ecomodder.com website. It's a community of above average people taking fuel effeciency into their own hands by experimenting with aero modifications and sharing their results.

The removeable boat tail project for a Geo Metro looks very promising.

I first blogged about Mike Turner towards the end of July of last year. Imagine my surprise when I saw him and his AeroCivic at a farmers market down in South Carolina this past Friday.

Turns out he's got some new ambitions on adding an electric 5th wheel to push the car under certain road conditions. At the moment it's not economically feasible due to the high cost of good batteries, but it might not be too long before some clever engineer comes up with a better and cheaper battery that perhaps is somewhat environmentally responsible to produce.

If you'd like to learn more about Mike check back in tomorrow to see a short video interview I did with him where he describes what happened when he hit a deer with the AeroCivic and how it just dented the hood and flipped over the top.

He's also got an excellent website which has a generous supply of construction images while the AeroCivic was being born.

The home made golf cart dump box is holding up nicely under some serious hauling.

I think adding a couple of seat backs to the protruding frame might help to soften the bumps for a couple of passengers in the back.

I installed a small roost training limb in the chicken pasture coop today.

Folks around here speak of a mysterious benefit from using cedar in chicken coops.

Someday I'll try to figure out the logic behind that Appalachianism. In the meantime I'll keep using cedar in future chicken tractors and coops just because it looks so good and feels very natural.

Big thanks to Vester for pointing me in the flywheel key direction in the comments section of yesterday's post.

I had to replace the blade twice last summer, and it stands to reason that the flywheel key is now the problem with the uneven timing and toughness to start.

Here's a good 5 minute video on exactly how to replace this part, but in the comments section of the video someone pointed out how the guy used a hammer and a large screw driver to get the flywheel off, which can result in damage to the flywheel if you're not careful.

The fear of fly wheel damage prompted me to order a special flywheel puller tool which is pictured above. This type works on most of the Briggs and Stratton flywheels, but you'll need to check your engine number to see if it's a proper match.

The lesson for today is to check out the comments. You might just learn something new about the wonderful world of small engine repair.

Our new Craftsman lawnmower is a lot easier to work on than its older cousins.

It only took a bit over an hour to take it apart, clean the points, and put it all  back together with no parts left over.

It's still a little rough to start, which I suspect is due to a slight warp in the blade. These blades have a more complex twist to them so they can work as a mulcher and throw the grass cuttings back towards the bag. It's this complexity that seems to make it more sensitive than most mowers and I would have to say gives it a disadvantage for folks like us who have the occasional stump to work around.

Of course this problem should work itself through as we continue to delete the stumps and level out the mowing area.

We've had this portable wall of willow branches since the winter(Thanks Mom), and today was the day I found its first use.

I put it up by the door to give the chicks some room to scurry off to while I installed the new Reflectix chick warmer.

Soon we'll have a proper area for the boys to run and scratch during the day.

We had to switch to the smaller back up bulb due to the larger heat lamp exploding yesterday.

I used a piece of scrap Reflectix and an old wooden box to form a cozy insulated corner that can hold in enough heat to keep the chicks comfortable.

Stay tuned for more details on the up and coming heat pad chick warmer, which might not make it off the drawing board till the next generation of chicks.

Our cat Huckleberry has been using 2 of our young fruit trees for a scratching post lately.

Let's see him try to scratch them now.

I can already feel an increase of happiness within the new flock after today's move. Now with a bigger space and some real ground to scratch they should start to settle down and feel at home.

A couple of the more brave chicks managed to jump out of the table top brood box the last few days, which probably means they needed more room a week ago.

We'll still keep a close eye on their well being, but the care taking should be a lot easier now that they have some elbow room.

One obvious omission to the do it yourself table top brood coop is the lack of a front or back door.

The chicks have a moving day planned for tomorrow as soon as I fence in a small segment of the new chicken pasture coop building. That's when I'll remove one of the brood coop panels and cut out a door opening so they can be free to come and go during the day as their nap schedule permits.

Photo credit goes to the intriguing heyburton blog, who has an interesting article on chicks doing some low level math.

One detail to note is the placement of an Avian Aqua Miser in respect to new chicks.

I started off with one in each corner on the starboard side of the box. The height turned out to be a problem when all 24 chicks decided to crowd into that corner during a brief fire episode. The chicks who were bunched up close to the nipple were activating the valve and dumping water on themselves and their immediate neighbors. I'm no expert, but wet chicks on a cold night sounds a bit too close to a country western song for my comfort level.

The lesson is to avoid corner placements of your automatic chicken waterer for the first couple of weeks. After that you should be able to raise the waterer to avoid any such issues in the future.

Estimated cost of the chicken pasture coop so far is somewhere between 1 to 2 dollars for a handful of sheet rock screws.

The salvaged brackets continue to prove themselves as a flexible fastener, especially when you have a good size hammer to help preach your philosophy of bracket transformation.

The last component of this year's grain experiment is equipment.  Backyard gardeners often skip growing grains because of the complicated harvesting, threshing, winnowing, and dehulling procedures.  But Home-grown Whole Grains introduced two pieces of DIY equipment that I'm putting on my honey-do list.

The first is a pedal-power drum thresher --- I've stolen the picture from the book just this once because I can't find anything like it on the internet.  Basically, a bicycle is hooked up to a utility-wire spool.  The spool is inside a collection bin of some sort and is studded with xd nails, pounded in every two to three inches.  One person pedals, which causes the drum to spin, while another person holds the grain heads against the drum.  The nails pull seeds out of the grain heads relatively quickly --- you can thresh about 40 pounds of grain in an hour with the DIY thresher.

If you're growing a grain that has difficult to remove hulls (like buckwheat), you'll be interested in Southern Exposure Seed Exchange's method of converting a hand-cranked grain mill into a DIY huller.  Basically, you temporarily replace the stationary disk on your grain mill with a rubber disk made by gluing soft rubber onto a washer.  With a bit of adjustment, your mill will be able to crack the hull on seeds without breaking the grain kernels.  I can't find any pictures of this apparatus on the internet either, but once we grow our buckwheat I'll give it a shot and post about it.

Step 2: Decide on location, choose and trim suitable cedar posts, and install.

Step 3: Catch your breath and have a glass of ice tea.

Step 1: Cut up downed Magnolia tree for frame work of the new chicken pasture coop building.

If you've been thinking about gettng started with permaculture why not try a simple aquaponics set up?

You take advantage of the fish waste by having the water pumped up to a reservoir holding the plants in place with some sort of medium like sand or gravel that easily drains.

Photo credit goes to the CompostGuy.com who has a great section on his experiences with do it yourself aquaponics. If that floats your boat you might want to check out this short video from permaculture expert Sepp Holzer and his impressive pond set up in Austria.

These small metal fence posts come about 10 inches shy of reaching the top of the new pea trellis.

It only takes 2 small sheet rock screws to attach each extension to the inside groove of its respective post.

I'd be surprised if there's an easier way to make a temporary trellis and still have it easy to take down and put up.

We had a close call today. The electricity went off, which prompted Anna to make some adjustments to the do it yourself table top brood box to keep the heat in. Once the juice came back on I went out to set the light back up, not knowing the new upgraded light can not be closer than 18 inches from anything flammable.

Fast forward about 20 minutes and I'm smelling smoke. Luckily I got there in time to remove the smoldering wood chips and adjust the lamp accordingly.

The chicks are fine, and I learned a valuable lesson about heat lamp safety.

I found this car seat heating pad at a thrift store a couple years back thinking it might come in handy for something farm-related in the future.

There's an interlock switch that tells the heater if anyone is sitting on it or not which needs to be bypassed for this application. Hook up a 12 volt DC power supply and you've got yourself a homemade do it yourself heating pad for sprouting sweet potatoes and anything else that needs to be kept warm during these cold spring nights.

It seemed to take these new chicks about an hour to warm up and settle down from their long journey. Tapping on the Avian Aqua Miser nipple with a finger for a couple of minutes was all it took to train the first chick to drink, and they all caught on like a chain reaction after that.

The last gate in my series is the only one we can see from our property besides the low budget garden gate which is only for foot traffic.

This is a classic example of a store bought metal version. A good choice compared to a home made wooden gate when weight is a factor.

I know why the caged gate swings, oh me,

When its frame is warped and its hinges sore,

When it scrapes its bottom and almost swings free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a squeal that it sends from its deep rooted core,

But a plea, that someday again it will swing-

I know why the caged gate swings.


There's a lot of places on the web that claim to be an authority on making your own gate, but Jeff Greef's wood working site delivers detailed pictures backed up with a real world explanation of each step.

If you've never built a gate before, or remember how the last gate you built sagged and rubbed on the ground then save yourself some grief and skim over these three pages before you draw up your plans.

Biochar (aka terra preta) is the new darling of organic gardeners.  Everyone's talking about it, and no wonder since terra preta in the Amazon has turned poor ground into high fertility soil that seems to last hundreds of years without any additional input of fertilizer.

What most people don't realize, though, is that biochar is more than just charcoal buried in the ground.  Amazonians probably stumbled upon the mixture accidentally when they combined human waste, crop residue, charcoal from their cooking fires, animal bones, and plain old trash in their midden heaps.  Scientists aren't quite sure why the resulting mixture is so good for plant growth, but until a biochemist tells me otherwise, I'm going to assume that all of the traditional elements are necessary to create true biochar.

Mark and I have decided to experiment with our own biochar composting toilet as a method of adding fertility to our young forest garden.  Our first incarnation is simply a four foot pit dug in the ground.  We'll poop in the hole and intersperse our humanure with leaves, charcoal and ashes from the woodstove, and the poultry bones we need to hide from Lucy.  Presumably, the nearby fruit trees will begin to send their roots into the terra preta as it ages and will get a good meal.  Meanwhile, our system won't require us to handle the humanure at all, unlike most composting toilet systems, so there's absolutely no risk of contamination.  Maybe the biochar composting toilet will replace composting toilets in the near future.