Open Thread - Homesteading in France
The sun is slowly coming around again. Happy New Year!
Our neighbors had two white horses set out on their own today. No halters, but not afraid, they sauntered up our farm road. We were able to point out their direction and they were safely retrieved.
We have had long periods of no air circulation punctuated with fast moving but intense rains for the last two months. We have just had another record set of downpours, which caused our petite rivière to rise as far as the previous stake in the ground. The bankside trees ended up in the middle of the rushing stream. We have a couple of days, maybe more of no rain, so the quickly drying stream is dropping fairly fast. We always hope no trees will be lost, but so far, several have given up their grip on dirt.
Wanting to add our wishes that Sam is ok today. We've had dawgs accidentally eat several things that caused reactions: mushrooms, critter poison set out by thoughtless others, and some foods.
We learned never to wait with doggies. Emergency vet, the sooner the better. We never lost a furry friend. Snoop, let us know how is Sam.
We are still trying to cope with the outgasing of our septic. But days like this are difficult at best. So I will probably be looking for higher ground and fresher air away from home when this publishes.
Thank you in advance for salutations and well wishes.
Comments
Good morning...
The greenhouse looks great...nice progress.
We dodged the bad storms last night. They went south of us. Another batch of dicey weather this weekend after which our 70 degree days will become 30-40 degrees days next week. Well it is winter.
One of my favorite dogs started weaving around and couldn't keep his balance. He had a tick on his backbone at the base of his neck. Pulled the tick and he recovered almost instantly. Weird all the stuff that can happen. Any way wishing Sam the best SD.
Thanks for the OT Dawn. Hope you get a fresh breath!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt83arWRx-M]
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Great tune !
The green house is pretty cool too.
Our horses used to get out and wander down the road.
Usually would get a call from a neighbor early in the morning,
then had to scramble with the bridles before the school bus came
and round them up. Silly critters.
Teddy has gotten one or two ticks a
Year here, inspite of his insect collar. We've stopped putting them on the kittehs. Too harsh and not really safe. May stop with Teddy too.
Thanks for the tunes.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
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patching it together
this is from an artist in Lyon, France
Ememem patches potholes and things with ceramic tiles ..
Intricate geometric motifs laid with pristine tiles hug the cracks and create “a memory notebook of the city.
https://www.instagram.com/ememem.flacking/
Hi QMS. Lyon is just over an hour
from home.
We will look for those cool mosaics the next time we go.
We like to take the little train locally which drops us in downtown Lyon. So fun.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Good morning Dawn. Thanks for the OT.
I suppose that there is no way to force the septic to outgas into the open air away from the dwelling? I keep looking at your petite rivière and thinking "undershot water wheel drives compressor ... "
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Hi there el. Yes you have got
one very good idea.
We have large diameter pipe between the septic outlet and the entrance to the distribution box. The box is set up with an electric extractor motor. From there we ran (Mr. Meta) flex expando drier vent pipe, connected with solid couplers and heavy tape.
So far our topography is working against us. Our lower yard/terrain is the bottom of a large bowl. The house sits midway up a hill. Prevailing breezes and weather push the extract back to the house
We looked at the adjoining pastures with gullies, terraces and benches. All seem to reinforce the up slope air.
Today we looked at the creek drainage itself and are extending the flex venting almost to the little river.
Great minds and all that
We are also adding more expanding foam around the extractor exits. Finally adding sealant around doors and windows on the septic side of the house.
We know the answer is an aerobic tank, but how to build or buy one that's well done but affordable is our challenge.
Any suggestions are so welcome.
Personally I need the pressure on my respiratory system to stop. There are days when it's quite scary.
Croisse les droights. And thank you.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Cancel Culture = the Fake Left
late to the party!
So, I packed for an 8 day trip according to two weather services. They were both wrong. It was not cold/near freezing, and it was not windy 5 days. It was windy two days.
They were also wrong about the rain forecast.
Well, DM, I know you are plenty tired of gasses. Not healthy, horrid odors. Hope the suggestions given might solve the problem.
Glad you can get out and walk around. And my, my, you had hard rains!
The forecast shows that Saturday, we go from a high of 80 to a low of 30. Low of 30 Sunday. Just enough to kill off my gorgeous, blooming flowers. Sigh...
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Antidotes for poisons that
Antidotes for poisons that pets might eat.
Ask your vet for an rx for something to help pets who have ingested poisons that are common in your area.
How can people put out poisons that are almost certain to be eaten by pets? Are dogs in your area typically leashed?
One drug that can help detox pets that have drank toxic blue green alage is cholestyramine resin. Many lakes now have microcystin containing algae that is a liver toxin. It could save your pets life. Microcystin dust is also toxin. Lakes filled with blue-green algae are dangerous to be near.
After they consume the cholestyramine they have to consume fat. The cholestyramine sucks the toxins out of their bile. Otherwise it will just be reabsorbed by the body. And build up, possibly making them very sick.
Activated charcoal may be able to do something similar. Activated charcoal has a huge surface area and presents a surface to many small molecular weight toxins that absorbs them, instead of them going into your body.
Another general poison antidote, that helps reduce the toxicity of many toxic substances, is n-acetylcysteine. Its good to keep around and take daily. Why? Because many of us are exposed to toxic substances daily. Also the older we get, the more we need to replace our body's stores of glutathione. Glutathione helps protect our cells DNA from xenobiotics, man made chemicals.
Many common chemicals that are building up in our environment are causing birth defects. Many chemicals should be regulated together, not individually. The government is in denial about this. Supplementing with n-acetylcysteine prevents these quite expensive birth defects, which use these common pathways.. (glutathione being the most important one)
Women of childbearing age who live in areas like the US northeast where environmental exposure to elemental mercury is dangerously high, would be smart to take a modest amount of NAC a day. (a gram or two a day is probably a reasonable amount. NAC is usually sold in capsules , typically 600 mg a pill.) The highest natural source of cysteine is whey protein.
Sam plays off leash with permission at the cemetery
with the same other dawgs she’s played with all summer and only she has gotten sick from there or from something she found in my yard. But she is the only one who gets in the water that flows from a duck pond as well as secondary water sources. My other lab dawg was always in the water and 4 others have drank from it without any problems so I don’t think it’s the source.
The good news is that she is fine now. It lasted for about 6 hours. I always fear someone throwing something poisonous into my yard but they would have to go out of their way to do it. I’m surrounded by other dawgs on all sides. Thanks for your suggestions tho.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Pressurize your house,
You'll need two fans, one going in, and one going out. The intake put where the air is clean. Have the intake fan be bigger and more powerful than the exhaust fan. You should also use a heat exchanger to reclaim some of the heat from the stale air that's being exhausted. They sell them on sites like AliExpress.. I would use an aluminum one. If you design it right you can expect to reclaim around 60% of the heat thats going out. This will give you clean air 24/7 if you are able to place your intake in a clean air spot. (Upwind of the sewage area) This will be a huge help to reducing any risk of covid 19 transmission in your home. ASHRAE has tables that should give you a good idea of the amount of fan capacity needed to keep your air fresh enough. 150 CFM is enough for even a large house. They also make duct heaters to warm air. Put it after the heat exchanger just before the register vent thats dumping it into your home, so you are not wasting energy heating air you are exhausting any more than necessary. Site the intake and exhaust on opposite ends of your house. The air coming in one should be on the upwind side of your house, and the exhaust one should be on the naturally downwind side. In France like the US I would expect winds to flow from west to east, generally. It depends where you are located.