Bounty

[greenstorm]

Most of a 5 gallon bucket of soap lard trimmings rendering in the oven, plus two crockpots' worth on the table. Instant pot full of dog scraps. Dehydrator on with bay leaves. Supergiant stock pot with bones on the stove overnight. Dishwasher on. Freezers all stuffed full, with more work to be done tomorrow.

Gonna be a big electricity bill for today, and small grocery bills for awhile.

Can one cook doughnuts in lard?

I'm incredibly tired, and I've been super sad and anxious all day except when I can get completely caught up in deboning a picnic shoulder or something. I don't want to be sad the whole time Josh is here. I want to be present and enjoy his company. He's a wonderful person to project with though.

There's not even any point in discussing my communications with Tucker right now. They go terribly, then really well for a bit, then terribly. Why am I doing them? What do I want to get out of them?

Lots of rain last night and today. Everything is muddy and chilly. Summer is over. Next dry day I'll take in grain and tomatoes I think. A dry day might be a bit if it stays this cool, since I don't think it'll dry quickly.

Demoncat hates the rearrangement of the kitchen for butchering and meowls piteously.

This is going to be my first full week's vacation where I don't have to manage a trip somewhere.

My mind doesn't exist. More tomorrow.

Comments

[greenstorm]

This makes a lot of sense. I've never stewarded a humanure setup -- here you can't get organic certification if there's one on the property, so I think they may be less common as a trickle-down effect. In the case you describe the outhouse has buckets, and the buckets are emptied into the pit, instead of the outhouse being moved over a sequential series of pits?

I love love love high-nitrogen composts hot enough to break down animals quickly. Here I have no way of doing it: I'd have to exclude, not just domestic animals but also all the bears and big cats and foxes etc it would lure who might snag an animal on the way out even if they couldn't access the compost. A pit with a cover and its own electric fence might be enough of a disincentive though.

[yarrowkat]

i am not sure if organic certification would exclude it in the US; certification is prohibitively expensive, so most small farmers with organic practices never get certified. it's something like $5k/year.

ours is above-ground, not in a pit. but yes, bucket in the outhouse and another in the houses, emptied into the bin. we do not have bears, big cats, or foxes, however. :) just raccoons, whom we can effectively fence out, and coyotes, who are smart and canny and don't mess with fenced enclosures when there are free-range birds to prey on. and stray cats; Furdre used to eat out of the compost all the time and that is how i eventually tamed her, luring her over to the yurt (which is not far from that compost) with food.

i've seen it done with a tall outhouse built up about person-height above ground - this was at EarthHaven ecovillage in North Carolina - you climbed stairs to get in, and then pooped into a barrel that's kind of way down there, and if you have the capacity to separate it, you pee into a tube that goes to a different barrel; this they dilute with water and put directly on the soil as high-nitrogen fertilizer. below the high floor, the enclosure with the barrels is fully fenced with a secure gate, so a person can enter to remove/add barrels but animals cannot.