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It works decent but the handle is too heavy. I’ll fix it in the future.

For all the sugar cane growers:

We had two days of 24 degree nights on November 10 and 11. It’s sustained those two nights of frozen temperatures. The leaves are completely white with almost no green in them. The cane looks dry, but it does still have some juice in it. We are not sure if this bacteria that gets in the stocks after a freeze in these cane stalks. Google searching shows that freezing temps can introduce bacteria and that impairs (ruins?) sugar content / quality.

Really don’t want to spend a day and a half cutting grinding and boiling cane if it is not going to bear fruit.

Any ideas?

I posted this on r/composting yesterday but have realized that it’s a great example of stacking functions and obtaining a yield. The video shows off my winter “compost house” and focuses mostly on the new worm bins I’ve added next to it. This adds another function for the whole system: keeping the worms warm. The whole system is:

• helping some local businesses dispose of food waste properly,
• giving me compost,
• keeping my chickens busy throughout winter
• (not to mention the eggs some of them still provide my family and friends, which is likely increased because of the more comfortable environment),
• giving them a warm place to spend cold days (last winter on 0°F days, the air temperature inside the greenhouse was 20-30°),
• and now helping my composting worms stay alive through the winter to eventually spread throughout the chicken/compost yard, Edible Acres-style.
• These new worm bins are also adding insulation to the active compost inside the greenhouse.

The new bins are super simple in design but should keep the chickens out and the worms in.

The video also shows off some other changes to the compost house, including an expanded back wall made of scavenged pallets and a side retaining wall made of slabwood.

This is the confluence at the corner of my place on Hawai‘i Island. Both streams got the same rain, but not the same treatment upstream. The clear river comes from about two miles of farms practicing agroforestry and permaculture. Lots of canopy, groundcover, perennial roots, and almost no exposed soil. The brown river drains an area of conventional ag with regular tillage and long stretches of bare ground. Every storm sends sediment downslope, and the river turns opaque fast.

I’ve watched this pattern for years, and this photo captures the contrast better than any soil health lecture ever could. Thought folks here would appreciate the visual of how management choices show up instantly in watershed behavior. If anyone wants more context—rainfall patterns, soil type, crops, or land use upstream—I’m happy to share what I’ve observed. This river junction has become a pretty reliable indicator of what’s happening on the landscape above it.

🆒

With winter creeping up, I’m full of doubt about where we stacked the firewood. The furnace does an okay job keeping us warm, but the fireplace is still necessary when it really drops down, let alone power outages. Obviously I want it convenient, but I’m also concerned about being so close that rodents and termites are a problem.

I’ve lived here a couple years and just guessed the whole time. I see lovely woodsheds built way back on some properties and others with their whole porches dedicated to hosting firewood. What’s the logic?

How do you balance there?