21–30 of 127 posts
What's with the 5-digit year format? Premature prep for y10k?
The Long Now Foundation's mission is "Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now." The leading zero is a way to trigger people to think about the next 10,000 years.
I know the author is not arguing to tear down all the seed banks, they're saying we should keep plants alive by growing them. But I don't see how it pencils out. To me, this article makes the case for seed banks stronger by pointing out how that proposition is just impossible in reality.
But how do I get it, to eat?
Home gardeners seem like a pretty good option here. For more regular vegetables, this is already a thing that exists with seed libraries and exchanges, and programs that preserve heirloom varietals and sell the seeds to gardeners. Buying these seeds is basically just a way to help pay for the continued cultivation by the breeder (unfortunately, unless you really know what you are doing and are quite careful, preservi…
I've harvested 25lbs of wheat berries from a boulevard in my city. I then threshed, winnowed it myself. I still have some of the flour and berries left and use it to make bread.
I did my threshing using a lawn mower on a big tarp. This actually worked fairly well. Were I to do it again I would probably want a more repeatable setup. Ive seen some good strategies on youtube.
The winnowing I did with a leaf blower, and worked pretty well, I think I would use this strategy again, but I suspect if you were going to do it more often it would be very easy to build something that would help mechanically.
I have a friend with a little home flour mill which took a while but was perfect for turning it into flour. If you were to do it fresh when you wanted to make bread these little mills are fantastic.
There's a book I highly recommend reading called Small Scale Grain Raising [1] that has a lot of good tips, and ways to do this kinda stuff.
In this book they recommend using a leaf shredder or wood chipper which would be incredibly effective.
[1] https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/small-scale-grain-raisi...
A conclusion I reached while reading this article that I can't shake is Adolf Hitler was more forward-thinking, and compassionate, in a way, than Vladimir Putin.
Home gardeners seem like a pretty good option here. For more regular vegetables, this is already a thing that exists with seed libraries and exchanges, and programs that preserve heirloom varietals and sell the seeds to gardeners. Buying these seeds is basically just a way to help pay for the continued cultivation by the breeder (unfortunately, unless you really know what you are doing and are quite careful, preservi…
Wowa, something I have experience with. I've harvested 25lbs of wheat berries from a boulevard in my city. I then threshed, winnowed it myself. I still have some of the flour and berries left and use it to make bread. I did my threshing using a lawn mower on a big tarp. This actually worked fairly well. Were I to do it again I would probably want a more repeatable setup. Ive seen some good strategies on youtube. The…