Hydroponics question.... Wife and I started discussing building a green house this week. One of our ideas is to have a pit in the center that is a foot or so deep so I can set an IBC tote in it. The top of the tote would be lower than any benches inside... that way we can use the water in the tote as thermal mass and we may as well dump a bunch of rabbit "pellets" (coco puffs, eh) in the water and allow it to become nutrient rich. Then we can pump it around like a hydroponic system. So I can make the outlet of the IBC tote like a septic tank where it draws from the middle of the tank and avoids floaters and solids... but there will be particulates. Is there a pump recommonded for this use? Attached is my idea of a good green house design... I'm open for suggestions on that too.

Here's a one time use perimeter alarm from a mouse trap. I used needle nose pliers to bend the bail (metal bar) to have that tip on it to strike the primer.

Survival Guide to Self Reliant Living

The invention of the 3 point hitch we use today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAajrTlwVAY

Just saw saddest thing ever… a fawn was freshly killed on road down from the house. About 100’ away, a doe was hit and she was a little further along in decay. I can only imagine the fawn didn’t know what to do when his mama got hit and continued lingering on the roadside.

https://youtu.be/lPDvjIk5cQY spiral pumps can lift water higher than you think. These may be more suitable in some applications than a ram pump.

Having a discussion right now with a friend. He's got 4 55 gallon drums he bought new to store water in his residential house garage. But he has no other water source. So we are discussing taking the downspout of his gutters and putting into a IBC tote (275gallons each). He can then manually move water in 5 gallon buckets to a stacked sand filter and allow it to slowly drain into his 55 gallon drums in the garage. https://offgridworld.com/how-to-make-a-5-gallon-bucket-water-filter/

So we're getting the barn reroofed in a few weeks. We moved the chickens to a 20x20 dog kennel up closer to the house yesterday. I put a hot wire around the bottom in case our dogs thought about digging under it. Usually the dogs can't get to the back 40 where the barn is due to an underground fence and shock collar so they are very curious about the chickens. Well about 3am we heard a gawd awful yelping. Guess one of them found the hot wire.

If you cna find two 10' dog kennels, you cna link the panels so they are 20'x20' (8 panels total). Go by the fencing dept at Lowes and get T couplers and some lengths of 10' 1-3/8 fence top rail. Make a cross in the center and put a 4x4 post in the middle to support the point those fence rails meet. We then covered with two 12x20' shade tarps from horrible freight. Pictures later....

Dog kennel chicken run. Pickup a couple used dog kennels on craigslist. Each will come with a gate/door. remove the gate panel from one and use it to kiss the end of the chicken coop. Birds can go up ramp or under for shade. The other gate panel is used for man door access. The top is 10' lengths of chain link top rail attached with a T coupler. We used two harbor freight shade tarps.

This location is temporary until we can get the reroof of the barn done. At that time we'll put a 6' 4x4 in the middle instead of that telephone pole.

Woefully off topic.... but don't think this can't happen here. I'm drawing some strong vibes from J6, a stolen election and normal people being villainized as "terrorists". Imagine being called a pro-democracy terrorist because you think an election was stolen....

Executions in Myanmar
The military government in Myanmar executed four imprisoned pro-democracy activists over the weekend, government officials confirmed yesterday. Carried out under the pretense of terrorism charges, they are believed to be the first formal executions by the government in decades and come amid a growing, multisided insurgency against the military government.

The prisoners included Phyo Zeya Thaw, a former lawmaker aligned with imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as writer Kyaw Min Yu. Since the country’s pro-democracy government was ousted last February (see timeline), an estimated 14,000 civilians have been arrested and 2,000 others have been killed amid fighting and a military crackdown.

A friend's review of portable battery packs.

Here's the deal with getting the oldest all-in-one: The Yeti from Goal Zero, repaired.

While the design seems to have been originally made on the States [Utah], and been engineered to be completely modular, in actual fact, only the battery [33ah lead-acid] is replaceable.

Transformer burn out because you thought Yeti 400 meant '400 watts', or it just finally died? No problem: part not available. "Can buy whole new entire unit." [The inner printing on transformer is '300 watts'. The battery has a 400 watt-hour capacity.]

While the Power board and Control board are modular, and can be replaced individually based on opening the unit, those boards are not actually available.

No wonder why their lithium offerings, in a much more crowded marketplace, a market GZ used to own, were a flop. Jackery, Bluetti, etc had already made a name for themselves, sent out sample units which were well-reviewed by trusted and listened-to reviewers on Youtube, and used by many people with success who wrote their own reviews and positive comments.

Meanwhile, the company which had been cutting-edge and reliable, mostly, made Lithium units with problems equivalent to second-rate designs. It does appear that after some core units were designed in lead-acid days, that they got lazy and no longer brought to market product that was above-bar.

With technical issues related to poor design that someone in a bubble might dream is 'good enough', no one uses their units - that I know of. Preferring either the Bluetti (or that style of suitcase) or a GroWatt/MPP/EG4 style wall-mounted unit [with separate batteries].

I gave ebay another scan for parts. Mind you, at one time, GZ had offered to replace a board, so they did have them, then. But only a few years later (a few years ago), the only thing they had was refurbished whole units from their sales warehouse. They can't be bothered to have a stash of parts for users that 5 years in, need one?

Refurbished Ecoflow River units are quite affordable [$200]. If it's between spending more on 'Yeti 400 parts' or a cert refurb Ecoflow, I'd do the Ecoflow.

Just a quick fyi… electric fence insulators for metal Tee posts will fit chain link fences.

What a hell of an idea... https://youtube.com/shorts/5L8BVQffdHQ?feature=share

Something to think about when you see "supply chain problems". Our government (cough cough) would never make people dependent on them by destroying an existing supply system.