Author: Dan

Where Do Lettuce Seeds Come From? And How to Save Them

Some vegetables can be baffling when we think about where their seeds come from because we only see the part we eat. Sometimes that part is a seed and but most of the time it’s a completely different part of the plant. But the seeds are the key to the existence of the vegetable we are eating, so every vegetable must have seeds somewhere. But where are the seeds on a head of lettuce?

This video will not only show where the seeds are, but how to grow them and save them so you can grow your own lettuce year to year without buying seed.

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Starting Jackfruit from Seed the Super Easy Way

While in Florida this time I started some jackfruit from seed and planted a few trees before I left. In this video, I demonstrate the super simple process and reveal some tidbits about this delicious tropical fruit. In only 2-3 years you can have a jackfruit tree that produces fruit if conditions are right.

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Amazing Timberframe Strawbale House with Castle-like Interior

This amazing strawbale house located at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is one of my favorites in the village. There is so much to it and the design is so unique. It features beautiful timberframe with strawbale for wall structure and insulation. Lime plaster exterior and earthen interior makes for a pleasant aesthetic and some natural organic shapes. The earthen plaster interior and framing have been designed in places to create an almost castle-like look in some of the rooms. The earthen plaster interior walls are inlaid in places with glass shard mosaics.

But not only does the house have a unique beauty, it has many sustainable systems for providing for basic needs like running hot water from a cook stove or evacuated solar tubes, radiant floor heating, rainwater catchment, wood and passive solar heating.

#StrawbaleBuilding #NaturalBuilding #SustainableLiving

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What Happened to This Lime Plaster Job? And How I Fixed It

How do you fix lime plaster gone wrong? Early in the building of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, when strawbale building was a budding technology, people tried some experimental stuff. Well, to be honest, people are often experimenting because not everyone that builds their first house has all the knowledge they need to do it right the first time. We all make mistakes, and the combining of earthen and lime plasters on strawbale exterior walls was one of those experiments that failed. In this video I show you what happens when you put lime plaster on top of earthen, and how it can be repaired to make a long lasting wall surface.

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I Fixed a Dead Chest Freezer and Turned It Into a Chest Fridge

My old superefficient Sundanzer freezer was DOA when I got back to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage from Florida last spring. This time, I wanted to convert a chest freezer to a fridge with an external thermostat. That way it would be more efficient because it wouldn’t dump the cold every time I opened the door. But when I looked into chest freezers, they were not available and were on backorder for months into the future.

But I noticed a number of appliances on the curb in the village waiting to be brought in for recycling, one of which was a small freezer that still looked in good shape. I thought I’d do some troubleshooting and see if I could get it running again.

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