thanks to your post here i looked up Sharewaste and am now a host myself!

i built a compost bin out of free pallets from the neighborhood and compost my household’s food waste as well as yard waste from family members. i also follow the lazy compost “method” of collecting kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, and etc and adding them to my pile. my in-laws regularly contribute lawnmowing scraps and leaves. i look forward to really putting it to work in the spring!

as for me, i live in Western Colorado, USA - in the high desert. we get a ton of direct sunlight, it’s really hot in the summer and can get really cold in the winter - USDA hardiness zone 6b/7a. it is also a very arid land.

my setup is super basic, as lazy as it gets. i use a pallet compost bin that i made out of free pallets i got from the neighborhood, pretty much as shown in this link. we keep our kitchen scraps and i add to the pile generally once a week. we also add yard waste of our own, and that of friends and family and neighbors occasionally. i water the pile irregularly as i am extremely lazy, but i do have a water barrel set up nearby that, in the future, i will use to drip irrigate the pile, but that’s a next spring project now. something for future Andy; we hate that guy! ha.

we also are using chopped up leaf mulch as compost on a part of our back yard that we are turning from a dirt patch into a garden. this is sort of a compost-in-place situation, or a lasagna mulching situation. it’s not amazing, but it works; i grew potatoes in a wood chip mulch this year, so i am hopeful it will work next year.

i check in here pretty regularly but am largely a lurker; if that’s okay, i could take on moderating c/composting. i’m no expert but i am an enthusiastic amateur…

this is my dream right here. my wife and i bought a “fixer upper” with bare dirt in USDA zone 6b/7a, and i dream of doing this. thanks for sharing!

maybe i can incorporate a 501c(3) and run it as an NGO, ha! but, seriously, fair point. i have heard both horror stories (SWAT teams bursting in in the middle of the night, etc) and bore-er stories (ran an exit node for 3 years, nothing ever happened). i guess i’m worried, and that worry maybe implies that i should not do it just yet. Signal proxy might be the way to go.

yes, the instructions are definitely doable - i am just wondering if there are recommended home network hardening steps that one might recommend. honestly, my worry is probably more related to the Tor exit relay. i really want to do one, but i also do not want legal trouble. maybe i’ll start with a bridge, sigh. but thank you! no worry about tone, text is tough.

dang, the bookbinding looks super cool! good for you. i am slowly beginning to investigate a partnership between my workplace (in the IT field, and we do a lot of ewaste recycling) and the local migrant center to provide them with a bunch of machines for things like GED, citizenship study, and communication.

good luck and good powerthrough!

i’d love to see photos!

i’m recovering from COVID (ugh, it’s terrible) and we have both been too wiped out to cook lately, so i did not get to it. it’s on my list for either Thursday night or this weekend, though. i’ll post a reply and maybe some photos if it goes okay.

for myself, i have been an unproductive lump for weeks due to oppressive heat in my part of the world. and also laziness, and internalized pseudo-Protestant work ethic guilt, and other stuff. but i do have some plans. i live in the arid southwest of the USA (well, extreme western Colorado but it’s effectively the arid southwest, climate-wise). i’ve got some potato plants that are growing which have largely been watered via a rain barrel i have set to collect water from our downspout in our backyard. i have three more such rain barrels which i plan to install.

my mother gave me a gift certificate to a local nursery, so we’re going to plant native/xeric bushes and trees on the west side of our house which is currently essentially bare and exposed to late afternoon glaring, hot sun.

we’re adding cellulose insulation to our attic in September, and once the heat has died down a bit we are going to finish covering out front yard in cardboard and mulch, hopefully in time to plant some winter cover crops. we also planted an apple tree last year that has survived the winter and the summer thus far.

lots to do, and little energy to do it with unfortunately. i’m feeling really depressed and shitty about climate stuff right now, which is why i made this post; i’m hoping i can get some secondhand positivity or enthusiasm to help me get going to actually do some of the projects i have in mind.

thank you! my wife and i take turns cooking and it’s my night tonight, i think i will give this a shot!

do you have a good mujadara recipe that you like? i’ve made it before but it was incredibly bland despite caramelizing the onions for what felt like 100 years.

ooh, excellent ideas, thank you!

dang, approximately where in GJ? that’s where i’m located and i’d love to get some inspiration. i see some stuff like that in Fruita sometimes.

oh dang, shutters! i forgot they’re not just decorative.

i might do something similar when we eventually replace everything in our house with electric stuff, but for now we have a gas-powered water heater. i am saving for a full solar installation on our roof, though, which would power everything. solar is the one energy-producer we have here in absolutely wild abundance.

i’d love to move, but i want to improve where i am while i’m here. we have some plans for trees and sunflowers or amaranth on that side, but i think it’s a “both/and” situation rather than an “either/or” for me.

yes, that actually is my very long term strategy, but the trees are not in place yet. my wife and i had a permaculture analyst suggest plants that produce edible foods for our area, so there are some plans for that and maybe also sunflowers or amaranth to do a natural block. but for today, i’m thinking awnings.