peds

Yeah, great tree. Happy to have such a similar medium-term replacement for the ash trees growing increasingly rare out here on the west coast. They've been around for well over 1500 years, carved themselves a decent ecological nook, and contributed well enough since then.

At least you've got today's complaint out of the way nice and early. Only good vibes from now on 👌

Whoops! m2-res_700p.mp4

Depends what you are building and who is building it. If you are doing absolutely everything yourself and putting a log cabin on ground screws, then you can take us much care as you want and take the tree into account. If you are building a McMansion and having the contractor with the cheapest quote drop thousands of tons of stone and concrete into the ground, they'll probably drive a digger over it at some point.

If you really want to keep it, snip it right back down to the ground and see what happens. If it's dead you can either remove the stump or not bother, if it gives a last gasp of regrowth and then dies it's still easy to deal with, if it puts some effort in then in a few years you'll have your tree back. Last ditch attempt.

I wish there was some follow up on threads like that. It's so unsatisfying to leave the mystery hanging in the air like that.

That's why panéeing and deep-frying them is such a good idea - both snails and oysters.

Very high in protein, vitamins, and minerals, low fat and calories. Oysters, however, offer all of this and more, but with a much higher fat content, including that good omega-3, so I'd always rather have the oysters if there's a choice available. I have not cooked snails in the following methods, but they work very well with oysters: pumpkin, sage, oyster and cider stew; oyster chowder of sweated mirapoix with chopped oysters and potatoes, herbs, stock, water, milk, or a mix, half blended and half left chunky then recombined; oyster omelette with green herbs; wrapped in seaweed and baked until they pop open; grilled with garlic butter on toast; and in a chicken oyster, oyster, and oyster mushroom cream sauce for mash or tagliatelle. Theoretically, all of these work for snails too, after a hard boil and a slow braise.

Boiled hard in water, drained, then braised low and slow with chorizo and chicken stock is a very good method; as is braised, shredded, and mixed with herbs and ricotta for stuffing into ravioli. (That's minus the shells for both, obviously. ) Snails should be foraged live, then kept in a box and fed carrot for five days then starved for five days before you want to eat them. I am allergic to cheap imported Chinese snails which are probably farmed using absolutely terrifying methods, like much of their agriculture, but I have no reaction whatsoever to decent European snails.

Luckily, no trees fell over today, but yesterday's snow-felled hazel stems in clear view across the path a bit lower down didn't inspire confidence. Today's anchor was 2 cams, a hex, a hedgehog, and a single stout but leany tree. I'd rate it above 16kN, definitely. All tied together with our fancy 6mm aramid cord.

Me too, absolutely love the stuff, and if the practices used to produce it weren't so harmful to the planet and every living thing on it, I'd feel more comfortable eating more of it. But they are, so I limit my intake. On that point though, farmed oysters and mussels are generally considered a net plus for the planet at the moment on account of them cleaning the waters from our river estuaries on its way out to sea, and removing carbon from seawater dissolved from the atmosphere and turning into shells at a remarkably efficient pace. I'm sure I don't have to remind the enlightened congregation here that ocean acidification as a result of an excess of dissolved carbon caused by rampant CO2 levels in the atmosphere will one day, if left unchecked, render the seas inhospitable to life and incapable of producing the vast majority of the oxygen we breathe. So do your bit to save the planet, and our lives: drop steak night and Sunday roast beef, and replace them with moules frites and oysters baked in garlic butter and breadcrumbs.

Your idea that a plant-based diet isn't "nutrient dense" enough for humans to survive. It's nonsense. As evident by the number of species on the planet who survive - and thrive - on a plant-based diet.

On your first point, the same as today, but less domesticated. Wild roots an tubers, nuts, seeds. Wild parsnip, lesser celandine, dandelion, etc. Edit to add: these roots and tubers come with the added bonus of not being able to fight back or defend themselves when attacked, unlike most sentient lifeforms, making them a particularly appealing choice when faced with potential maiming or death at the tusks of a mastodon. On your second point, there are many incredibly large herbivorous species who would disagree with you.

You're also glossing over the fact that a lot of the premium quality grass-fed stuff is being exported to places where they actually care about such things, and being replaced with pink paste shite from industrial feedlots because that's all the vast majority of consumers need.

Ah right, that's fair enough. Not the most elegant of phrasing, but absolutely a good point.

Absolutely, some could just be a paper thin sheet of roots hidden under a blanket of moss on a solid rock slab, but some could have big thick roots wrapped between and around a pile of half ton boulders. Tricky one to judge.

That's all they are, a pretty slick 800euro guide plate, but with a pulley built in. Awesome bit of kit, huge improvement on the Pretzl IDs they replace. Still got a heap of IDs for general use, but for the centrepiece of the masterpoint... Clutches rule, hard.

Figures be damned, that's a nice meaty pull. No worries dangling two people and a stretcher off a 12" conifer then, I'll make a note of it in our training manual.

And yeah, load cells are great fun, been such a useful tool the few times I've played with one. Definitely an investment worth making if you can make it work for you. Not sure we can afford one this year, fingers crossed for next year!

Those Clutches do all the clicking for us. Such a pleasing noise! I would like to upgrade the pulleys in the future, but it won't be for clicky ones, just the Petzl SpinL1/2, or another brand equivalent. I definitely see the appeal of the one directional ones, but they wouldn't really help us out I don't think. Can't afford clicky pulleys anyway, we are getting another pair of Clutches soon enough...

Provided the 5 lucky chosen trees can each take 16kN of pull, they are stronger than the anchor cord holding them together, and they only need to give 7 or 8kN each to beat the current weak point in the system, the ropes themselves. Maybe we'll track down a load cell and a tractor and try pulling some trees ourselves, it'd be fun to get some numbers on it.

You just need to cover the tree in a giant cloud of insulation.

Pretty scary looking worms, those. To be fair, barriers are an effective pest control technique in organic growing.

Yeah sideways pull at the base. It'd be interesting to consider a downward pull on a limb or the stem from a redirect, aiming to haul a load out of cave or a river gully though. Wrist thickness or more for climbing on (depending, of course, on so many factors), so two wrists for a rescue load, times it by ten for a safety margin... twenty wrist thickness? I don't have the arb rigging experience of a lot of people here, so what thickness of wood is the minimum for dropping a 250kg chunk from up in the tree? Probably want to let that run for a bit I guess... Back to the ground anchor, I'd say a 6" minimum stem is a decent diameter to aim for and I'm sure it'd perform just fine on its own, personally I'd want three of them tied together though.

Shame it was vertical on the tree and not a horizontal load, but still wildly interesting. Love a bit of destruction testing. From a technical rope rescue point of view, that tree would probably exceed the 25kN target for a system... but you'd still want a second one nearby, just in case. Good old redundancy.