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It depends where you store them. In a cupboard in a cramped, cluttered kitchen a load of cheap flimsy gas cartridges are going to rapidly accelerate a house fire in the event one started. In an old brick outhouse down the garden, a bulk buy of a few hundred will be of no risk to anyone. I seem...

If you're not squeamish, and don't mind a little bit of labour, dry compost toilets do away with any requirements for drainage. Grey water from sinks and showers can go on the garden, or a small reed bed.

Water companies are obliged to provide details of treatments which go into your tap water if asked. I'm lucky here, mains water (my only mains service, which feeds a single tap over a Belfast sink, with a lead pipe leading to the ditch for drainage) is from a local borehole treated only with...

I don't have an account on any image posting sites, so here's a commercial version. A homemade version is two containers of your choice with a tap in the lower container and a hole drilled in the upper container for the filter cartridge to drip through. Nothing more.

This post is in the homestead, so if you mean for domestic use, gravity filters are a good bet with ceramic cartridges which prevent the passage of living nasties filled with activated charcoal to remove dissolved nasties. Stainless countertop gravity filters are around the £150-£200 mark from...

I get wounded enough from thorny bushes with all my faculies intact ;)

Funny the conversation came round to giant hip flasks- I got one of these for a quid at a boot sale this summer, an unwanted present: https://www.notonthehighstreet.com/david-louisdesign/product/giant-enormous-hip-flask Being the classic shape scaled up, the curve happens to fit against my...

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Cleaner burning than cheap Chinese versions, too. They will extinguish if knocked over, unlike in films...

I'd be very surprised if there isn't more stainless steel cookware in domestic and commercial use in the western world than all other types put together.

Stainless varies hugely in construction- a pan formed from a single piece of stainless will be prone to sticking in hotspots on anything other than a hotplate. A copper base- encapsulated or otherwise- will conduct the heat to all parts of the pan. Some frying pans are triple ply (or tri-ply)...

Hens are always after protein! They do get some from inverts when free ranging, and can survive on wheat plus what they find but won't lay particularly well. If you could find a source of peas or beans to add in as a small percentage you'd get good results. Only a few percent though or the...

I'll see what I can do! Previous attempts at the UK protein problem were to sprout legumes to remove the antinutrients using a continuous drum sprouter, and raising mealworms on waste from milling. Both were too labour intensive to be viable with around 2000 hungry crops to fill! Apologies for...

Good quality olive oil is stable at higher temperatures and far healthier than cheaper seed oils. Good quality cast iron- and even cheaper stuff- is flat enough for hotplate/woodburner cooking and very stable in use if treated properly. I do have an exception, a Tefal has been wonderfully...

Good for you, I'm naively hopeful that the future is with people like yourselves- doing things on a small scale locally with animal, soil, human and planetrt health in mind. So many domestic poultry keepers seem blind to the fact the protein they are giving their birds is unsustainable...

Looks grand! A pressure canner and bulk buy of Weck jars was one of the best decisions I have ever made! It seems bizarre how few people do this in the UK. I only eat organic food, so grow what veg I can and get the remainder from a farm I occasionally work at, and barter veg with neighbours...

Mine always bounces back by the third pancake.... And truth be told I like the first two piles of yummy mush as much as the properly formed ones!

This is timely, I've just tonight picked up a Tefal cast iron frying pan locally for peanuts from marketplace because I liked the colour. The non stick coating is worn so that will disappear tomorrow with the help of an angle grinder and flap disc. It will then joint my small collection which...

Roll up and fit in a backpack! You can mess about in the surf, propel yourself with a wing (which can be a first step in learning wingfoiling), and climb back on when you fall off.

Two days of proper cold followed by the wind is finally making things look wintery... In Suffolk there are still a few oak and ash trees with a full covering of green leaves, in late November! All changing now.