[0] https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/who-is-the-money-behind-t... [1] (PDF) https://www.nuj.org.uk/asset/18CD4D84-FD26-4CDB-AF43E11F6A6C...

Here in the northern Scottish highlands it's hard to find good bread. Which led us to learn to bake our own sourdough. But there are some good things popping up, like a local baker who is now doing a People's Loaf pay as you can https://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/sutherland-artisan-bak...

Putting the 'right to roam' movement in a greater context. Coming about after de-peopling of the land, trying to counter the effects that has had on people. By returning land access to people, people will regain a connection with the land and care for it more.

You can read more about coppicing on the national coppice federation: https://ncfed.org.uk/public/coppicing/

Some interesting aspects that have been fun to code with (the app is Rails + Elm btw).

- one key detail is Days To Maturity (DTM). This changes between varieties, time of year and latitude. A seasoned grower will know what to expect from a crop they have experience in on their ground. Local knowledge networks are important. The best market gardens know their DTMs and will be tracking it, using it to inform their growing on the fly (maybe their plans need adjusting). Doing things like this should be easier.

- an efficient market garden makes sure they don't have empty space. When a crop is harvested or terminated, a bed flip occurs where it's prepped and the next crop is put in (sown or transplanted). You want to have this planned, ideally in winter before the season starts. You need to know your crop timings (DTM, days in nursery, harvest period (once off harvest or repeat harvest for _n_ weeks). This can be used to ensure you have your succession sowings ready.

- efficient market gardens will most likely have a standard bed width & length, organised into field blocks. A grower will have spacings (distance between rows, in row spacing, multi-sow count). It's easy to calculate the number of plants, rows, seeds for a grower when they're sowing (taking into account a safety factor too). When knowing a seed weight you can also calculate a seed order. This also leads to being able to predict harvest quantities, which leads to knowing how many veg boxes could be filled etc and when coupled with pricing data, can predict yield. You want to know your $/bed-metre and use that as a metric for comparing crops and making decisions.

- if you imagine a weekly veg box scheme, that has _n_ customers (shares) of varying box sizes (e.g a 0.5 box, 1.0 box and 2.0 box), with a season from Some Date -> Some Date. You aim for _n_ number of different vegetables in the box. You can imagine some questions that are helpful for experienced growers and also newbie farmers:

  - if I have _n_ acres, what's an efficient way to divide up my field into beds and field blocks

  - if I have entered in my crop plan, can you show me what's going to be in the veg boxes each week?

    - actually, I don't know what I'm doing, can you just fill in all my beds with a crop plan as a starting point? All I know is how much space I have

  - ...how many shares can I support ...how much money will that bring in?

  - if I have a sense of prices of my crops, how much value are my customers getting?

  - At the weekly harvest: we have harvested and have all the different crops with quantities. We have a box scheme composed of all these shares & share sizes, divide up the harvest evenly so that we know what to pack in each box. Usually this is done each week by hand on a whiteboard or similar in a packing shed. It should be easier (and ideally predicted).

I am very interested how organic growers in NZ deal with them. If they're a problem in their native regions.

There's some more info here: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Rainscreen

I hear the term "rain screen" fairly often to describe open cladding styles. Scroll down to "timber cladding profiles" and then "open cladding": https://www.thousandhuts.org/walls Rather than a more closed timber cladding, like shiplap or board-on-board, there would be a gap, maybe 8mm between the cladding boards. Rain can get in, but with an effective membrane beneath, it's waterproof. And there's always ventilation, so it dries out more quickly. If the wall is built for it, the membrane should be vapor permeable and allow the building to "breath".

I'm not sure if this is as appropriate for your local buildings if they have exterior polystyrene etc. Where I am in northern Scotland many of the buildings from the past several decades are timber frame inside + cavity + a wall of concrete blocks. Those concrete blocks are basically the cladding. They have the same renders as you linked on them. While a lot of people are skipping the blockwork and just cladding the building with timber or metal instead.

The handling of Covid was a reminder too. Consistently rules would (or would not) be made in the south, yet here in Scotland we'd have a firmer stance and/or clearer guidelines to follow. For example, lifting mask rules and so on. I know opinions differ on this subject, for many people that I know the difference in the Scottish gov's handling was appreciated.

It's also interesting looking at result maps for the Brexit vote and the last General Election. These maps show the Scotland / England border, yet that's just a result of showing the differences in how these nations vote.

Carl Rogers & family are restoring an old French farmhouse and have a series of very well made videos about the process. There are separate 1-5 videos of this barn build, but here's a shorter version that's combined: https://youtu.be/K75pQ2HxRgM

Another good channel has this recent video showing a legit medieval castle being rebuilt in France using simple tools and traditional methods. There's a section on working with green oak where they use a side-axe to square up some lumber https://youtu.be/Ajqort8ldXA

Mr Chickadee is another high quality channel for expert timber framing using hand-tools only https://www.youtube.com/c/MrChickadee

Here's a great post on the woodland by a very knowledgeable person: https://alanwatsonfeatherstone.com/a-day-in-scotlands-most-n...

I live on the mainland across the Pentland Firth from Hoy, with our place looking across to the hilly island. We've planted 1,000 trees or so over the past couple of years. I'm growing a lot more from seed I collect locally from woodlands that weren't planted by someone (true local seed stock). There aren't so many native woodlands in this area and it's almost impossible to source trees grown from local seed. It's great to see proof that even on Orkney these sorts of woodlands want to thrive.