Shop Truths, Phrases, Tales; and Outright Lies

[C-Bag]

Very interesting tie in Frank S. Because one of the "truths" always being thrown around any shop is "time is $$" and in my experience the managers don't think anything is getting done unless those on the floor are rushing around expending energy like chickens w/their heads cut off. The few masters I got to work around were the epitome of economy of motion and by extension, energy. They never rushed, they never did it over. They wouldn't start until they had a clear plan of what they were going to do. And they were always done before the whirling dervishes. Especially when you started tracking their comebacks. Their time truly was directly converted to work/$$.

I also enjoy seeing where time, $$ and energy is saved here on HMT using what is at hand or might be a tossed by others, converted into something useful. The hugelkultures are a good example. Instead of being carted off and dumped it's used directly.

The first time I ever heard of such a thing is in Paul Stametts book Mycelium Running. For those who don't know him he's the mushroom King. He describes where he was living in WA was a very old homestead like most of the places around him. And like most around him they had an old barrel in the ground for a septic tank with a very poor leech field. Everything sloped and went over a cliff into the bay. He has farm animals too, so everything was going over the side. There was a long depression that everything kind of ran to so he put all his wood chips in layers with cardboard layers to keep them damp in the building a dam so all the run off had to go through. He also told the phone and power co they could dump their wood chips from trimming in there too. Each layer of cardboard and chips he inoculated with garden giant mushrooms.

They started having probs with the clam beds in the bay having bacteria related to effluent and started going around checking on all the farms runoff. After checking his they found no trace of bacteria. The mycelium filtered the bacteria and ate it producing clean water going into the bay. It typically lasts 10yrs, and you dig it up and it's the best soil you can imagine. Then just repeat the process.

That book is chock full of amazing things like that. Another was the state transportation yard put out a bid to try to find an alternative to scraping the yard clean of the oil that dripped off the vehicles and send it to a hazardous waste dump. They wanted an onsite remediation process. There were three respondents, Stammets being one. The state prepared 4 piles of oily dirt/gravel. There test piles and one control. They each applied their process. Stammets used wood chips inoculated with oyster mushrooms. He didn't see what the other outfits used. All 4 piles were covered with tarps and they returned 6wks later. When they uncovered the piles the control and the other two piles looked the same, but Stammets pile was covered with oyster mushrooms. The tested the soil and the oil was completely gone. The mushrooms had done what they do, disassembled the long molecuclar chains of the oil. He also makes the rolls you see put in storm drains here as they are inoculated with the same mycelium to filter the oil that come off the roadway during a rain and keep it out of Morro Bay fisheries. I've read where there has been success composting chipped plastic the same way with wood chips, oyster mycelium and chipped plastic.