So many Bad Ideas come so easily…

I am addicted to gardening channels although the most I can muster is a few pots on a balcony.  One of the channels is a permaculture nursery that started raising chickens on compost. He gathers food scraps from a couple of restaurants he trusts.  Dumps it into the coop.  They eat it, poop on it and it degrades into compost over time.  He adds wood chips and leaves and a bit of bio char.  And his interesting addition is a bit of seed so the chickens will kick around for sprouts.    It’s amazing.  The chickens kick around the compost, helping it develop.  They poop, helping it.  And he gets nearly free chicken feed and eggs.

Winter was a bit of a problem for him.  He lives in upper NY.  It gets really cold.  Chickens don’t love cold.   So his compost system, while a pile of warmness didn’t always work in the winter months for chickens who refused to leave the warmth of the coop.  So he built a polytunnel and began dispersing his compost in the polytunnel.  The hot compost heats the tunnel and the chickens are VERY HAPPY.

His only downside is it’s not comfortable for him.  He has to turn the compost for the chickens daily.  And it’s tight and awkward.  A batch of  viewers think he created this tunnel to keep his chickens warm and have come up with several creative fire hazards for him to try instead of his successful tunnel.  They haven’t been watching since the beginning.  I know those chickens have a lovely warm coop with a heated water dish.  They aren’t needing a warm home.

He has chicken workers creating compost.  And he needs the workers to show up at work when it’s cold.  So he created a comfortable place for them to work.  They could refuse to participate and he would still give them grain in their coop, just as he has in previous winters.

What is interesting is that suggestion brigade is so oblivious.  The entire video shows extremely contented chickens kicking about in the leaf litter and compost while it’s 20 degrees outside.  They LOVE the new poly-tunnel.  The only one suffering is it’s creator and he already said during the video that the awkwardness is worth it to have content and working chickens.   He called them his workers at least 3 times.

There are of course several practical suggestions from people who listened and know the situation.  Those suggestions are the reason the internet is such a boon to society.  He can get suggestions from people in Russia or Canada or China.  Chickens are everywhere.  In fact I believe they out number us by a factor or two.

So many people have ideas.  And the internet makes it so easy to spew them.  Sometimes this is a great thing.  People are helped.  Sometimes it’s just the garbage of an uninformed mind.  I think the problem is in the person receiving the ideas.  Can they discern the garbage from the practical advice?  Sometimes that is hard. Int his case, I think it’s going to be obvious.

I’ve been all of the above. The person spewing a random but informed idea that entered my head.  I’ve been the person with experience and knowledge who offered advice.  I’ve been the person receiving the barrage of good and terrible suggestions.  I think I have learned to curb my desire to share whatever uninformed thought enters my head.  But probably I will do it again.  I do think I’m pretty good at distinguishing the seed from the chaff on the advice that comes at me.

The internet is a marvel.  But with marvel came a lot of garbage.  I am sorry that it works that way, but it is inevitable considering humans.  So it seems to me the only solution is to teach people how to sift the good seed from the chaff.